REJECTED

Finally back from my trip... it feels like I've been gone for ages. Luckily the weather doesn't seem too bad in Yerevan (ie. cold). It's sunny and not too much colder than Tblisi.

Last August when I was in Tblisi I was tempted to apply for a visa to go to Azerbaijan since, I'd really love to see it and compare and contrast, and get a feel for what the vibe is like there. I never got around to it, but this time, with fresh reports from Katy at Blogrel.com it seemed that as unlikely as it would be, I may as well give it a try. Before heading to Turkey me and another Diasporan applied at the Azeri Embassy. The consular official who took our application seemed to have been caught a bit offguard - the only question he asked was about my friend's occupation and time in Armenia, and he forgot even to take my application (I had to hand the obvious papers and passport in my hands to him after he concluded the meeting). In any case, we were quite surprised to hear him say "no problem, come back in 3 days". Still not completely convinced, we went to Turkey and returned to the embassy at 10am. After waiting around (everyone waits outside on the street, a muddy construction area with nowhere to sit) for a while, he came out to us and said to come back at 4pm to pick up the visas. We were again amazed, but asked if it could be earlier so we could catch the 3pm bus to Baku... he said, ok, 1pm it is then and took our passports. Well, in a state of disbelief, but rather happy, we headed off to kill a few hours and eat some delicious khachapuris. At exactly 1 we arrived back and the guard (Georgian) rather rudely informed us that the official was not there and he had no idea when he'd come. Our suspicion was that the rudeness was over our morning laughter (suppressed, but maybe not enough) when he tried very publicly and unsuccessfully to get the phone number of a cute girl applying for a visa.

After waiting an hour and a half, the consular guy drove up and saw us, and said there was a problem and said to wait another few minutes. After we got in he said he had been sure we'd get the approval and even had stamped the visas in our passports, but they had not gotten the clearance from Baku for some reason and he had to cancel them. Is it possible we could get an invitation from someone in Azerbaijan? Well my friend said he had an Azeri classmate a year earlier and could get one from him, but it would take too much time so there was no point. The official asked his name and when it was given, another guy wrote it down not thinking we'd notice. Then he asked the friends address and phone number and other details, even though we had made it clear we were not going to pursue the letter or the visa... rather scary. We expressed regret that it was not issued and curiosity that others had not had this same problem, he assured us he had no idea what had happened and that an invitation, any invitation surely would have put us over the top... we extended our hands to shake, catching him a bit by surprise (not that our entire application wasn't one), and left - none of us ever mentioning the pink elephant in the room.

I had heard that those with last names ending in -ian or -yan are not given visas, and knew of specific cases including one where the US Ambassador had to intervene to get a US govt employee in. It's really a shame they have adopted this policy, and that along with the war rhetoric makes me wonder if they can possibly be genuinely working towards a peace deal at these peace talks, but still remain hopeful...