There are no pics this week.
Our focus this week has been on getting a Russian Visa. We have to have a Russian visa before we can visit Russia. One can get a visa from a company that specializes in getting visas for people. All those companies charge a lot of money and all visa applications go through “ILS-Visa”, a company Russia set up specifically to manage all Russian visas. ILS-Visa has an office in DC. We decided we could save a bunch of our hard earned green by doing the visa ourselves. It sounds so easy. Fill out an on-line form, take it to ILS-Visa, and wait a week. Voila. It turned out to be a little harder than that.
We needed an invitation before applying for a visa. Our flights and boat cruise were through Gate1. They said they would send an invitation, so we waited for that. When it arrived, it did not include our entire time in Russia — only the cruise. I contacted our hotel in St. Petersburg and in Moscow and got invitations from them also.
The online form turned out to be quite involved. They required our previous two employers, with start / end dates, job titles, name of supervisor, and more. They require two numbers from the invitations, helpfully listing the Russian word to look for. One invitation didn’t have one of the words. I suppose they used a synonym? They required the the schools where we got degrees, with major and start/end dates. The details were astounding. We went through 3 iterations, with me entering information and Danita proofing. Having all the paperwork, one can request an appointment with ILS-Visa. Requesting an appointment can be done on-line. Except that no appointment times are available in 2016 or 2017. Why have a website to request appointments if they obviously don’t intend to offer appointment times?
So we bundled up our forms, invitations, photos (the photo that’s in our passport isn’t good enough, I guess) and took a trip to DC. When we arrived at ILS-Visa, we learned that our application had 3 errors. For example, one error was the name of the St. Petersburg hotel. The name I copied and pasted from the website wasn’t acceptable because it wasn’t the Russian name. We could correct the forms and come back another time, or they could correct the forms for us. It “only” cost an extra $30. Each. The invitation we had from the St. Petersburg hotel was not acceptable. It turns out the hotel sent us two documents (both in Russian). I picked out the wrong one.
The good thing was the person at ILS-Visa who we worked with. She was polite and professional. She called me at home, helped me find the correct invitation form, and allowed me to Email it to her. If all goes well, we will be able to pick up our Visas Monday, May 23 at 2:00. When we left ILS-Visa, I spotted a patisserie across the street. Our plan is to arrive a little early and visit the patisserie when we go to pick up the visas.
My other recent frustration is over. I’ve been “spring cleaning” the office computers. I finished my last update this morning. There are a few issues I’m not sure how to address. I documented them and sent them off to the IT committee.
Besides that, we had a neighborhood concert Tuesday. It was a “big band” playing swing. The band wasn’t the best, but it was good fun. I met with our new IT support company and reviewed our office computers with him. We had a neighborhood party yesterday. And we have a BSO concert tomorrow. The concert is unusual for us, because this performance is at Strathmore, which is close to DC.
That’s quite enough complaining for one week. ;-) I hope this finds everybody doing well.