Today the great “Russian Visa Adventure” continued

After running short on time yesterday, I was determined to finish off my Russian visa application today.

All I needed to do was go downtown to the VisaHQ office and hand in my pile of papers, along with my passport and that new passport photo (from Costco yesterday) to paste onto the form.

At 3:30 I called into work for my “on call” shift and found out they did, in fact, need me for a shift tonight.

The start time was 6pm.

Hmmmm

I quickly decided I could still make this happen.  I immediately left my place and headed into Vancouver.  The drive downtown takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.

Today it only took me 30 minutes and I found a parking spot right across the street from the VisaHQ building to boot.  Sweet!

I headed upstairs and entered their “office”.  I put it in quotes because it was just a little room about the same size as my living room with three people manning three desks.  I guess their business is probably 99% online driven and only a few stragglers like me actually visit them in person.

Anyway, the actual process of submitting the papers was pretty simple.  I think it helped that I had organized everything and checked and double checked everything the night before.

Just one problem though

That damn passport photo!

Yeah, the one I went through my Costco adventure for

It was unusable.  Not Costco’s fault – it’s actually perfect for a Canadian passport.  Problem is the Russian visa application requires a smaller photo.

Bleh!

Thankfully the guy in the office directed me to a little convenience store across the street that also does passport photos.

I walked across the street into the store and, sure enough, along with all the regular things you would find in a convenience store there was a little chair set up in front of a white roll down backdrop.

This was one enterprising convenience store owner!

Five minutes and $12 later I was heading back to the visa office.

By 4:30 I was heading back out of Vancouver and straight to work.

Only I would be crazy enough to purposely put myself into rush hour traffic – but, yeah, that’s what I did.

I endured the madness that is rush hour and by 5:45 I was pulling into work – on time.

And that was it!

My application is officially submitted and will be ready in about a months’ time.

Weeeeeeee I’m going to Russia!