Way to Russia Talk Lounge

themoon73 · Just Starting Joined: 12 Apr 2004 Posts: 1

I am a US citizen. I will be staying in Irkutsk from August 7th to August 24th. So far, I have purchased my airline tickets and have received them. I will depart from New York and go through Moscow. I also applied for and should soon recieve my passport.

The problem is, I wish to reside with my girlfriend who lives in an apartment in Irkutsk. She will be providing all of my accomodations. This being the case, I believe this may pose a problem with my visa. What should I do about invitation and registration? Will I be able to stay with her at her place or will I be forced to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a hotel? What should I do about obtaining a visa?

hendrik · Just Starting Joined: 03 Jul 2004 Posts: 1

hi,

i reckon you should get an invitation from some backpacking hostel or other organization and apply for a visa with that. then, stay a night at the backpacker place and make them register your visa. that's how i'm gonna do it, when i enter russia in StP.

an agency in irkutsk is 'baikalcomplex', which you can find on the net at http://www.baikalcomplex.irk.ru/

they are very kind and helpful and also speak english very well, so you might try getting an invitation from them

what i heard from private invitations is all bad: you'll have to queue up for a day to register (.. and your gf has to queue up one day to get the invitation signed, too) - at least that's what i heard. it's not worth it. you'll pay about $40 for an invitation with backpacker places.

hope i could help you a little Smile

hendrik

PS: .. maybe meet you in irkutsk! i'll arrive on the 13th and get back on the train on the 19th iirc Smile

WayToRussia · Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2004 1:49 am Post subject:

You can get your visa support through this site ( http://waytorussia.net/Services/VisaSupport/Tourist.html ) and get it registered in Irkutsk (that will be extra ~$20 US). Then you can stay in your girlfriend's apartment without any problems. The address of the companies that can provide registration for your visa (if the invitation is obtained through this site) are listed on the application form page.

wavetossed · WayToRussified Joined: 27 Jun 2004 Posts: 337

If you haven't got your passport yet then you clearly have no visa to enter Russia. And you have plane tickets for August 7th!?!?!?

Somehow you have to get an official invitation to Russia (that's what they call visa support) and then you have to get the Russian visa.

In order to get an invitation I believe you have to tell the visa-support people your passport number. I know I had to put this on the form when I applied in the UK.

Then, after the invitation has arrived at the consulate/embassy in the USA, you have to hand you US passport to somebody who will take it to the embassy along with a visa application. There is no guarantee that you will get a visa even if you have an invitation, but it is extremely rare for people to be turned down *IF* they use the services of a visa support agency.

It's not impossible to get this sorted out but you need to stay on top of it and make sure everything happens quickly, including the turnaround time for emails and phonecalls and the payments to the visa support agencies.

It might be better to postpone your trip. My advice would be to contact visa support people, get firm commitments for the turnaround time and if you can't live with the suspense, change your plane tickets.

As for hotels, there is a hostel on Razina Street that charges $14.30 per night and they also do the visa registration for you. Nobody says that you actually need to sleep there in their dormitory rooms. You are lucky that you tried this trick with Irkutsk because they attract backpacker traffic due to nearby Lake Baikal. In most Russian cities you would not be able to find cheap accomodation and they would definitely not help you with registering visas in a fleabag hotel.

If you don't have visa stamps for every day of your stay, it can help if you have some train tickets because you can make a convincing story about not being in any other town for more than a day or two. The law says that if you go to another town, you have 3 business days to register. Obviously there are lots of people doing long train trips through Russia who only stop for a day here and a day there. So the border people are familiar with this. Since you can't show a full set of tickets, I'm suggesting that you might be able to bluff your way out with no fine by rummaging around in your bag and finding one ticket and then claiming that you never bothered to keep them after the end of the journey. So consider taking your girlfriend on a train trip to another city for a few days. You'll get lots of talking time together on the train, i.e. you can't do much else besides talk, i.e. no distractions, no T.V., no bedroom, no nightlife nearby, etc.

I'm doing something like this, flying with my girlfriend for a day in Moscow to go to a rock festival and then onto the train for a two and a half day journey back to her hometown.