Visa woes
Joe and I are less than two weeks out from our big adventure - six months of campervan life in Europe with Jacob the dog.
Getting ourselves and our household ready for the February 14 departure date has felt totally manageable - a piece of cake after parenting for the last 28 years, Joe's 40 years of running nonprofits and my last eight years on Charlottesville's City Council.
We've been making lists and checking off to-do items – plane tickets; camper reservations; international driver's licenses; Jacob's pet passport preparation (microchip, rabies shot, health exam), carrier training for the plane ride, grooming; getting the house ready for renters (mold remediation, cleaning out the basement, going through eight years of City Council papers, general scrubbing and tidying), finding a family for Darwin the dog while we're gone, taking care of health appointments and prescriptions and haircuts. Good planning has made each of these things fall into place, giving us a false sense of confidence and control. I was even able to take a late November thyroid cancer diagnosis in stride: December 13 surgery left me with half a thyroid and no cancer, ready to hit the road in February.
But the last item on the list could be our Waterloo. We discovered only recently that most European countries are members of the Schengen alliance. All well and good. And that visitors from outside the Schengen region can only stay in the region for three months out of every six. Wait a minute! We're planning a six-month stay!
England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are not part of Schengen, so if all else fails, we can spend three months there, but we'd been hoping for a little more flexibility.
The only way to get that flexibility is to have a visa from one of the Schengen countries, for which you must have an address. Fortunately, friends in Lyon with whom we've stayed in the past agreed to let us use their flat (and address) as our French home base, and we've applied for French visas. Unfortunately, the process takes a while, and the earliest appointment we could get at the Consulate in D.C. was January 30.
On the 30th, completed applications in hand, along with a checklist (from the Embassy website) of required documentation – proof of income, statement that we won't take French jobs, photographs, criminal background checks, proof of address in France, travel documentation, etc., etc. – we rose at 5:30am and headed to D.C. in rush-hour traffic. We were on time to our appointment, and things seemed to be going swimmingly until the gentleman behind the plexiglass window asked for a letter from an insurance company stating that we had health insurance of $40,000 each, along with extraction benefits, for the period of our travel, as well as a pre-paid Express Mail envelopes to get our passports mailed back to us when the visas were ready.
"Those things weren't on the checklist we got from this embassy," I foolishly pointed out. He performed a gesture that is universally called the Gallic shrug. Not his problem. He couldn't accept our application without them. We could express mail them from home. Oh, and it could take three weeks to process the visa.
(I don't know how good your math is, but that is six days longer than we have before our plane is scheduled to head to Frankfurt.) Of course, it often goes much more quickly than that, he said. Hope springs eternal.
The documents have now all been submitted by Express mail, our passports are in Washington waiting to be stamped, and we have put ourselves at the mercy of the grinding efficiency of the French bureaucracy. Piece of cake!
Getting ourselves and our household ready for the February 14 departure date has felt totally manageable - a piece of cake after parenting for the last 28 years, Joe's 40 years of running nonprofits and my last eight years on Charlottesville's City Council.
We've been making lists and checking off to-do items – plane tickets; camper reservations; international driver's licenses; Jacob's pet passport preparation (microchip, rabies shot, health exam), carrier training for the plane ride, grooming; getting the house ready for renters (mold remediation, cleaning out the basement, going through eight years of City Council papers, general scrubbing and tidying), finding a family for Darwin the dog while we're gone, taking care of health appointments and prescriptions and haircuts. Good planning has made each of these things fall into place, giving us a false sense of confidence and control. I was even able to take a late November thyroid cancer diagnosis in stride: December 13 surgery left me with half a thyroid and no cancer, ready to hit the road in February.
But the last item on the list could be our Waterloo. We discovered only recently that most European countries are members of the Schengen alliance. All well and good. And that visitors from outside the Schengen region can only stay in the region for three months out of every six. Wait a minute! We're planning a six-month stay!
England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are not part of Schengen, so if all else fails, we can spend three months there, but we'd been hoping for a little more flexibility.
The only way to get that flexibility is to have a visa from one of the Schengen countries, for which you must have an address. Fortunately, friends in Lyon with whom we've stayed in the past agreed to let us use their flat (and address) as our French home base, and we've applied for French visas. Unfortunately, the process takes a while, and the earliest appointment we could get at the Consulate in D.C. was January 30.
On the 30th, completed applications in hand, along with a checklist (from the Embassy website) of required documentation – proof of income, statement that we won't take French jobs, photographs, criminal background checks, proof of address in France, travel documentation, etc., etc. – we rose at 5:30am and headed to D.C. in rush-hour traffic. We were on time to our appointment, and things seemed to be going swimmingly until the gentleman behind the plexiglass window asked for a letter from an insurance company stating that we had health insurance of $40,000 each, along with extraction benefits, for the period of our travel, as well as a pre-paid Express Mail envelopes to get our passports mailed back to us when the visas were ready.
"Those things weren't on the checklist we got from this embassy," I foolishly pointed out. He performed a gesture that is universally called the Gallic shrug. Not his problem. He couldn't accept our application without them. We could express mail them from home. Oh, and it could take three weeks to process the visa.
(I don't know how good your math is, but that is six days longer than we have before our plane is scheduled to head to Frankfurt.) Of course, it often goes much more quickly than that, he said. Hope springs eternal.
The documents have now all been submitted by Express mail, our passports are in Washington waiting to be stamped, and we have put ourselves at the mercy of the grinding efficiency of the French bureaucracy. Piece of cake!
Ah....this then is the proof that you are tough enough for the next steps of your adventure. We, your public, await the process and progress. Thank you for "taking us with you"!
ReplyDeleteUm. Leaving on Ash Wednesday must surely entail some sort of Lenten moments. May all of yours be in advance!
ReplyDelete