AAAAAAAAAAAH MOTHERLAND! 2
Russian visa blanks must be the stupidest things ever created. They practically scream "we don't want you in our country", which is awfully discouraging even if you already have bought half of your tickets and booked the hotel (which is another exciting story of Awful Service).
They ask you to report which cities you are planning to visit. And leave you with enough space to write S:t Petersburg or Moscow, but not more than one place. Definitely not enough space for longer town names like Komsomolsk on Amur.
And then there are the great and beautiful questions "If you ever were a citizen of the USSR or Russia, how did you lose your citizenship". Which in my case is "due to the collapse of the Soviet Union when I became an alien of Latvia", and it sounds incredibly stupid. I wish I could write a laconic "1991" as the cause. My all time favourite Russian visa question is however "when did you emigrate from the USSR or Russia". I never did! I was born in Leningrad, Russia, yes. But when I moved to Latvia it was still a part of the USSR, just as Russia, and moving within one country is not usually referred to as "emigration". I have never moved from the Soviet Union, it went *poof*, I just stayed where I was.
Stupid stupid country. And the visa will cost us $320. I know so many people who'd totally go touristing Russia if the visa was free of charge, or at least reasonably priced...
They ask you to report which cities you are planning to visit. And leave you with enough space to write S:t Petersburg or Moscow, but not more than one place. Definitely not enough space for longer town names like Komsomolsk on Amur.
And then there are the great and beautiful questions "If you ever were a citizen of the USSR or Russia, how did you lose your citizenship". Which in my case is "due to the collapse of the Soviet Union when I became an alien of Latvia", and it sounds incredibly stupid. I wish I could write a laconic "1991" as the cause. My all time favourite Russian visa question is however "when did you emigrate from the USSR or Russia". I never did! I was born in Leningrad, Russia, yes. But when I moved to Latvia it was still a part of the USSR, just as Russia, and moving within one country is not usually referred to as "emigration". I have never moved from the Soviet Union, it went *poof*, I just stayed where I was.
Stupid stupid country. And the visa will cost us $320. I know so many people who'd totally go touristing Russia if the visa was free of charge, or at least reasonably priced...