After a hectic month at work and an exhausting 11 day tour of America, I'm definitely due so R&R. Thanks to Korea's independence movement celebration on March 1st, I get a 4 day weekend here in the end of February. Four days is not enough to go somewhere far like Thailand or the Philippines, but I've already been to all the close, fast places like Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. I've been doing a lot of domestic travel this winter to boot, so where do you send the guy who's been everywhere? Siberia, of course.
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The choice was easy. In my immediate area, everything is East Asia. That's not to say at all that everything's the same, but there are common themes throughout the whole region that are endemic of countries with common ancestry. However, Russia is the only place that's both closer than Tokyo and extremely different from anything I've seen thus far. It's my theory that any city that's across a land mass and around the corner can't be anything like the capital either. So, not only am I keeping it fresh after 3 years of Asia, but I'm also laying the ground work for some distance vs. nationalism observation when I visit Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The road to Vladi, however, was not quite as simple. The first obstacle was obtaining a tourist visa. My application started last December. Step 1: apply to a tourist agency to obtain an invitation. That's right, I had to go pay for an arbitrary piece of paper in order to be invited to pay for a visa. I finally got my hands on an invitation, but I had to put the visa process off until the end of my school's winter schedule. Finally, just before leaving for America, I had the opportunity to get over to the grey-gated monolith that is the Russian embassy during its visiting hours.
Who uses the Russian embassy in Seoul, you might wonder. The answer is Russian nationals living in Korea and large tour groups of Koreans who stand in the visa line with 30 passports in hand. While in this building, I actually heard an employee refer to someone as "comrade." Walking down the alley to get to it takes me through construction and parking lots. My heart was in my throat every time I went through the metal detectors and passed the armed guards.
At the end of the obstacle course of security and extra paperwork, I was finally trapped between a rock and a hard place: I could pay substantially for the one day turn around on my passport work (so that I could have my passport to go back to America with that same week) or I could postpone the visa process further and possibly jeopardize my whole trip. In the end, it's only money. Now, with one empty page left in my passport and Cyrillic on my visa page, I was ready to start the search for lodging.
I had decided that, given its duration, this would be a good opportunity to test couchsurfing, a community who offer a place to crash to their fellow traveler. However, this too has proven to be problematic. My top choice, Roman Naumenko, is currently unavailable. Viktor Matveev is busy this weekend. Dmitry Kirsanov recommended a hostel I could check out. Sasha Starostin is in Valencia, but has a friend who'd be willing. Daniil Koltsov hasn't responded. It looks like it may be another hostel trip after all.
Wish me luck with the housing, I'll check back on Wednesday with the story of what Vladivostok has to offer.
View Vlad in a larger map
The choice was easy. In my immediate area, everything is East Asia. That's not to say at all that everything's the same, but there are common themes throughout the whole region that are endemic of countries with common ancestry. However, Russia is the only place that's both closer than Tokyo and extremely different from anything I've seen thus far. It's my theory that any city that's across a land mass and around the corner can't be anything like the capital either. So, not only am I keeping it fresh after 3 years of Asia, but I'm also laying the ground work for some distance vs. nationalism observation when I visit Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The road to Vladi, however, was not quite as simple. The first obstacle was obtaining a tourist visa. My application started last December. Step 1: apply to a tourist agency to obtain an invitation. That's right, I had to go pay for an arbitrary piece of paper in order to be invited to pay for a visa. I finally got my hands on an invitation, but I had to put the visa process off until the end of my school's winter schedule. Finally, just before leaving for America, I had the opportunity to get over to the grey-gated monolith that is the Russian embassy during its visiting hours.
Who uses the Russian embassy in Seoul, you might wonder. The answer is Russian nationals living in Korea and large tour groups of Koreans who stand in the visa line with 30 passports in hand. While in this building, I actually heard an employee refer to someone as "comrade." Walking down the alley to get to it takes me through construction and parking lots. My heart was in my throat every time I went through the metal detectors and passed the armed guards.
At the end of the obstacle course of security and extra paperwork, I was finally trapped between a rock and a hard place: I could pay substantially for the one day turn around on my passport work (so that I could have my passport to go back to America with that same week) or I could postpone the visa process further and possibly jeopardize my whole trip. In the end, it's only money. Now, with one empty page left in my passport and Cyrillic on my visa page, I was ready to start the search for lodging.
I had decided that, given its duration, this would be a good opportunity to test couchsurfing, a community who offer a place to crash to their fellow traveler. However, this too has proven to be problematic. My top choice, Roman Naumenko, is currently unavailable. Viktor Matveev is busy this weekend. Dmitry Kirsanov recommended a hostel I could check out. Sasha Starostin is in Valencia, but has a friend who'd be willing. Daniil Koltsov hasn't responded. It looks like it may be another hostel trip after all.
Wish me luck with the housing, I'll check back on Wednesday with the story of what Vladivostok has to offer.
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