To travellers applying for an Iranian visa in The Netherlands, here’s how to queue at the right ticket-window. Which is at.. the travel agency. Despite what the embassy states, you hand in the required documents at a travel agency that sells trips in Iran.
After 7-8 days (or, in our case, longer) the agency gives you a registration number as supplied by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, which is what the embassy needs for.. adding a stamp. If you want it pronto, add 15 euro, otherwise the price depends on your nationality.
In short, the agency arranges the paperwork, the embassy merely stamps the visa.
I have to say this procedure applies to the Iranian embassy in The Hague. Other embassies may do it differently.
If we knew this beforehand, we would have saved two trips to the embassy. The first time, we were met with a ‘closed’ sign on a normal working day, the second time we were sent to the travel agency.
You’re not obliged to book a trip or to buy some service, but there’s no way around the Middle Eastern way of doing business. It involves sitting in an empty office, with no other customers about, an agent mumbling into his headset and letting go of time altogether. A form may well take up to 25 minutes to fill. Because, well, it’s a slow day and why would you hurry when details in your form spark personal memories and anecdotes. Phone calls are answered with the same slow cadence similar to his pen going ‘check.. check… check…’ over the filled pages, in a way that would put a stressed pekinese at ease.
