Posts Tagged ‘Visa’

So, it is done. We arrived in San Francisco and activated our Greencards yesterday! The actual activation process was pretty easy, but it nearly didn’t happen. But let’s begin this story at it’s actual beginning. Our flight to Paris left on Saturday morning at 7.25am from Duesseldorf. My dad picked us up at home at 4am. Luckily! Because at 4 am we were both still fast asleep! Missing that flight would have been pretty bad, because our Visa’s expiration dates are on May 17.

The flights to Paris and the next one to San Francisco were pretty good. And I can really recommend San Francisco International as destination to activate your Greencard! They have a “new immigrants” counter, where you don’t have to wait at all. All you have do is give your finger print (old style way with real ink) and sign your name (my husband first wrote his whole name down, because he didn’t listen to what the officer told him) and than you can go to the actual counter. The officer there was really nice and just asked us, why we waited 6 months to activate our Greencards and if the address we want our Greencards to be send to is still the same. Then he ripped open our envelopes, checked the papers, stamped a new visa in our passports and we were ready to go!

Now we somehow feel more immigrant-like than before. I really love being in my new home country and look forward to the next two weeks we will be spending here! Right now I am sitting at the Madonna Inn hotel in San Luis Obispo, which is the cutest hotel I have ever seen in my life! My husband ordered some cute presents for me to our room as an surprise and I would love to call my parents, tell them to pack up my stuff, get rid of our flat and never leave this state again!

I will keep you updated on what will happen on our trip! Till then you can check out some pics…

I am not exactly sure, but I guess I never told you about our interview at the consulate in Frankfurt. The short version is: it was horrible. The long version would blow the space I have to write on this homepage so I give you a medium version. Our day began with the standard security check which left me speechless, because I carried a bottle of water with me and had to drink some in front of the security guards to demonstrate that the bottle actually contained water and no poison or flammable liquid. I am not exactly sure what I could have done with it though, because you are not allowed to take a lighter inside the consulate or anything else.

Our whole visit was about three hours long and ended with the actual interview with a woman (I am not sure if she was a consul), which was horrbily mean. She didn’t believe us that we are actually married, told me that I am just there as a Greencard winner’s wife and therefor are not allowed to open my mouth and send us away without a hint of what will happen in the future. We were actually both near tears after that interview and terribly frightened that they might send our passports back without the Visa in it and accomponied by a letter of refusal.

As you all know the story has a happy end, but I still would so love to go back and ask that woman what her problem is. Especially after what I heard this week. I just started a new job and one of my colleagues is American. I told him about that whole Greencard thing and our interview at the consulate and he just laughed. Because not only the staff is nice to you, if you are American, you also don’t have to wait in one room together with the “german infantry”. Till that interview I had only met kind and helpful Americans. I know that there is always a negative side to everything and that not everyone in America will welcome us little Germans with open arms. But a Two-Class society that even seems to exist in the American Consulate here in Germany kind of frightens me. I do understand that perhaps the consulate staff is happy to deal with Americans, because it may be easier to handle them due to the not existing language barrier. But there is no need to be that bitchy to Germans, who are excited to have their Greencard interview and may give some wrong answers or may not understand everything on the first try.

Perhaps I should only talk in english to my colleauge from now on, so that not every American will notice that I am German in the first place and I may fit in the higher class of this society! But for now I will try to calm myself down about this by thinking that the woman we talked to might just have had a bad day and is no good example for the typical American!

I am not even living in America, but I managed to piss off a canadian guy with an very american statement yet. But let’s begin this story with the basic infos you need to understand. It was about two weeks ago and my hubby and me were still waiting for our passports and the temporary visa inside to arrive. I was kind of depressed at that time and wasn’t really in the mood for anything. A friend for whoms magazine I sometimes write managed to get me an interview with Dallas Green, who is one of my favorite musicians, to do me a favor. Even that couldn’t get me in a better mood, but I told myself to get it together and tried to see the interview as another lesson to practice my spoken english skills.

Dallas, who is Canadian and plays in a band called Alexisonfire, actually was pretty cool and easy to talk with. The interview was kind of fun til I asked him which musician he would love to once play with. His answer was Neill Young. I have to say that we watched How I met your mother about three days before this interview. For all of you who don’t know the series, it is about some friends living in New York and one of them is Canadian and everyone always makes fun of her, because she loves hockey, guns and Neill Young. My hubby was with me in the interview to take pictures and we just looked at each other when Dallas gave Neill Young as an answer and immediately had to laugh. I told him about the How I met your mother episode we had just seen and asked him what it is with Canadians and Neill Young. I shouldn’t have done this, because he was kind of pissed and told us that Neill Young is just gorgeous and Canadian and that’s it.

The rest of the evening we couldn’t stop to make fun about the Neill Young thing. I guess his music is just not my thing and I am not Canadian, so I don’t get it. But perhaps this is is my first step to be a good American one day!