Entering Malawi - Lost in Transit

Malawi is the only country in Southern Africa, where Austrian people have to apply for a visa. There are two ways to get a visa for Malawi ... the recommended way is to apply for a visa at an Malawian ambassador in Europe (the next ambassador is in Berlin/Germany) ... so if I want to do that, I have to send my passport there ... that means that there is a lot of paperwork to do before, it may take a while until it is issued and it seems that this is not that easy anyway!! However, I decided not to do that, because I heard that it is possible to get a temporary visa at the boarder and issue the visa at the immigration office in Malawi ... that's what I did!!

So I took a minibus from Tete to Zobue (the border town) and leaved Mozambique ... from there I took a taxi through the DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone - software engineers should know that ;-) to the Malawian border office (it's about 5 km). I explained my situation to the border officer and kindly asked for a temporary visa ... whereupon he said: "Sorry, without a visa you cannot enter Malawi!! ... You have to go back to Maputo or Harare and apply for a visa there and than you come back!!" ... Ahhh ... I cannot believe it ... I am lost in transit ... somewhere between Mozambique and Malawi ;-) ... so what should I do now?! ... I won't give up, so I waited 15 minutes and I talked to the officer again, I mentioned that I have heard that Malawi is so beautiful and the people are so nice and friendly there ...it is really a pity that I cannot go there ... so this time he was lenient with me and gave me a 7-day temporary visa ... and of course he wanted a little tip therefore (which costs me 20$ ;-) and everything was alright!!

... but this is not the end of the story! ... I had to apply for the official visa at the immigration office in Blantyre, which seems to be quite easy, because I had the temporary visa already ... but anyway it took me another two days, because on Monday there was the funeral of the former president (which means national holiday) ... so I had to wait until Tuesday ... and then, the migration officer was very annoyed to issue visas ... so that I had to wait about four hours for this stupid visa.

So getting an tourist visa for Malawi was my biggest challenge so far ;-) ... However, now I am in Malawi - *The warm Heart of Africa*