Absurd AZ.

Things are getting crazy here as I'm about to leave. There's been a progression of things and events that I don't think would fly so easily in other places occurring here. The latest is that there are some new visa regulations that began with visas only being issued for a week period at the airport; the next was that visas were no longer available at the airport. It's getting a little wild as this has actually affected people I know that had people visiting and were trying to get out/in.

The thing is, of course, Azerbaijan is completely within their rights to do what they please with people coming in and out of their country, but it's annoying and unnecessarily difficult when there was no word from the Azeri government before these new regulations actually took place. Great guys, really. I live in Azerbaijan and we didn't really know about this. There were a few rumblings of the possibility with the impending parliamentary elections, but there was no concrete confirmation until the day of. We didn't get any type of notice from the embassy (because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't give them notice) until it was too late.

Thinking of how I'm in the supposed perfect spot to hear about all this and didn't, it makes me feel bad for Richard Norman who came here to vacation and went through some really unfortunate things. It might just be me, but I'm getting a kick out of the comments at the end just because... well, it's so Azerbaijan.