A run for the Border

I have caught up with my emails at least for the moment!
On Monday I asked Dr Halascz to print out and try and decipher the emailed documents that Matt has sent at the weekend. Although they were both issued by the Kazakhstan office, one seemed to have a transit authority on it, although it wrongly specified Vylok rather than Chop, which Rowena was in the process of trying to rectify. Rather than hang around for another couple of days for the corrected document I decided to have a run for the Ukraine border and see what happened, a good decision as it turned out.

Early Tuesday morning we loaded up the horses and said goodbye to the vets, hoping we would NOT see them again - here is Hua with Tamas, one of our young Hungarian vet officer friends - and after negotiating the Hungarian customs, set off across the bridge over the river Tusa to Ukraine.
Almost immediately on arriving an Ukrainian customs official was fussing that the photocopied certificate was ineligible because it was issued in Kazakhstan not Ukraine. Eventually a vet officer appeared who confirmed that it contained the relevant authority in the form of a registration number. Sigh of relief, but not for long.
We seemed to be progressing through the system, albeit at the usual snail's pace, when another bombshell. The vet officer told us the certificate was not valid because the Kazakhs had not changed the journey plan and it still went from east to west. Consternation. But apparently if we can get that changed, all should be well, though no doubt they will find something else next time. It sometimes seems to be a game of trying to guess what is needed and then keep on trying until your guess is correct. Although to be fair, the woman vet official we had this time was prepared to give some advice on the phone to my Mrs Fixit Natalia, so hopefully we will get it right next time.

But after most of the day hanging around outside and inside offices in Chop customs, it was back to Hungary with our tails between our legs. The horses are back in their stalls (no doubt to the pique of the vet staff as they had just been thoroughly cleaned out and disinfected) and we are back on our pitch by the muck bins.
Rowena has been on the case pronto, and another hopefully perfect application with full corrections was winging its way to Astana yesterday morning. I cannot imagine what would have happened without her and Matt working behind the scenes.
Most annoying as I will be missing a few functions at home I was hoping to attend.