Friday, August 05, 2005

The Russians break me

So about 7 weeks after my wife should have got her new passport, she finally gets her new passport. Next up, our son.

Now, if you have never been to Russia, this may be difficult to comprehend. If you have had the unfortunate experience of visiting a Russian consulate you'll be able to picture, quite clearly, the situations.

I spent 5 hours waiting for the new consul man to speak to me the other week. 5 hours!
I announced my arrival through a mirrored glass screen when i arrived at 10am. (50 USD flight remember) At 12.10 after a couple of reminders and and rather curt "padazhdetye" (Wait) he told me to come back at 1pm. Went for a spot of lunch. Returned at 1pm. At 3.20pm he came out from behind his glass screen, still wearing his cyborg phone thing, but that's not the point. During my wait i witnessed rudeness I have never seen before.

Visa runners, that'll be the people who get visas on behalf of tourists for tour companies, were routinely ignored, spoken to like they were a dog turd and generally made to feel like they shouldn't be there. Some poor fools actually went to process their own visas. 2 Indian girls were talking to a guy who was trying to humour the sour-faced bitch behind the mirrored screen. One of the Indians said to him "They are so rude here. And it's the same when you get there. Everyone is so rude." Couldn't agree more.

Why was I there? Ah yes. The passport office in St Petersfuckingburg had rejected my son's application on the grounds that he is not Russian (if only he wasn't).

They needed confirmation from the Russian consulate that he is Russian. Right. Let's understand this. The Russian consulate put my son in my wife's Russian passport and assured us that we had everything he needed to get a Russian passport / citizenship. They said that by adding him to her passport he was, in effect, Russian.

Not so! The documents came back to the consulate here for verification. I rang the new consul general wanker for 4 hours before he answered. Yes he'd received them. Yes he would look into it. Yes he would call me. 5 days later, nothing. And no answer on the phone. (Fucker knew it was me.) So, a flight there to sort it out. I always prefer a face to face, even if it means getting up at 4.30am, still drunk, to get the first flight.

The outcome of this visit, besides witnessing the rudest nation on earth do their worst, was a load of crap from Mr New Consul man, interestingly called Alex Rude, if you translate it.

He would not issue any further documents. "Everything is in order." He suggested a lawyer to force the hand of the passport office in St Petersburg. "It is strictly against regulations" to do what my wife was asking him. What was she asking him to do? Write a a letter confirming our son's claim to Russian citizenship. Not exactly going to start a diplomatic incident is it. Hardly supporting the London bombers. But no, cannot.

I was not looking forward to calling my wife to tell her this news, not least because to call Russia from anywhere in the civilised world costs the GDP of a developing nation per minute. From here, about USD2.40 per minute. When you can only buy top up cards for USD 20, that's not a long phone call. Luckily, or not, she called me. I passed my phone to Mr Rude. 5 minutes later he gave me back my phone. If I ever hear my wife crying like that again I will kill the cunt that caused it. When I left the building my legs gave way and i was sick. I thought that only happened on cartoons an films.

The Russians had finally broke me.

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