In short, it’s all because of Bulgaria.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0For every country we’ve gone through, FBR has needed visas.\u00a0 Until Bulgaria, we got the visas without much hassle.\u00a0 The Turkish visa we bought right at the airport.\u00a0 It only took up a quarter of a page in our passport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Americans, Andrew, Pete and I don’t even need visas to go to Bulgaria.\u00a0 In fact, we will travel visa-free for the rest of the projected trip…if the trip continues, that is.\u00a0 Nakia, as a Bahamian, needs a visa for Bulgaria and the rest of the countries we want to travel through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So far she has spent\u00a0more than\u00a0two weeks trying to get a Bulgarian visa.\u00a0 She spent one day at the Bulgarian consulate in Istanbul.\u00a0 The next day she returned earlier with my mom and spent the whole day there.\u00a0 She couldn’t even get into the building.<\/p>\n
That same night, she and Pete and Drew returned to the Bulgarian\u00a0embassy, sleeping pads in hand.\u00a0 They camped out on the street.\u00a0 When they arrived at 12:30am, twenty-some people had already formed a line.\u00a0 They spent a long night on the street next to a busy road amongst a growing crowd of would-be transitors through Bulgaria.\u00a0 When the consulate opened nine hours after they queued for it, the guards didn’t let anyone in.\u00a0 By 12:00pm (when the gate closes), not even twenty people had been admitted.\u00a0 Peter and Nakia forced their way to the front of the line.\u00a0 Nakia demanded her money back.\u00a0 The guard let\u00a0her in and she managed to apply for a visa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Seven days later she learned her visa was denied just before having the door slammed in her face.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I had started biking with my mom towards Edirne, Turkey.\u00a0\u00a0She visited with the Bulgarian vice consul at the consulate there, Georg\u0131 Vodenski.\u00a0 He seeemed pleasant and said Nakia’s initial denial was due to a misunderstanding.\u00a0 He promised he would issue Nakia a visa in one day as soon as she arrived.\u00a0 I informed the rest of FBR, and they rushed to Edirne from Istanbul.<\/p>\n
\u00a0My mom and I, eager to see more country and meet my sister and friend in Bulgaria, continued across the border.<\/p>\n
When Nakia arrived at the Bulgarian consulate in Edirne today, Mr. Vodenski reversed himself.\u00a0 He refused to issue a visa to her, claiming he had forgotten she first needed a visa for a country beyond Bulgaria.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nakia has 10 days left on her Turkish visa.\u00a0 It’s unclear whether we can extend it or not.\u00a0 Obtaining a visa for Western European countries like Greece for people from small countries like the Bahamas is infamously difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Just as we were getting back together, FBR might have to split up again – this time for good.<\/p>\n
Visas and regulatory red tape might be necessary.\u00a0 It’s unfortunate that they now threaten to derail our mission of understanding the world better and grass roots peace spreading.\u00a0 It’s also unfortunate that they’ve done so through Bulgarian consular officials who, saving my mother’s single apparently pleasant conversation in Mr. Vodenski, have treated us in an uncommonly adversarial manner.<\/p>\n
In the battle of bureaucracy and good will, it looks like bureaucracy is delivering the death blows.\u00a0 So it goes.<\/p>\n
We’re all brain storming solutions.\u00a0 As I write this I’m tired and stressed, even though I haven’t been involved in the visa shenanigans lately.\u00a0 Perhaps things aren’t as bleak as I’m making them out to be.\u00a0 We’ll keep you updated.\u00a0 In the meantime, let us know if you have any high-level contacts in the Bulgarian government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In short, it’s all because of Bulgaria.\u00a0 \u00a0For every country we’ve gone through, FBR has needed visas.\u00a0 Until Bulgaria, we got the visas without much hassle.\u00a0 The Turkish visa we bought right at the airport.\u00a0 It only took up a quarter of a page in our passport.\u00a0 As Americans, Andrew, Pete and I don’t even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-here-you-will-find-the-posts-that-jim-wrote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/0708.fueledbyrice.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}