NO EASY WAY TO RUSSIA
DECEMBER 2017
I had been trying to get to Russia since as far back as early 2015. It had been near enough to the top of my list for years and years. I was close to Kaliningrad in 2015 on a trip to Lithuania, sadly I didn’t have a Russian visa at the time, so I couldn’t cross over to the enclave. I was also close during my Estonia trip in 2015, inches from Russian territory, though, once again, I didn’t have the visa. I lived in Guangzhou in China for a couple of years, initially unaware that there would be a huge Russian population living in the city and I thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with them and chatting about Moscow.
The more Russians that I met, the more I wanted to visit, and the more stories that I heard ,the more interesting it began to sound. It sounded even more tempting to go to Moscow, the capital city, knowing that there would be a lot happening leading up to the World Cup which Russia was close to hosting. I loved listening to stories about Moscow in the wintertime and the thought of standing in the Kremlin with the snow dropping down motivated me more and more. I knew that the trip would be difficult and would require a lot of effort, but I was willing to give it a go, hoping that nothing would get in the way!
Russia wouldn’t be easy and visa regulations had changed a lot in recent years, and from what I was told, would often change again without much notice. There were a million and one things that I needed to get and soon found out that I was unable to apply for a tourist visa outside of my home country, so I needed to go back to Ireland, then I’d be able to apply at the Russian embassy in my hometown, Dublin, so I flew home. I wanted to do things by myself and I didn’t want to pay for an expensive tour, a guide, and an expensive hotel, so I knew that it would be trickier and more time-consuming, but I knew that would be the best option because I hate being on someone else’s schedule and told what to do every day, like my Bhutan and North Korea trips which were heavily monitored.
Firstly, I needed to buy an invitation letter that I found online. I filled out the application form, which included the exact dates that I would be staying in Russia, along with the name of the place I would be staying, along with the address, phone number, and some other additional information. I sent them the payment and got the invitation letter, via email, after a couple of days. Everything was in Russian and it included an official stamp, so that was ideal and I didn’t have any worries knowing that it would be approved and it was an authentic document.
Then I needed to buy a separate insurance policy because my current insurance policy wasn’t applicable in Russia for some strange reason, so they needed a recognized name, so I bought a Russian insurance policy for four days and printed it out, it covered the entire length of my stay in Russia (very important step at the embassy). Along with these forms, I needed to fill in and print out an application form from the government website and then, along with all of these forms, a payment of 190 euros for the express service, outch a bit pricy, but whoever said that there was an easy or cheap way to Russia? The slower service could have taken anything from 5 – 15 business days and would only cost about 80 Euro and at that time I didn’t have enough time to wait around Ireland. So I was all set and ready to go. I showed up at the embassy in Dublin, my hometown, and gave the worker all of my documents and he told me to go back in three business days to pick up my passport which was ideal.
Afterwards, everything was official and I was now a step closer to Moscow and a step closer to St Basel’s Cathedral.
A few weeks later I landed in Russia, after competing another mini European trip, landing right in the middle of their freezing winter. After clearing customs, I went straight to the city. It was an insanely cold November evening and it just happened that I needed to pass through the Kremlin to get to my hotel, so it was an absolute bonus on day 1 in Moscow!
taking everything in, all of the famous sights on my first night. I crossed over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge and then checked into my hotel with a view over all of Red Square. It had been an exhausting trip, but completely worth all of the effort and the painful bureaucracy challenges , but I could now happily tick off the biggest country in the world!
