Oh, the Suspense...

I could not make this stuff up...

After spending the morning trying to find out under what circumstances you are allowed to apply for a second passport and getting the same reply from the people at the passport application services in Spokane over and over (“Second passport? What do you mean?”), I called the Spanish Consulate in Munich again tonight (at 1:00am, since Germany is nine hours ahead), and was so frustrated when I hung up that I was crying.

Apparently, the Kollege who’s in charge of the Visa department is on vacation for the next THREE WEEKS. It definitely would have been nice of him to warn me that I would have to wait at least three weeks for a reply to my email, especially after I made it abundantly clear that I don’t have much time left to figure this out. The Kollegin who is filling in for him offered to look for my email, but asked me to send it again, because she was sure I had sent it to the wrong address. However, the email address that she then proceeded to spell for me was the same one!

Anyway, according to her, the bottom line seems to be that in order for the Spanish Consulate in Munich to even send a message to Madrid asking whether or not I can apply for my visa in Munich (which does not mean that I will be able to get a visa, only that I will be allowed ask for one!), I am supposed to show up at the consulate in Munich in person! That is, of course, very useful to me, seeing as the only reason I am trying to find out whether or not I can apply for a visa in Germany is to decide whether or not I am going to Germany!

She said they might make an exception, but apparently it will take two days for the Consulate in Munich to see whether I can ask to apply for a visa without being there in person, which means I am supposed to call back Thursday. After that, it will take three weeks to find out whether they will allow me to apply. And by that time, it will already be July 18^th!

The woman I was speaking to thought that I didn’t understand her when she kept telling me all of this, but really, after trying for two weeks to get an answer, in order to decide whether to give up on going to Germany or to try to get a second passport or what, I was just trying to explain to her that I can’t keep being told to email and wait! Being polite and just doing what they tell me has not gotten me anywhere. Had I not called back and annoyed them today, who knows how long it would have taken to find out any of this stuff that they really could have told me the first time I called.

So, I re-sent the email, and now I have to wait two more days. 

Navalmoral de la Mata

I've been assigned to work at a school in the city of Navalmoral de la Mata in Extremadura, Spain!

View of the city Navalmoral de la Mata from a nearby hill.

Map of Spain showing autonomous communities (like states). The star represents the location of Navalmoral de la Mata.

Map of the world with Spain starred.

Scrambling for a Visa

So far, my trip to Spain to help teach English is off to a rough start.

First of all, having read on the Spanish Ministry of Education’s website that applicants to the program North American Language and Culture Assistants in Spain would be informed of their acceptance or rejection by April, I was in quite a panic, when, during the last week of the same month the message was altered to read “by mid to late May.”

Phew.

However, my relief did not last long, as the days raced by and I began compulsively checking my email up to four times a day. Finally, on May 22, after waiting over seven months, I received a message alerting me to my assignment in the autonomous community of Extremadura.

Right away I went to accept. And that seems to be when all my troubles began.

Now, four weeks later, on June 22, I am, once again, waiting for an email from the Spanish government. This time I am hoping to find out whether I will have to cancel all of my summer plans, wasting a non-refundable, $800 plane ticket, just to get my visa to go to Spain in October, or whether I will be allowed to file for my visa during my two-and-a-half-month stay visiting friends in Passau, Germany this summer.

You see, under normal circumstances, I am only allowed to apply for a visa at the Spanish Consulate General in my region of residence. Seeing as I am currently a resident of eastern Washington, my assigned consulate is in San Francisco. Because I do not live in the state of California, I am allowed to mail my passport and all other necessary documents (application form, medical certificate, police criminal record clearance, etc.), along with an extra envelope with $18 of postage (for the return of my passport) and a money order of $160 ( the visa application fee) to the consulate. Next, I am expected to wait the minimum of four weeks for the consulate to approve all of the documents and stick the visa in my passport and mail it back to me.

Unfortunately, I was in the middle of finishing up my final classes at Eastern Washington University when I found out that I had been selected to be a North American Language and Culture Assistant, and I didn’t have the time to begin running around gathering all of the documents I would need to apply for my visa. So, it was not until after I had submitted my final paper on June 12, that I sat down to read through the instructions on the program website and begin calling doctors and post offices to find out how to get all of the documents I needed.

Big mistake.

By the end of the week I had found out that it would take five to six weeks to get police criminal record clearance from the United States, let alone from Germany (in order to apply for a Spanish visa, you are required to submit police criminal record clearance from all of the countries in which you have resided in the last five years)! Adding the five weeks for the background checks and the four weeks for the visa application in my head, I realized that by the time I got my passport back from San Francisco it would already be August. And in April I had already booked a one-way, non-refundable flight to Munich on July 18, hoping to spend the summer with friends in Passau and fly from Germany directly to Spain for the start of the program in October.

Shit.

I don’t feel like going into extensive detail, but after submitting my requests for FBI criminal record clearance and a certificate of good conduct from Germany (which entailed a whole nother set of obstacles in and of itself) and collecting all of the other documents I would need to apply for a Spanish visa, I decided to call up the Spanish Consulate General in San Francisco that same day to explain my situation and ask for any advice they could offer, and have been playing phone and email tag with them ever since. After being told finally to email my questions to them, I waited a couple of days, and after receiving no reply, took matters into my own hands and called the Spanish Consulate General in Munich to ask whether it would be possible for me to file for my visa there, since I have less than four weeks left in the United States, but will be spending almost three months in Germany.

And here I am, two days later, awaiting a reply that won’t come for at least another two days, considering the fact that it is now Saturday morning in Germany.

All I know is that, most likely, they will require me to have a German residence permit in order to apply for a visa at the Spanish Consulate General in Munich, which I won’t be able to get, seeing as I am currently neither studying nor working in Germany.

So, it’s looking like I will have to waste my plane ticket, cancel all of my plans with friends in Passau this summer,  and stay in the United States for at least nine more weeks.

Awesome.