After 6 weeks of jumping through hoops, I’m going to Russia next month for 5 days.

Russia is not a particularly easy country to travel to (most countries don’t require an American citizen to even get a Visa), but I got it all taken care of.

• Got a US Passport
  

• Got “sponsored” so I could apply for a Russian Visa
  

• The Russian embassy gave me a Visa without any problems. I was pretty surprised, because it took Yelena (my girlfriend) about a year to get her passport renewed through the Russian embassy, and even had to resend her picture to them because they said it was a “defective” picture (they lost it).
  

Now all I have to do is fill out a migration card when I get to the Moscow airport, and register with the police department in every city I visit… yay! hehe

She is going for a little under 2 weeks, so I’m going to meet up with her at the end of her trip and travel home together (we have an overnight layover in Germany coming back, so it will also be the first time I visit Germany as well, so that will be cool).