It is a lot better now. When I first toured Europe in 1985, it took me almost a year to prepare all the visas. The funniest thing was France required entry port to appear on the visa (at least in their consulate in NYC), which were mostly little border towns unknown to us. Naturally I was stopped in the train station of Geneva, because my entry port to France was located in Italian border... Finally I was able to go after showing them my credit cards, and US dollars.. There were better places, such as Berlin Wall, where East Germans were quite friendly.