T Minus 15 or Cluster#&*% at the Consulate

Notes on June 3, 2009


I have done the impossible...I have procured a Brazilian tourist visa.

What do you call it when you send an application (which includes your precious passport) via mail to the consulate in Miami, for five weeks you nurse a simmering panic that you haven't gotten your visa in the twelve day turn around time (let alone your passport back). You try calling the Miami consulate (no one EVER answers), the consulate website and the consulate phone message provide you with conflicting details on what to include in your application, then you finally get your passport and application returned in the mail with a denied stamp because you should have applied to the Atlanta consulate (which didn't have an operational visa office at the time you applied to Miami). So you call the Atlanta consulate (where no one EVER answers), you skip out early from work and drive down to the consulate to apply in person only to get there 30 minutes after they closed to the public, and the man behind the counter is being a complete bung hole, and you really want to scream at him "Hey buddy, I'm trying to go to your country to spend money, and if you don't want me to, fine! I'll go to Saskatchewan for five weeks and spend money there! So um, there!" But instead you rearrange your face so you have that, "Hey mister, I'm about to cry mister so please take pity on me and pull some strings and get me a visa so I don't turn into the ugly white lady who unleashes a torrent of culturally insensitive obcenities at you." But he still insists on being a sphincter and turns you away with no visa and tells you to apply via the website (which you already tried and couldn't because it hasn't been working for two days) and wait to be assigned an official appointment time with the consulate. So then you go scrambling to R&R's to fill out the online application (which you could never have filled out on your own because the whole frickin' thing is in Portu-frickin'-gese), and request an appointment and make plans to call in sick to work the next day so Rodrigo can GO to the consulate with you and pull some strings to get you an appointment -- the LAST open appointment before my flight leaves -- and you wait, barely breathing, while Rodrigo attempts to schmooze the same prick who was behind the desk the day before.

You call it a clusterfuck, that's what you call it.

But wait, it's not over. So you go to the consulate on the day of your appointment with a $150 money order, per the website, and the new sphincter behind the counter tells you the MO is for the wrong amount. "Well, how much is it supposed to be for?" you ask. "$130," comes the reply. "Oh, well at this point I don't care about the extra $20, I just need the visa because my flight leaves in like a week." "No, we have to have exactly $130. We won't see you today. Change your flight," comes the reply.

WTF?!?!? Change my flight? What's wrong with you? You can't just tell someone to change their flight like a waiter tells you to order the shrimp because they are out of the mahi mahi. You Tourist Visa Nazi!!!! So guess what I did, just guess:

I changed my flight. So now I am leaving on the 18th, not the 4th, and I had yet ANOTHER appointment at the consulate, and I did get a visa at long, long, friggin' long last. Because if they hadn't given me one, I was prepared to go all T-Rex up in there for real.