Russian visas

[andy]

Hi people, seems I have to go to Russia for a few days at the end of the month. Anyone knows how this works / timescales etc. Do I need to panic yet??

[_kat_]

http://vienna.rusembassy.org/

http://www.visatorussia.com/

[Tatt]

I believe you need to book a hotel before you apply for a visa, as you need to state where you are staying on the visa.

Andreas

[_kat_]

i remember back in the day we organised a visa through a similar (or even the same) service as the one i gave the link to - as my partner was staying with my parents we didnt really need a hotel, so just ordered an invitation online (they provided a name of a hotel in st petersburg), paid and they faxed it to us. got the visa from the embassy using that very same invitation no problem.
although this was a few yars ago and in UK

[morgenhund]

Andy no need to panic - I got a visa express style in 2006 for about EUR 110 (same day service for a single entry tourist visa) for the last time I was there. The most important thing is the invitation as Tatt says - there are a number of travel services that will book you a hotel and cancel it for about EUR 30 if you are staying privately with a foreigner who can't issue you the invitation (as per _Kat_'s suggestion). I did this on one occasion.

One thing to remember to definitely do is to make sure the phonetic spelling in cyrillic is correct - I had problems first time round (involving an hour in a holding cubicle at Sheremetyevo and a few calls on my mobile at high roaming rates) because I had my surname transliterated with an Austrian rather than English pronunciation and the forms had an English transliteration...

A word of warning about the visa forms. There are some old forms floating about on the web - which you can't use. The embassy has the correct and up-to-date ones (not sure if they are on the web though!). I'd advise getting a travel agent to do the legwork if possible.

One important thing if going on business - if you are going regularly and a multi-entry visa is required you usually have to supply a negative HIV test result (was the case about 3 years ago when a friend told me about this). This will cost money - if a doctor says there is a way he can do it for free, beware, it may be entered on your medical records that you are under suspicion of having HIV (which is used to get the free test), which can have long-lasting repercussions for your insurance premiums in the future - any employer should pay for the test.

[Grigi]

i remember back in the day we organised a visa through a similar (or even the same) service as the one i gave the link to - as my partner was staying with my parents we didnt really need a hotel, so just ordered an invitation online (they provided a name of a hotel in st petersburg), paid and they faxed it to us. got the visa from the embassy using that very same invitation no problem.
although this was a few yars ago and in UK

We used the company from the link a couple of years ago here. It worked perfectly.

[andy]

perfect! Thanks for all you help - now just got the vodka to contend with.