I will be flying from Kiev to Minsk soon, on my way back to Oslo. As my stay will be way less than 48 hours, will I be able to obtain a transit visa on arrival at Minsk Airport?
|||
Good morning!
I have just learned a few funny things on your transit visa issue. It turned out that to get such a visa you only need to submit (or to show) your ticket to Oslo (or perhaps you fly through Poland) to the corresponding authorities.
However, the Law on Transit through the Rapublic of Belarus (from the words of the consular dept chap) allows you only to travel across Bealarus in the direction of your final destination (via Poland or Lithuania).
It grieves me to tell you as well, that you cannot check in the hotels or use travel services such as city tour (this is a more complicated issue on which I cannot comment - something to do with police regulations).
That was it - perhaps you try and find time for a more substantial visit!
|||
I hear that you can get a tourist visa at the airport, but I also hear that it can be a bit time consuming. I%26#39;ve always gotten my visas in advance, so cannot offer first-hand insight.
|||
Well, that is right - you can get a tourist visa at the airport - with an invitation naturally. It has to be submitted in the original a few days prior to your arrival by your travel agent.
It might cost around 100 USD (60 - consular fees; 40 - agent%26#39;s due). You can choose to get to the city by a shuttle bus, which wouldn%26#39;t be too costly and spend a few hours in town to while the time away with the total expenses amounting to 150-200 USD depending on your appetites.
You are between spending a good while at our airport - that is not exciting at all or going to the city - which might be a bit costly, but diverse.
Regards, Andrei
|||
Hi,
To answer your question about getting a visa at Minsk-2 Airport (MSQ), I will tell you my experience.
I am a US passport holder, and I arranged my visa through BELINTOURIST, one of the official travel agencies there. They will arrange your invitation and hotel voucher. You will have to bring a passport photo as well as the visa fee on arrival. For American citizens, the fee is $180 US. But for European Union citizens, it is less, I believe.
I arrived at MSQ around 2200, quite late, but the consular office is opened 24 hours a day, so there will be someone there when you arrive. You walk up into the arrival hall and right before passport control, you go left and up the stairs to find the visa office.
Since it was late and I was one of the few who needed to get the visa on arrival (in fact, only one of two people there who needed this), after showing the paperwork and paying the fee, it took only about 15 minutes, if that.
It was a lot easier than I thought.
I arranged everything through Belintourist, including transfer to hotel. But when leaving the country, I took a taxi from the Hotel Yubileiny, which cost 85,000 BLR Rubles, or about $40 US (about 25 Euro).
But yes, you cannot just arrive at the airport and get your visa; you must have an official invitation and voucher to do this. If all your papers are in order, it should be a relatively easy and quick process.
|||
Well that one was not a transit visa. And the procedure takes 15 minutes for everyone, hence the high consular fee.
|||
-:- Message from TripAdvisor staff -:-
This topic was inactive for 6 months and has been closed to new posts. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
To review the TripAdvisor Forums Posting Guidelines, please follow this link: http://www.tripadvisor.com/pages/forums_posting_guidelines.html
We remove posts that do not follow our posting guidelines, and we reserve the right to remove any post for any reason.
Removed on: 3:18 pm, October 07, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment