hate all the bureaucratic world except those required to obtain a visa. Sometimes to enjoy the drawbacks, paperwork and obstacles imposed on me through those windows. Masochism must be some traveler heir of my experiences with the Polish and Soviet bureaucracy of communist times. Something. The fact is that I enjoy. Request the visa is often the first part of the trip and the visit to an embassy often puts you at home.
The Russian embassy has inherited from the communist country's powerful bureaucracy. The officers are strict and serious suuuperburocráticos. Reject any request by a multitude of small details set out in the regulations issued for this purpose: not just any company to make insurance mandatory but a few credit card and you can only carry certain companies. Yes, know how to create orderly queue and treated equally to everyone, always from behind glass. Embassy of Mongolia, but no ghost honorary consulate in Barcelona and Consul is the owner of a travel adventure.
The Embassy of Syria Syria is full of unemployed roaming the waiting room. The location is central, something decadent scene straight out of any book of Naguib Mafhuz. A tiny room. The walls lined with stacks of records to the ceiling, most tucked into brown envelopes. A fairly crumpled poster of President Bashar Assad hung between the sets. Two table also full of papers. On one table, hunched over an official. Mayor. Graying hair and mustache. Prominent belly. Write a pen on a register and next have a cup of coffee. In the other an officer, also in his fifties, with brush-cut hair is yelling at a couple:
"If you bring me a marriage certificate stamped by the Superior Court of Justice, you will be validated in Syria. "But the government delegation told me that it is impossible ..." the girl timidly spoke
- see! If you know everything, why ask me? Why have you come? If you can not do, ea, they do not come, come on out! - The street yelled out pointing
-sorry ... "The husband takes the word submissive and gradually redirects the conversation.
Not a single person passing out the small office without having received some criticism vilification of bureaucrats angry at the stupidity of every citizen. Soon also reach the office a couple of guys Syrians than rely on the wall and stay there, talking with officials. It is not known whether they work at the embassy, \u200b\u200bmessenger or just go there in the morning laughing at the people coming in and chatting with two old. The treatment of the public is rude, but what most surprises are lots of people wandering around the window with nothing particular to do. Later, in Syria tell you that 30% of the population working or collaborating with the intelligence services, and understand. Credible.
I went to get me a visa for Cameroon and had At least two professional diplomats I have ever seen. An old man wearing a colorful tie and a suit and a very old young man in jeans, shirt and gold chain. The old man did not hear anything, looked at the pictures of the passports and asked the young nonsense about life in Spain. The young man pretended to be efficient, but other than that charged to sort the tickets, did not seem very talkative. The old man asked me if I went with the dancers. As I understand, the other said no, they went to a conference. Then, in a delightful conversation the old man kept insisting absurd "and the dancers? Of their sentences at me loose (in a sort of French incomprehensible typically African) was meant only guitar, dancing, flamenco. Then I knew I was taken by the companion of a flamenco group that had applied for visas before me.
This morning I went to apply for a visa at the consulate of Kazakhstan. Is in a suburb of Madrid does not seem to Madrid. Landscaped streets and villas. Most design, and all immense. In one of them is the embassy, \u200b\u200bconsulate, including ambassador's residence. Everything is new, austere but newly built. Colors. The official, ethnically Kazakh, is right and speaks fluent English. Just do not cut into spending three quarters of their time on the phone of small private businesses to the window while waiting for a tail somewhat less stringent than the Russians. In the neighborhood I passed no one to speak English and those long streets, almost no pedestrians and large cars evoked some districts of Eastern embassies. There do not accept cash, as in some African consulates, but they make you go to a specific branch several miles away landscaped streets. Kazakhstan looks like a prosperous and orderly.
Before going to Kazakhstan, from a simple email, I made up a story in French:
Imagine that you dwell in Lyon, France. Exactement in center city \u200b\u200bat number 32 rue Dr. Rebatel. Your name, for example, Marie Clotilde Gabellieri 21 years and you (your birthday is June 29). You just finished Political Science at the University Jean Moulin (very experienced member of the resistance against the Germans) in Lyon. You're pretty and you femenina veus become an independent woman. You do not even fix a boyfriend. You do not speak very good English but you are strongly in love with the culture and religion of India and Nepal. You read books about religion, you listen to music, and you take care of the political events of the bottom. Sometimes you love about yourself as Shilpamary. India half a nick. Last summer you stayed in a shipyard in India by "the humanitarian" (in MARWARI & MEDICAL RELIEF SOCIETY), and after you are traveling alone by India.
If you live in Lyon you know well the history of silk in Lyon. It is the silk flower has the economy of the nineteenth century Lyon. So the liaison between India and Lyon is ... The Silk Road.
This is not a good reason for doing one job to Kazahstan and more of what you want to make india or nepal? Your Email
would, therefore, of course, mgabellieri@hotmail.fr, yet for most private things you use another worry: honey_moon@hotmail.fr
