My mother-in-law is going to come to Cyprus this Sunday. She lives in a far far away town of Mezhdurechensk, which is the Russian Sybiria. In order for her to come, there is some paperwork to be done.<\/p>\n
Firstly, she needs visa. In order to get visa she needs either to get an invitation from someone in Cyprus or she needs to buy a tourist package, which is kind of expensive and not necessary. An invitation can be send to her by anyone who is legally resides in Cyprus. That is either a local or a foreigner who has a pink slip (residential permit). Neither I, nor Olga have pink slips at this very moment, since they are being renewed, but that’s OK, since my good friend Lev is helping me with this issue. With the invitation in her hands, she needs to apply for visa in Cyprus Embassy in Moscow. It will take them a couple of days to process the application. Meanwhile, she also needs some tickets to fly in and out.<\/p>\n
In order to minimize the organizational time and expenses of this trip, my mother is helping, who lives in Moscow.<\/p>\n
And now for the interesting part. The logistics. The path that information travels and people involved in the process, so to speak. Olga called her mother (that is my mother-in-law) by phone and instructed her to send her papers to my mother in Moscow. Papers travelled by train. I than called my mother and she gave me all the passport details and stuff like that needed for the invitation. I than emailed these details to Lev. He downloaded the invitation form from the web, filled it in. He went to certify the invitation and than faxed it to my mother in Moscow. My mother picked up the fax and went to the Embassy to apply for visa on behalf of Olga’s mother. She also arranged for tickets.<\/p>\n
The funny thing here is that in order for Olga’s mother to come and visit us, the only people moving around are Lev and my mother. In other words, people who won’t benefit from the trip. Olga’s mother and we didn’t have to do much except for a couple of phone calls and emails.<\/p>\n
Also, I find it interesting how information travelled around the world. All sorts of different media were used – phone, email, web, fax, and even a train. The whole thing took about two days to complete. Now this is globalization at its best!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n