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.