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.