Today I spent 5 hours at/outside of the Russian Consulate. I am feeling something in between amusement and anger, but now that I am home all I really care about is resting. I am eating a loaf of bread and a quesadilla at the same time.
I have to say, after everything I feel like I have gone through with Russia (i.e. a miserable summer at UCLA taking intensive Russian, literature teachers I didn't like, my extremely creepy boss at the Russian deli) this is actually the first thing that has made me doubt my commitment to Russia.
Bureaucracy I can handle, but this was something else entirely. It was more like anarchy. Firstly, here is a picture that gives a fairly good idea of what it looked like (I didn't have my camera, but I found this one):
You really can't see the stairs in this picture but they, at least today, were packed as well. There seems to be some sort of divide between people who needed visas and people who needed passports. However, half of the people needing visas just shoved their way to the front of the passport line, which was moving much, much, much faster, so a man that literally got there two hours after I did got in before me.
In the first 3 hours they let in about a third of the staircase of visa applicants, aka about 10 people. Then as they about to take their lunch break they told us (in Russian) that the system was down. And so, for an hour, we all just stood there without even the hope of being let in while they ate lunch.
They was some problems with crowd control in that the people at the back of the line kept screaming whenever the door was opened. Then they tried to get the people in front to just push their way in the next time the door opened. This, to me and all the other people near the front, sounded like the fastest and easiest way NEVER to get a visa, but they kept screaming at us.
On the plus side, I was actually in a cheerful mood and had a great attitude for about 4 of the 5 hours. I had lots of interesting conversations and met some very nice people. Had we been able to sit in a waiting room and were treated slightly better than cattle, it might have been a nice day. In fact, if I wasn't so worried as the hours crept by that I wouldn't get my visa in time for my trip I would have taken this more in stride. I nearly snapped in that final hour, mostly because my attempt to be polite, non-violent and friendly seemed to have actually impeded my visa application process.
More importantly, I have to go back on Thursday to pick up my visa and there is a very good chance that I will again have to wait somewhere between 1-5 hours.
So, not the most encouraging way to begin my travels in Russia, but I will try to stay optimistic.
