Off the Boat and Making Moves

We are making moves to figure out all the problems and are slowly making progress. We went to the American Consulate first thing the next day and after being stripped of all electronics were allowed inside the building. We were first seen by a nice woman who like everyone else chuckled and was very amused at the predicament we have ourselves in with our visas. While at the consulate they are unable to do anything directly in fixing our visa, which cannot happen, she was very helpful in pointing us to a passport and visa business that she believed would be able to help us. While she was working with us another man came out. He turned out to carry the relief that we all needed. Jeff, originally from North Dakota, has worked in the foreign services in Vladivostok for about the past three years. He was also very amused and said that when he laughed he was laughing with us and not at us.

 Anyway, Jeff, who was very excited about our trip continued to help us with the other problems that we have had, and in general provided us with the feeling that if we continue to explore all our options we would find a way to complete the trip as originally planned, though it will cost some more $$. Our current plan is to get an exit visa and get another basic one entry one exit visa in Russia.
From Jeff we got the number of Yuri, who's job title is "Fixer." He makes a living by helping people get their motor vehicles through customs without any problems, and the price isn't that high either. After helping us and giving us numbers to aid our journey, he walked us out of the consulate and continued to walk us down about 5 blocks sharing snippets of his knowledge of Vlad and Russia. Here is a picture of Jeff with Jack and Richard during our walk.

Filled with a sense of resiliency, we took off on our down the streets of Vlad creating mental plans of attack to fix/obtain new visas, get our car through customs without a hitch, buy the remaining essential car parts and gear, and pick up the items we shipped to the Russian post office.

Later that night we met up with Neal again, and he introduced us to some english speaking Russian girls our age. We had a long conversation with our new Russian friends Liza, Natalia, and Vera. We talked about our trip, our educations, food, and Russia. Vera had to leave early but she provided us with a very good car shop to visit in Russia that will have all of the car specific gear we need to get.


After sitting at the cafe for almost 2 hours we went off with Liza and Natalia to see the sights of Vlad by car.  On the front and back windshields of Liza's car are giant exclamation points!! They mean that she is a new driver, and it was definitely one of the more thrilling casual car rides I have ever had. Except at lights there are basically no rules that drivers follow. So every minute or so I felt like we were extremely close to getting in an accident. They took us to a look out point above the city.

There is a lot of construction going in Vlad at the moment including two bridges that are being built. This is all in preparation for APEC in 2012 in Vlad. There is construction and remodeling going on everywhere in the city and the citizens of Vlad are very upset with the current disarray of their city. Liza and Natalia continued to take us around to various museums and memorials. Here is the eternal flame at the World War II memorial.

It was a great night and cool way to see the city. They also said that they would be willing to help us with problems we might have with in getting everything ready to leave on our trip. So between our new friends and Yuri the "Fixer" I feel we have a good shot of getting everything set up and taking off.

--Ezra