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Originally Posted by Asick
. Now it's not that easy, currently it is the worst period for exUSSR people travelling to West from time to time, because East Europe has not joined Schengen area still (by the way, when will these countries join it?),
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1st Jan 2008 for land traffic, 1st Apr 2008 (or something around) for air traffic. Not sure about the sea traffic.
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Originally Posted by Asick
If I need to go to Istanbul by a train, I have to get both Romanian and Bulgarian transit visas, which is crazy and not that easy since Turks used to put their visa at their border... and so on.  |
Well, are so long trains journeys cheap enough to prefer them to taking the plane???
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Originally Posted by Asick
Most of Russians are set behind iron curtain from the West again, because it's close to impossible to go 2000-3000 km to a nearest embassy just to fill up an application form and then make this way again just to get visa in their own hands.
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Must it be done personally? Can't travel agencies do those "paper transfers"?
In Poland travel agencies do that kind of job at least for Russian and Belarusan visas (and used to do the same for Western European or Israeli visas as long as they were required).
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Originally Posted by Asick
Honestly, I didn't know that socialistic countries except of USSR had a sort of their own free travel area, so it was easy to cross from Poland to GDR, for example.
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Well, it wasn't as easy as in 1990's nothing to say about EU, even non-Schengen. First of all, there were restrictive limits on currency exchanges (necessary in non-market economies). In 1972 there was even an experiment of full free trafic and full currency convertibility between Poland and GDR. Free traffic remained but there was a lack of balance about currencies - eastern Germans reamined with millions of Polish zlotys and with empty shops
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Originally Posted by Asick
Did they put those restrictions back in 80s right after Wojciech Jaruzelski proclamed state of war?
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No, it was due to Lech Wałęsa rather than Wojciech Jaruzelski
. Other socialist countries closed their borders in summer of 1980, right after strikes which were begging of the Solidarity. It was a prevention against the "freedom disease", effective for next 9 years
. However, western countries were still open to Poles. There was even (at least since early 1970's) a visa free traffic for Poles to Finland, Sweden and Austria. Nevertheless those countries reintroduced visas in 1981 because of growing wave of Polish economical refugees. OTOH, Jaruzelski restricted foreign travels independently of other contries's policies, just to stop emmigration. However, when the passport policy loosened later in the 1980's, about 1 million Poles emmigrated anyway.
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Originally Posted by Asick
On the contrary, USSR was generally closed from any country around, I mean you had to had some significant reasons to visit another country (even 'socialistic' one), which could be some things from military service to diplomatic work. Private visits were quite difficult, which was the essence of that iron curtain.
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I realised that already in the late 1970's when I was a child. I spent summer holidays with my grandma or parents in Gdańsk or Gdańsk area. When I watched country signs on cars, I noticed that there were thousands of tourists from GDR, Czechoslovakia or Hungary and many from West Germany or Scandinavia but almost none from the USSR! And Kaliningradskaya oblast's is the "closest abroad" from Gdańsk! As to the borders between the socialist countries, they used to be named "borders of friendship". It was a common joke that "the border of friendship" is "the place where friendship ends"
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It was visible especially if to consider that before 1988 there were only 2 road and 3 railway border crossings between Poland and USSR available for public use (the border length was over 1200 km).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asick
On the contrary, some exUSSR republics use the only passport valid both for home and abroad, carrying just a 'foreign usage allowed' mark.
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Well, something like this was also necessary here in the 1970's to cross the border with "dowód osobisty"...