Angola, get rrready! Got the visa!

I met up with Mr. Pinto from the Angolan embassy in Berlin at a Bratislava shopping mall this morning. He brought me my passport that I sent to Berlin three weeks ago with all the necessary visa documents. Slovakia doesn't have an Angolan embassy anymore, and all the Slovak visa applicants have to send their stuff to Berlin. At first I was a bit anxious about sending off my passport, but it turned out working quite smoothly. It took them about two weeks to stamp it, approximately the same time it took for the Zambian visa to go through at the Washington embassy last year.

I called Mr. Pinto while I was in Serbia to ask about when the visa could be finished, and he said it was ready. When I asked him if he could mail the passport to me to Slovakia, he offered himself to bring it in person since he’s visiting Slovakia for a few days. What a blessing, and what a relief! We found each other in the mall (it’s still not difficult to spot out an African in Bratislava- we’ve got a long way to go to be more internationalized), and I got my passport, stamped for the whole period of the stay... It all seems so much closer now.