The International Women's Day. Also Slovenian?

Right now, I should be one of the passengers on a flight from London to Johannesburg. I should just be abandoning my seat and greedily replacing it for the whole (empty) row so that I could spend my night in a horizontal position, with sleeping mask over my face and earplugs in both ears, getting some appreciated hours of sleep knowing my journey continues with a 6 hour drive to Kruger NP. But no. It all had to go horribly wrong before it even started.

“It says ‘visa required’. I cannot let you take this flight, you need to get a visa first.”

Those were the words of a douche at the counter, telling me I am not allowed to fly to South Africa because – as a citizen of Slovenia – am required to travel with a visa. Unfortunately, I got false info every time I was told I do not need a visa for the journey, that I just get a stamp at the Johannesburg International for 3 months, as a tourist. Yes, this holds true for almost all EU citizens, and a loooong list of other nationalities around the world. But not for Slovenians, nah-ah. We need to apply for a visa via the Embassy of South Africa in Vienna. That’s right, we don’t even have our own SA consulate, Austrians have to do that for us. For extra time, money and effort, of course.  Why Slovenia? Why is Slovenia not on that list but, for instance, St Vincent and the Grenadines are? This is not a matter of international recognition, is it? Maybe it’s another paper we haven’t signed because of our shitty financial state. Or we simply got unnoticed while that list was made, as the case usually is. Perhaps South Africans find us threatening? Do we have some horrible infectious non-curable embarrassing disease, do we carry cooties?!

Whatever the reason, I got stuck in München. Surely it will take long enough to get that miserable piece of paper, re-book the plane tickets and transit myself over Europe to the Southern Hemisphere to skip the whole first week in South Africa. The week that should represent a kick off of my project – I’d be a happy, honoured participant of a conference on savannah ecology in Kruger NP. I’d be all ears at the scientific discussions during the day and screaming of excitement while watching lions, kudus and hippos on so-called Game Drives every time the sun went down.

Now I can only fix my eyes on the abstracts of the Kruger talks at day and listen to goodnight stories when it gets dark. No lion roars, only noises of cats mating. A privilege of Slovenians only.