Travel (to Russia of course)

I have traveled to Russia on 2 different occasions now. The first time I went to Russia, I went by myself. It was a giant leap of faith on my part. Can you imagine deciding to go to Russia, the former USSR, behind the iron curtain? Yes, I was (to say the least) just a little intimidated to travel to a place once regarded as the communist enemy to the USA. I asked myself “What the hell are you doing?” Flying to the other side of the world to see a woman. I did question it more than a few times. But in the end, it was an adventure for me. I had never left US soil (except for a drive down the Alcan in Canada) and decided I was going to do this or I’d always wonder, “What if?” and I could not bear that. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made.

So, let’s start off with the basics. First of all, you can’t just decide to go to Russia, buy your plane ticket and go there. A trip to Russia takes much planning and a golden ticket called a VISA. No, I am not talking about that plastic thing you use to buy stuff with. As an American, you need a visa to enter as well as exit Russia, can’t get in or out without it. But there is a process to get it. First, you need a USA Passport. Once you receive this, you will need to get an invitation. This is a formal document needed to obtain your visa from the Russian Embassy or Consulate in the USA.

So, there are 3 ways that I know of to get an invitation:

1) Go through a traditional Russian dating agency/service. This is probably the most convenient, but definitely the most expensive way. If you are corresponding with 1 or more women from a single agency, this may be the way for you to go as long as you are not cost sensitive. Most of them can handle getting the invitation as well as getting the visa for you.

2) There are services and attorneys on the web that specialize in foreign visas and will do everything for you usually at a little better rate than the agency. This is definitely the safest way if you are not using a dating agency.

3) Correspond with a woman. Once you feel like you can trust her and you want to meet her, have her get the invitation for you in Russia (In my opinion, this is the preferred and least expensive way to do it). Once she has the invitation, have her scan it and email it to you. The Russian Embassy/Consulate will accept the scanned invitation without problems. When you go to their web site, be sure to click on “Tourist Visas” or possibly “Business Visas” (depending on the type of invitation your lady was able to get).

Once you send in everything for your visa, you can expect a 2 to 3 week turnaround on average. I would not suggest paying for expedited service because they will process the thing when they decide to. If you pay the extra money for it, they don’t guarantee it will be done faster, but say they will try. Something you will learn about the Russian Government is that there is no hurry to do anything.

If I recall correctly, the visa is good for a 6 month period (not for sure on this, make sure you ask). So, once you receive it, you can go ahead and book your plane ticket. Don’t get ahead of yourself and buy a ticket before the visa comes. It is not uncommon to find mistakes on the visa and have to return it to have it fixed. Your patience will be rewarded by not having any problems at Passport Control when entering and exiting Russia. Also keep in mind that the visa will expire in 30 days once you enter Russia.

From start to finish, this process could take a few months. So, my advice is if you are thinking of going and you don’t have your passport, go ahead and get it. Right now, it takes around 8 weeks to get it. This way, you’ll have half the battle won when and if you decide to go to Russia.

When I went for the first time in early 2001, there were limited choices on airlines going to Russia. Therefore, I flew on Aeroflot, the Russian airline. Today, you can go with Lufthansa, Delta, United, KLM, Northwest, Aeroflot plus many others.

As far as Aeroflot is concerned, they did ok. All the flight attendants spoke some English. But prepare for a long long flight. Depending where you are starting, you can expect to spend as much as 13 hours on the trip. If you fly out of JFK, I think it is about 9 hours from there to Moscow. I flew from San Francisco and that was 13 hours, non stop to Moscow.

Not knowing any Russian, I decided to pay for Lena to come to Moscow and meet me at the Airport as well as get us a hotel room. This made my life so much easier. Plus, I got to spend a couple days in Moscow and site-see. Everyone needs to go to Red Square and the Kremlin at the very least. You can see Lennin’s Tomb if it is open, the famous St. Basil’s Cathedral plus there is an excellent museum in the Kremlin full of cool Russian history.

St. Basils cathedral on Red Square

We rode the train to her home city. She got us a private compartment and we got to know each other a little better during the 26 hour ride. It was a nice trip.

I am not going to go into much detail about my trip. I will be posting that information a little later from a journal I kept while I was there. These things I have talked about are important technical points that will assist you should you decide to travel to Russia.