This whole week I have been quite frustrated by the Serbian Embassy’s lack of flexibility and exaggerated bureaucracy in issuing me a visa so I could to travel to Belgrade for a two day Forum organized by the new shareholder of the Institution I work for. I applied the first day and I was told that I would have to wait some 30 days for this procedure; meanwhile, it should have been a 10-minute thing!
Moreover, they expect all respectable citizens who apply for a visa to leave their passport at the embassy for a verification period of 1 month after which they may or may not issue a visa for you to travel. But the situation is even more frustrating for me, since I’ve traveled once already to Belgrade and moreover, I have traveled to several other countries including the U.S., Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, etc, and have so far never been denied a visa. This whole situation further exacerbated in my mind when I learn that the British embassy take almost half that time to conduct its verification procedures.
But my frustration is also fueled by the fact that all the people that I’ve spoken to and even my first experience of getting a visa at this embassy was so disappointing because just one week after we had applied for the Visa, they notified us that they had lost our documentations after we called in to ask for the status. So we had to go back to the embassy, which meant, wasting another half day to take care of something which we had already taken care of once.
However, this time I’ve tried my best to have several people to intervene on my behalf, both from Albania and from Serbia and hopefully I’ll be getting my much deserved visa so that I can then proceed to this important meeting.
Ah, I almost forgot to tell you about the blatant hypocrisy of the Serbian Embassy, which when I applied asked that one of the documents which I had submitted to be resubmitted because the title of the embassy was left Embassy of Serbia and Montenegro. Obviously I complied with their request, but the hypocrisy stands in the fact that the Embassy itself still has the plate that says Embassy of Serbia and Montenegro, right on its front wall for all to see.
Anyway, I may be ranting a little too much about my frustration with this particular situation. I do not mean to be mean, but just want to forcefully point out some issues which I believe reflect some aspects of the policy which their country applies towards Albanian citizens like myself, and that I think it is inappropriate to say the least! But for this I cannot blame them, because this is also a major failure of our foreign policy as established by the government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
