Zurich - Calm Before the Storm

Visa Successfully Obtained!

I’ve had a few quiet weekends recently. However, I have just 5 weeks left in Zurich and for two of those I’ll be on vacation, which leaves me with only 3 weeks. It’s round about now that I start to get really busy as I try to see everyone for one last time.

Each time I go back to Egypt, I always seem to have more food in my freezer in Zurich than I meant to have, so I’ve already been doing my best not to buy anything else and to eat up what I have. I’ve also tried to set aside an hour each evening during the week to do something that will need to get done before I leave (I’ve primarily been working on throwing out papers that I don’t really need to keep any more, paying bills, and getting information together for my UK tax return).

One of the things I’ve needed to get done is to apply for a visa for my upcoming trip to St Petersburg. I found it quite a scary process as it started off innocently enough and then the questions got more and more difficult (it was like being on a quiz show!). For example, some of the more difficult questions were to provide the countries you’d visited over the last ten years (and dates) and to provide your previous passport number in addition to your current passport number. And they asked me to say what social media sites I used. I’m not even sure what social media is (is this blog social media? Are my stocks and shares discussion boards social media?), but I mentioned facebook. Hopefully they’ll have seen that I was born pre-internet. Although the internet is my friend (as opposed to mobile phones)!

Another thing that caused me difficulty, a bit like with my UK passport application, was the photograph that I had to provide. I went to a photo booth, but they’re just too technical these days. I took the first photo, but the top of my head (just the top of my hair) was chopped off in the photo, so I took another one. This was successful (in my view), because my full head could be seen, but the booth told me it was invalid. I took another two photographs, but both of these were deemed invalid. I didn’t have the option to abort, so I had no choice but to take the first photo, which I thought would not be accepted. I was so disgruntled, that I thought it would have to do and I wasn’t going to waste more money on the stupid machine. However, I subsequently spent all the time fretting that my application would be declined due to my defective photo.

Anyway, I filled in my application. I had to send off both my passport and my Swiss C permit, so on top of worrying about my photograph, I also felt a bit fretful being without both of these documents.

After ten days, I checked the visa site to see how my application was faring, and to my horror it said “application not found”. Aaargh. I emailed them, but I had a bit of a problem because when they received my email, anything I’d put in red text (in answer to their questions) didn’t show up. However, I’d just realized that the red text was the problem when the doorbell rang and it was the postman with my passport, my Swiss C permit, and my shiny new visa!! So, in the end, it was all actually super quick and not so difficult after all. Hurrah!