Visa requests in Warsaw are taking over six months now, from a report I saw last week. A friend of mine waited five months for his Croatian work visa. He had to delay his job start date twice. The embassy told him it's because of backlog from summer tourism. It's a common problem across Eastern Europe. Governments aren't updating their systems fast enough.
But wait, are these delays really as big as they say? People often make it sound worse than it is. Visa problems happen everywhere, not just in Eastern Europe. Governments are trying to update systems, but it takes time. A single case doesn't prove a widespread issue. Maybe the backlog isn't that serious for most applicants.
Yeah, the wait times are brutal and totally unpredictable. My cousin's Poland visa took so long he missed his first semester of language school. You really have to check the specific embassy website, not just the general info, because some like Bulgaria are faster than others. Never trust the "standard processing" estimate they give you, always add a few months buffer, especially if applying around summer.