the bane of bureaucracy.

There are lots of things that I love about Russia/Belarus (I may have mentioned that once or twice on this blog).  Then there are some things that make me want to pull my hair out.  One of those things is the impossibly convoluted and inefficient bureaucracy and all the paperwork that goes along with it.  Once upon a time I thought that the US government is extremely bureaucratic and hard to maneuver, but after six and a half months in the former USSR, I will never take for granted a) the benefits of being a US citizen/having a US passport, b) the comparatively few bureaucratic hoops we have to jump through to get things done, and c) the freedom and possibility of America.  If you’ve talked to me at all while I’ve been abroad, you’ve probably heard me talk about my visas.  They’ve been the theme of my time abroad (Therefore it's only appropriate that I complain about it to the whole world:).  There are only two countries in Europe that Americans need visas in order to enter, and of course I chose to go to both of them. 

Friday I got finished applying for the last of three visas that I have painstakingly had to procure over the last six months.  I’m heading back to St. Pete in a week to fly home and I need a transit visa because my student visa has expired.  If you’ve never applied for a visa (especially applied in a country where you are not a citizen and where you have to communicate in another language), here’s basically how it goes down: spend a couple of hours trying to navigate vague and unhelpful consulate websites to realize that you have absolutely no idea what documents they really want or which application is current; bring every document you have to the consulate, and after they finally let you in the building, find out that (surprise!) you don’t have enough documents; go back to the consulate the next day with all necessary documents; wait to go through security; spend two and a half hours going from window to office to window to office to table to recopy all forms to window to office to window to… (all the while trying to give suitable answers in Russian to questions like: Why do you need to fly out of Russia?  If you want to go to Russia why are you going to Ukraine? Were you really a student there?  Why do you want to stay 48 hours?  This isn’t really a transit visa…); finally get the man in the office to sign off on my visa after arguing my case/more or less pleading; go to pay at cash register; realize that I don’t have enough cash to pay for the expedited visa and that she won’t take my card; leave the consulate and ride the tram ten minutes in the opposite direction to find an ATM because there are none anywhere around; ride back to the consulate and go back through security; pay the lady a ridiculous amount of money (in Belarusian rubles after spending a few minutes calmly explaining to the lady that even though I am an American there is no way in heck I'm going to give my precious US dollars to government agencies that rip me off and make my life so complicated); leave the consulate with a measly slip of paper that tells me I can pick up my visa on the same day that I am leaving; PRAY TO GOD that they actually have it ready.

Basically this system is ridiculous but absolutely necessary to go anywhere.  And if I think it’s hard for me to navigate the bureaucracy as an American, it does not compare at all to the mountains of paperwork that Russians/Belarusians have to go through to get visas.  I need a visa for Belarus and Russia and nowhere else.  They need a visa for basically everywhere in Europe except Belarus and Russia.  My friends Sasha and Egor (who I am staying with in Minsk) are planning to take a trip to Italy at the end of the summer, so they are in the miserable process of applying for a Schengen visa (for all you Americans who have the luxury of not having to know what that is, look it up and appreciate the possibilities of your passport).  As the three of us sat around the apartment worrying about our visas, we couldn’t help but laugh at the irony (we all need visas to the place where the other can go without a visa, no problem) and began to plot ways to somehow switch passports in order to make life easier (yeah, we never figured that one out...).

I say all this to say that I have come to appreciate being American more during my time abroad.  Don’t get me wrong.  America is not without its problems.  It is very far from perfect.  But there is no denying that, for the most part, life is just a little bit (sometimes a lot) easier there.  Despite the difficulties, despite the imperfections, despite our own issues with bureaucracy, there are still more possibilities for more people.  I won’t take that for granted again (and I’ve left a paper trail all throughout the former USSR to make sure that I never forget).