Is the cold war over?

Getting a visa for former Sowjet countries can be a pain in Switzerland as we had to experience on earlier trips. Getting one outside your home country is even much worse as we (unfortunately) can tell now... . It's a story over 3 episodes... 1st attempt - Russian embassy in Dar es Salam, Tanzania. The consul was surprised to see Swiss people in Tanzania applying for a Russian visa. He informed us that "You know, Russia is very far away, you really want to go there?". All small talk didn't help, he wanted an additional paper with a russian reference number. FAILURE 2nd attempt - Russian embassy in Dubai, UAE. Pretty short process. no visa if you're not resident in Dubai. Mmmh, poor travelers... - FAILURE 3rd attempt - Russian embassy in Teheran, Iran. This "rendez vous" actually lasted 3 days... . - Day 1: The guard welcomes us with "niet, tomorrow". It takes a while to just get in and explain what we need. After discussing with two different guys the consul comes in person and talks to us in French. He says that 1. he can't issue a visa if we are not resident, 2. our invitation letter is copied - he wants the original and 3. it taks min 10 days to get the visa. Pretty frustrating. We try to organize the original invitation by DHL from Moscow but this takes too long. - Day 2: We return and explain that the letter is coming. They discuss back and forth and say that they can't do anything unless the travel agent in Moscow calls the consul on his personal mobile. We leave the embassy and ask Moscow to call "Mr Dunaev". The response is quick and negative - if the embassy wants to talk to us they should call... (grrrh) - Day 3: We go there before they open and wait in front of the gate. This gives us plenty of time to discuss (which is needed). After long discussions the consul decides to issue the visa (now all of a sudden without calling Moscow...) but only 3 days later. As we lost plenty of time before, this doesn't work out as we have to leave earlier... . No chance to discuss this, even after more than 30 minutes it's 3 days or nothing. During the 3 days at the embassy we made friends with an Irani who works for a local travel agent and is at the embassy every day to get visas for his customers. We had some small talk with him every day and gave him a look at our Russia Lonely Planet which turned out to be valueable as he "saved us". He said accept the delivery time the consul offers. That's what we did. So consul himself tells you that it's impossible to get a visa faster than in 3 days. Our 'friend' then walks to one of the windows and says 'Olga..... (Russian discussion which I didn't understand) and 30 minutes later we had our visas...