Last Friday, I received a DHL package from my school in Russia, containing everything I would need from them to apply for my visa. And today, I filled out the actual visa application. I had some questions regarding the cover letter I need to enclose with my visa and am waiting on a reply from my school. But if all is well, I expect to get all of my visa materials sent out on Thursday.
Russia has a reputation for being both bureaucratic and capricious, but, considering all of my visa problems in Taiwan, I am actually glad the visa process for Russia requires as much as it does. No one, and I mean no one, enters Russia without a visa; there are no "landing visas" in Russia. Even to cross Russia on the way elsewhere requires a pre-arranged transit visa, valid for anywhere from 72 hours to 14 days (to give tourists enough time to get all the way from Vladivostok to Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Railway).
Officially, I will be applying for a 3-month, single-entry business visa. Upon my arrival in Russia, the school will exchange this for a 12-month, multiple-entry visa. I have to be officially registered within a day of my arrival, which means I may be taken straight from the airport to the school so that my paperwork can be handed in on time. Not the most fun way to spent my first few, sleep-deprived hours in Russia, but one that will be better for me in the long run.
But the business visa I am applying for specifies that I am coming to teach. I imagine that the Russian embassy knows I am likely coming on a 3-month visa that will be exchanged once I am in the Russian Federation. At least this time around, I don't feel as if I am playing visa roulette, for the simple reason that this time, I am not lying to anyone about my purposes in going abroad. This fact alone should minimize my chances of being bouned around Eastern Europe the way I was bounced around East Asia.
It's hard to say just when this whole enterprise starts to feel "really real". Going to Taiwan, I found there were several moments when it became progressively more real: when I applied for the visa; when I moved out of my apartment; and finally when my plane landed on the far side of the Pacific. I imagine it will be much the same with Russia. Doing some work to revive the smidgin of Russian I got in college has made the whole thing seem more real this time around.
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