So Much for European Enlightenment

Got some pretty interesting news this week.

First of all, my wife’s final embassy interview was postponed 10 days. No explanation given. We got the news earlier this week. Today, the embassy’s Facebook page (which, incredibly, exists) said 10 embassy employees had been fired for corruption.

Postponement explained.

My hope, of course, is that they fired people who were likely to DELAY issuance of visas. I hope they kept the ones who rubber-stamp everything.

The second bit of news is that the Europeans have denied her a visa again.

We were trying the Czech Republic. They respond to requests pretty quickly, and they seemed to have a relatively positive attitude toward Africans. For example, the Czechs have a scholarship program that brings Zambians to Czechia to study. We told them we would go to Prague and then Rome.

We weren’t all that excited about visiting Eastern Europe in November, but we knew a Schengen visa would get us into Italy as well as Czechia, so we were willing to take the bad with the good. Actually, I was hoping to change our travel plans after we arrived and cut our Czech time to three days. Once you’re in Europe, they can’t do anything to make you go where you said you would. Nobody needs to spend a whole week in the Czech Republic.

Today we found out we were rejected. They had a ton of documentation proving my wife was not going to stay there illegally and clean toilets for a living, but they didn’t care. We showed them she was about to be cleared to move to the US. We proved assets way beyond what was needed to pay for the trip. We showed them we had already paid for accommodations and tours. We gave them our original marriage certificate, which, bizarrely, they required. Didn’t matter.

So what’s the explanation? Prejudice is the only plausible answer. They just don’t want Africans. They don’t trust them. Maybe they let a few students in, to take study positions where they can be closely monitored, but forget visiting as a tourist. They don’t care how obvious it is that you won’t be a problem. They don’t want to look at the facts.

They put her application in a pile or threw it out, and they waited for her to come back for an answer. Then, without looking her documents over, they told her to take a hike.

The good news is that I’m glad, because this means she will be her sooner, and we will avoid spending a huge amount of money on a trip to a third-rate destination in bad weather. They did me a big favor. Now I don’t have to go to Prague.

I’m sure Czechia is nice, and Prague may be the most beautiful large city on Earth, but it’s a historical and cultural backwater compared to places like Paris and Rome, and these days, it is jam-packed with tourists, even in winter. Tourists are thicker than TBN preachers in hell.

Also, the food looks unbelievably bad. There is a reason we never see Czech restaurants in malls. Remember the dinner scene in Top Secret?

The farther north and east you go in Europe, the more off-putting and strange the food gets. Spain, Italy, France, Greece…excellent. Germany…passable. Scandinavia, England, and Russia…like prison food.

Based on Youtube videos I’ve watched, it appears Russians are swarming Prague. I don’t know how well they mix with tourists from NATO countries. I am not all that eager to mingle with Russian tourists. I suspect they are like British tourists. Drunken, loud, and likely to vomit at any second. Dublin sidewalks are always decorated in British vomit.

Russians sound like the kind of people I would have wanted to hang around with in college.

Americans used to be the problem tourists on this planet. As other countries have accumulated wealth and started to travel more, that distinction seems to have become harder to award. The mainland Chinese do unspeakably rude things, for example. Communism makes people coarse. The Taiwanese are probably great guests.

To get back to Prague, it looks a lot like Disney World. Throngs of tourists everywhere, even in the slow season. Tons of businesses designed for tourists. Lots of scams.

If it’s bad in cold weather, imagine the summer.

Rome sounds better, but my research suggests it’s not what it once was. It’s hard to book activities in November. The crowds are legendary. Also, tourism forums warn about the omnipresent pickpockets, who have formed a de facto industry.

I wasn’t excited about this trip. Wrong season. Lackluster primary destination.

Now that Europe has once again shown us its true, hypocritical nature, my wife should be able to arrive here a week earlier, which is fantastic. We lose 10 days because Zambia is crazy, but we gain days we would have spent traveling. There is absolutely no reason to expect anything but a quick visa issuance. America isn’t Europe. We actually let people in. Boy, do we let people in.

We feel cheated because we didn’t get a second trip this year, but hey, America is huge, and my wife hasn’t seen it. Maybe we can see the Smokies before the leaves fall off. Meanwhile, we can apply for a visa to visit Israel, which is a better destination than any European country.

European visas are not that hard to get once you have a green card. I think the Europeans don’t want to make Uncle Sam mad, and besides, they realize nearly no one wants to leave the US and move to Europe. Half of them are trying to move here.

American winter destinations are generally pretty bad. There are the beaches, which neither of us wants to see. The beautiful non-beach areas will be cold, there will be no leaves on the trees, and many locations will be rainy and muddy. Most of our big tourism cities have turned into mental asylums. Neither of us ski or plan to learn, so forget the western mountains.

Maybe we’ll never see Prague. That’s okay with me. I’ve never wanted to visit. It makes me think of Franz Kafka. Prague will never see my dollars, so it’s a two-edged sword.

When I got the news about the visa, I went online and canceled a whole lot of engagements. Around $3000 for hotels and an Airbnb. Another grand or so for activities. Thank God I didn’t buy airline tickets. There may be some long faces in Czechia and Italy today. Nothing I can do.

I feel God has blessed us once again.