Last week my brother and I queued at the Russian Consulate for over three hours (but probably closer to three and a half) to hand in our passports to get tourist visas for our Christmas visit to Russia. We had arrived before the appointed time of 9am only to find that there were about 20 people in front of us waiting for the gate to open. We were pretty relaxed at first as we thought it would simply be a case of people handing the passports plus applications in and then we would be off. How wrong were we?!The consulate is only open for a limited time including Mon-Fri but not Wed (what the?) 9-12 (accepting last applications at 11.45) or you can lodge between 3-4pm but you have to pay £120 or £180 for the privilege. Luckily for us we got in but we were absolutely the last people (at 11.44!) so we were relieved that our whole morning was not wasted. For the poor guy behind us this was his 3rd time lining up and he just missed out. Not sure why he didn’t make an effort to get there earlier and be first in line this time around. People are sometimes very strange like that. It was only later we found out that he was flying out the next day. Oops. So that was queuing experience number one.

Today I left work early so that I could pick up our passports/visas (again open only for a limited time 11-12 and 4-5) but to my dismay I found yet another line of people in front of me. Just as well that this time around I only waited half an hour to pick up our items but still … this was queuing experience number two.

I certainly hope that this trend of queuing is not what I have to look forward to in Russia …