Now that we have plane tickets, the second step is visas.  One of the true joys of being an American is that we generally breeze through this process.  If we want to visit Paris or London or Dublin we just show up at the airport and they happily wave us through.  Other places like Argentina or Cambodia ask us to pay a fee, fill out some forms and then wave us through.  But a few, a select few, do make life difficult.  Not as difficult as the American government does to other nationals trying to get to Disney Land, mind you. While we have to fill out some forms and glue on an itty bitty, inevitably unflattering photo, people applying for a visa to come here have to provide affidavits from their local police department and medical records as well as proof of employment and bank records.  So I am not complaining. I had a friend from Indonesia who tried many times to get a visa.  He was at that awkward stage between being a student and owning his own business or having inherited/earned enough money to own land or buildings.  Not having a wife or children to leave behind as collateral, the US officials simply assumed he would never return home and denied him a visa. This is more generally the case than not. 

However, of all the countries in the world besides ours, the two most intimidating are Russia and China.  First of all, they keep changing the rules.  This is the third time I have applied for a Chinese visa and I still don't have it down yet.  Now, apparently, we need a letter of invitation to enter the country.  Or is just presenting an actual flight ticket in and out of the country enough? Do we need a complete itinerary or not?

I'll get to that later because I can't apply for my Chinese visa until I get my passport back from the Russian consulate who are presently perusing it. I will break the actual steps needed to get a Russian visa down later but for now, let me just say, it is an exercise in cultural communication. Without even stepping one foot into the country I feel I have already glimpsed how my three weeks there will go. One the one hand, they are the most nitpicky, persnickety officials I have ever had to deal with.  On the other hand, there is no official obstacle that cannot be cleverly circumnavigated .

The first thing that flummoxes most travelers to Russia is the need for an official "Letter of Invitation", hereafter known as an LOI. If you aren't presently being invited to Russia by either a person or a business, never fear.  There are hundreds of organizations in Russia that are more than willing to invite you.  Twenty dollars and twenty minutes will get you a legitimate "Visa Support document". If you've booked a hotel they can send you one, if you've booked a tour or ticket in Russia, that agency can invite you.  Or you can just go to one of the many, many websites specifically set up to help you like Real Russia or GotoRussia.

Once you have your LOI, you are set to apply.  The first thing you need to know is the Russian consulate no longer actually handles the application.  Yes, that's right, they have farmed it out to a visa application business who will take your form, check it over and when everything is in order, send it to the consulate to be stamped.  For this service they of course need to be paid, so you will have to add on, at minimum, an extra $30 to the standard $140 (for Americans) visa fee. If you want to do it by mail or faster than the standard 10 business days then, of course, the fee will be much, possibly much, much higher.

Now mark my words, no matter how precisely you fill out the application, they will find something wrong with it; a spelling error, wrong punctuation, something. Mine was rejected because I had not realized my LOI had written (in cyrillic) the names of the hotels I was supposedly staying at during my three weeks in Russia.  I had, myself, picked various hotels randomly out of a guidebook and put them down (in english) on my application.  Now the agent looking over my papers was not at all bothered that the facts were blatantly false (as in I clearly was not going to be staying at hotels I didn't know about).  All she cared was that the forms did not match.  But, for $25, she could retype my entire application replacing my hotels with the cyrillic ones mentioned on the LOI. Note, this was $25 per visa per family member since they ALL had to match, not a one time thing. I still don't know the names of the hotels we and the kids are supposedly staying at.

So, nitpicking, yet surprisingly flexible. As in, everybody knows this is a complete scam but if you do not dot the i's and cross the t's we are going to pretend this is a very big deal.  Until it's not, because with a little extra money, it can all go away.  Or as the website for the agency that now handles all things Russian visa says - "it has become a very comfortable and pleasant procedure." Trust the system, you will get a visa.  Eventually.

We have tickets, we are going! Three huge countries - Russia, Mongolia and China. If only.  Naturally, it has gotten a tad more complicated (spiraled out of control). First, we have a friend from Estonia, a good friend,  She happens to be going back to her home country to show off her new baby.  Her home town, Tallinn, is only four hours by train from St. Petersburg.  It's right next door! So, why not? How could we pass up this opportunity to be shown around Estonia by a proud native?

Just as I was about to click on the buy button for tickets, my hubby casually mentions, oh by the way, the Dixon family reunion is happening in Ireland just after we arrive back in the states.  Ah, ok, let's think about this. Back to Kayak.com and rework the multicity tickets.  It is absolutely ridiculous to fly back from Asia to USA and then turn around and leave for Europe so....we are now going straight from Beijing to London.  There we will spend some time with my family before jetting off to Ireland to meet up with the giant Dixon clan.

So, in a nutshell, here is the plan - Estonia, Russia (including Siberia), Mongolia, China, England and Ireland in just over two months.  How did this happen? Emmm, what happened to one month, one country? It's just that that they are each right next to each other, how can we not keep going in a single straight line from Eastern Europe to Asia?  Yes, I realize the England/Ireland bit is at the end instead of in the beginning, but doesn't it make a beautiful (almost) straight line? Completely logical, no?

Ah, it will not be so bad, since we will basically be following the tried and true Trans Mongolian route, jumping on and off the train as we see fit.  The train routes are so extensive and omnipresent that even though it will be high season I don't think we will have any trouble getting tickets.  All the Moscow-Beijing tickets will be sold out but the little hops in between on the less fancy trains will still be available.

And that, my friends, might fall under the heading of "wishful thinking".  We will find out!