Why I thought I'd be deported

Some of you may have been aware of some uncertainty regarding my status as I passed through Russia on my way home.

Let me just start by saying that I knew there would be issues going through Russia. I went with Aeroflot because (a) it was the cheapest and (b) I already have a lot of frequent flyer miles with them, and I look forward to one day getting an upgrade to business class or even a free trip altogether.

On the way there, as you know, the money-grubbers at the Russian Consulate told me I'd need a transit visa. Needless to say, no one even looked at it on the way there. $200 out the window, all the more galling since I overpaid in the first place.

So, for the way back... I wanted to be on top of things. I asked our Consular people if I should get a visa. They called the Russian Consulate and dermined that I should have a visa. They cc'ed the email message over to the section that has the travel guy in it. This section would write a note telling the Russian Embassy to get me an effing visa, and not to fuck around since this was the American Embassy asking. The managers in that office delegated the task to the travel person, who responded to the whole email emphatically saying that no visa was required. The justification for this was that transiting passengers who stay on the same airline and don't leave the airport do not need visas. This was two weeks (ish) prior to departure.

The issue with this is that I was not sure if I was all on one airline or not. The flight from LT to Moscow was with FlyLAL, the Lithuanian airlines. They have a codeshare with Aeroflot, so while I had an Aeroflot flight number and ticket, the airline itself was not technically Aeroflot. This made everyone think that I wasn't in fact staying on one airline the whole way through.

Fast-forward to the Thursday before I leave (on the following Monday). Just in case the borscht hit the fan, I figured I should have the number of the American Embassy in Moscow. There, right on their website, American Embassy Moscow made a point to say that anyone transiting Russia for any reason should get a transit visa. Cue the freakout. It was 4:36 PM.

I called the American Embassy Moscow and tried to get them to tell me it was okay to transit Russia without a visa. They would not tell me that, saying it was completely at the discretion of the person at the passport control. Panic mode. Over to Consular. We get the travel guy to start on the note. Over to general services. Yell at them about how the visa was inevitably going to cost a lot of money... money I had long since spent, leaving my bank account more ore less empty.

Back to Consular to complain, saying that I don't have the money to expedite the visa processing, and even if they had expedited processing, it would have to be same-day on Friday or I'd have to change my ticket (another 150 euros). Really mad at this point because I do not have the money for this. Everyone seems to "understand my frustration," but clearly no one was ready to pony up. My rationale was, two weeks ago, the travel dude told me I'd be fine. Only through my own vigilance was I able to see that I needed a visa (at this point I still fully believed that I needed a visa).

As I was running around, I ran into a guy at my department. He was waiting for his wife to finish work. I vented to him, about how unhappy I was about receiving so little support from the Embassy. His wife exits the Chancery in the midst of this and we have a good, calming discussion. It is agreed that the best idea is to have Marius, our Lithuanian investigator and super-nice guy, call the Russian Embassy and figure out once and for all what the deal is.

Man, I'm kind of sick of writing this post. StumbleUpon is much more interesting, and this I'm finding is actually not that interesting. Long story short, I sat in on a conversation between our investigator and the Russian Embassy. He was speaking Russian and knew my whole situation top-to-bottom. I listened to him, and while I could never have spoken as well as he did (being a native speaker), I certainly understood everything and helped him present the whole situation.

I suppose the only real reason for writing this is so that maybe someday if someone is wondering about the same issue, they will find my site. In this case, I actually found that the Russians were acting far less paranoid than most people thought they were, including our Embassy, the Moscow Embassy, and all my friends. Be it known. If you are on the same airline, even if it's a codeshare, and you are flying in and out of the same airport (can be different terminals), it appears as if you do not need a transit visa. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.