Category Archives: Travel

Anticipation

Admin, Travel,

In a conversation not long ago, we chatted about how much of an agony anticipation can actually be. The idea of an exciting, joyous, happy-making future event is great. Or at least, it sounds great. But when the future-event is not certain (or – worse – is less certain than you think) and when the time-frame is not definite, it can get terribly frustrating and even a little depressing. It also makes you cynical. I have become cynical. After many disasters and disappointments, I’m not at all convinced that this trip will actually happen.

Perhaps in direct response to this – Murphy’s law and all – things actually appear to have worked out. By this I mean that I appear to be all set to leave the country.  After months of waiting and bureaucratic hoop-jumping, things have suddenly fallen into place. It seems.

The last step was applying for my visa at the South Korean consulate. This is really a follow-up step. The process starts (the visa process, I mean – the whole process starts with the SA bureaucracy) when you send all your precious documents (degree, criminal record check, etc.) to the school in Korea. They then submit your paperwork and – assuming you’re not a terrible criminal and haven’t lied about having a degree – get a visa issuance number, which they then send to you. This is perhaps why the process of applying for a visa in Pretoria (at the South Korean consulate) is so peculiarly painless and unbureaucratic – because the initial work has been done already.

Whatever the reason, this last little bit of the process of trying to leave the country has definitely been the least painful of the lot. In fact, it has been very pleasant. Simple, efficient, quick. The fact that this is sufficiently foreign to have me suspicious is probably an indictment on the poor service from SA’s bureaucracy. Alternatively, it’s just because the South Korean consulate in SA are super-fantastic. Or at least, the people I dealt with are.

For a start, they are able to read and respond to an email requesting information on how the process should work. Quickly. Which is a revolutionary idea. The actual application required one completed form, one photograph, some money and a passport. That’s all. No forms in triplicate, no jumping through hoops. I simply dropped off the form, money and photo and passport. I’ve also been having an email conversation with them and when I mentioned that I’m hoping to leave shortly, they rushed the visa through. Generally a South Korean visa will take 3 working days to process here in SA – which is pretty amazingly quick anyway. I dropped the application off on Monday late morning and picked it up yesterday at 10am. Quick and easy.

So I now have a visa. Actually, I now have a visa and a flight. It seems the anticipation may finally, actually, be over in just less than a week. Right now now that fills me with relief and happiness and sunshine and light. I imagine it will become less thrilling and increasingly terrifying as the week proceeds.

One step nearer

Admin, Friends, Travel,

Well, perhaps more than one. I now have flights. This is certainly a whole lot nearer than I have ever been before. I am still not assuming that it will all go well. In fact, I am trying to cultivate a healthy cynicism about the prospect. Regardless of this, I went through this morning (thanks to some marvelous friends) to Pretoria to complete the visa application process. Applying for a teacher’s (E-2) visa for Korea involves sending a whole bunch of crucial and hard-to-obtain documents to Korea where the school will start the process and then, once you’ve received a visa issuance number/visa certificate from them, applying at the local consulate or embassy – which, by the way, are in different places in the South African case.

It was a beautiful day for a drive to Pretoria. For those who have never done the drive, the trip between South Africa’s economic hub and her capital, is generally less than pleasant for the driver. There used to be miles and miles of open space and quiet road between the two cities. These days most of that has been filled with cluster-housing developments and the quiet roads have morphed into raging, over-subscribed highways. One of the reasons for the development of SA’s Gautrain is to try and deal with the congestion on the N1 and related routes between Joburg and Pretoria.

Anyway, the drive, for a passanger, is quite enjoyable when the winter sun is shining from a clear blue sky and the company is good. The trip doesn’t take all that long. In fact I think we probably spent more time wandering around Menlyn Park shopping centre (which is huge and definitely designed to confuse) than driving through. At least it felt like it, but that may just have been the result of an innate dislike of shopping centres, even when they’re pleasantly empty on a Monday morning.

Eventually heading off to find the Korean consulate, we spent a slightly nerve-wracking little while following various roads, almost (but not quite) certain we were going in the right direction. Eventually we drove past the address listed in my guide-book as where to find the Korean Embassy. Isn’t it inevitable that you will always drive past the place you need to be. When we turned back and reached the Embassy, we were informed that the consulate was around the block and down the road.

We ultimately found the consulate and handed in all the documents. Which was remarkably easy. I am torn between joy at the lack of bureaucractic hoops to jump through and fear that this may simply indicate that everything will now go pear-shaped and fall apart again. I am hoping for the former and trying not to think to much about it.

Instead I’m focusing on how lovely a day it is in Gauteng. And it really is. A slight breeze, pale blue sky, stunning sunshine and dry winter grass. It really is lovely to be able to spend a little bit of time here before, all things being equal, I head off into the sun… rise, actually… and summer.

Wishing didn’t make it so

Travel

The Shosholoza Meyl people turned out to be fairly competent – and capable of responding to email, which beats the DFA. But there seems to be some vagueness as to whether there are, in fact, sleeper carriages on the East London-Johannesburg run, or whether sitters (3rd class) are the only option. Given this and the fact that time is actually somewhat limited, I have, with a deep sigh , resigned myself to taking the bus. I shouldn’t really complain; I actually quite enjoy travelling by bus, I’m just moaning because I was so exhausted after the last trip. And, on a big adventure like this, the chance to do a train-trip in SA (which, frankly, I can do anytime) is probably not worth the risk. The height of irrationality, I realise, but I feel as though there is a finite amount of luck available and I need it all for the big adventure, so small adventures will simply have to be sacrificed. Irrationality, I don’t think unreasonably, given the disasters (international, global and otherwise) that have already befallen this journey.
I am now, however, a large step closer to actually accomplishing the goal of leaving the country. Infinitely closer than the last couple of times. Of course, I’m still infinitely far away from actually leaving. I click onto the news sites each day with fear and trepidation, just in case some major event has occurred to prevent me from going. There are still so many things that could go wrong. I am still terrified of tempting the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. I’m endeavouring not to think about it.
But some things have been achieved. I have packed, for example. Packing is a miserable job – made more miserable by weight restrictions – which makes me, at least once in every packing process, want nothing more than to throw up my hands and declare that I never wanted to go in the first place. But it’s done. For now anyway. And anyone who wishes me to add anything to my luggage is likely to meet with a sharp refusal. I cannot fit anything else in. At least not without going through this whole process again. The thought of which makes me miserable.
So this evening I will take my packed-to-leave-the-country bags, my more-tense-than-I-like-to-admit self and some fudge, and climb on a bus for the long trip to Joburg . For those who have never done it, it’s not as bad as you’d think. Plus you get to enjoy the sun setting on a winter afternoon through the red-seeded grasses, to watch the silhouettes of thorn trees and the hills of the sweeping plains carry the world into nightfall, and then to watch the night stars sparkle over a frost-dusted world. And other pretty moments between here and Gauteng.