Visa...

In order to avoid long waiting times along the way, we applied for several visa in advance. Some visa were a real struggle. Some episodes... > the application was returned twice with the official reason "picture quality" not good enough... (sorry, that's my face - can't change it) [Don't forget that every mailing costs 10USD as it needs pre-paid return stamps and secure mailing]. After two months we got the visa - yeah! > some countries have no embassy in Switzerland but other european countries such as Germany or Belgium. They all require you to send your passports, the forms etc plus an envelope with stamps to return everything back to you. That works fine with embassies within Switzerland. In the case of Uzbekistan where the embassy is in Berlin, they would not accept Swiss stamps for the return envelope while Swiss Post does not sell any stamps which are compatible with Germany... . At the end we had to travel to Germany to send it from there... (Globalization allows to ship an item all around the globe and sell it for a couple bucks in Switzerland but Switzerland and Germany aren't capabable to sell compatible stamps...) [Anybody working for Post services? Your chance to improve the world] Luckily we started applying for visas last summer... Now we're all set.