Romania 2003

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Newsletter Eight supplement

Date: Sunday 31 August 2003.

This newsletter had a limited circulation - only to those who may have been interested in getting a visa.

The nuts and bolts info on how I got my visa. (AKA the Newsletter 8 supplement.)

The Romanian embassy turned out to be just 10 minutes walk away from the train station, or 12 minutes from my hostel. I tried taking a tram to it on one day and a bus on another. I only went one stop on either but I went past the embassy both times. The bus turned out to be an express bus and I had just as far to walk back. People wonder why I prefer walking short and medium distances.

The actual entrance is down the sidestreet and there's just about always a small group (or a large mob) hanging around outside waiting to be let in for marriage certificates and things. Visa applicants get to jump the queue, so don't be afraid to ring the bell and tell the gatekeeper you want a visa. The office is open Mon-Fri 8:30am to 12:00pm (noon) except it's closed on Wednesday. Information on what's needed for a visa is on a notice board outside (same info as on the web site).

On Thursday I went to the Embassy to apply for my visa. Their web site is out of date - they now have a new visa application form (that they were happy to give me with a pen) and the price has gone up. However, another NZer there was quite relieved to find that he only had to pay US$77 (~NZ$135) for his business visa, not the 77,000 Forint (~NZ$616) he thought he had been told on his previous visit. Same price for my tourist visa. Another NZ woman there complained that they must not want tourists from New Zealand since she had tried to contact several embassies by email and none had replied, and many other frustrating things as well.

My masses of very important supporting paperwork must have impressed the visa guy, because he assured me there would be no problem and to come back on Monday. (He didn't even want to keep any of it.) I told him I wanted it tomorrow. He told me to return Friday afternoon. I pointed out their office closes at midday. (I think he got that "I've-been-caught-out look" but I'm not sure.) Eventually he agreed to try to have it tomorrow (Friday) morning, if possible. I thanked him profusely and moved on.

On Friday I dropped into the embassy to pick up my visa three times. The first two times I was told he didn't have something (the OK from above?) so to try again in an hour. On my third visit he seemed to just ignore me, so I just stayed put, since they were due to close in 30 or 40 minutes (at midday). I didn't even dare step outside to get a drink from my bag in case they closed the door behind me (even though there was another woman waiting).

Eventually, more than one hour after they officially closed, and after the guy said he had phoned the Minister of the Interior to find out what was taking so long, they gave me the visa.

Total cost for the visa (including accomodation, food, and sightseeing in Budapest [and the train to and from Budapest]) about NZ$420. Not too bad.

A model (cut-away) dino-leg in a fun fair near the zoo shows how a T-Rex would have made good eating.

I'm told that the closest related languages are (ancient?) Mongolian and Finnish. Apparently in the dim distant past a guy named Magyar got dropped by a really big Turul bird on the hills near the present site of Budapest. The bird crashed and "died" but a few years later some of Magyar's friends flew in to join him on/under slightly smaller birds that landed safely. Finnish paragliders? Atilla the Hun from Mongolia (decended from the white Finn-Huns, no less) was in Hungary in AD 435. Over the years the people moved on, but a few hundred years later in AD 896 the Magyar people moved back in and reclaimed the land as their Hun inheritance. The first underground metro railway in Europe was built in Budapest in 1896 to mark the millenium of that.

--

Ian.
8 )
http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/ianman/

Coming back from Jimbolia while the driver was washing his hands (at 100km/hr or so) with water from the windscreen squirters:

"Aaargh! He doesn't have any hands on the wheel!"
"Yes I do. I'm driving with one elbow."

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