It's official. After having submitted my application for a work permit and German residency in early March, and being told that the processing time would be six to eight weeks (yes, and I'm the Queen of England - just excuse me for a moment while I polish my crown...), Australis now has two pretty new pink stickers in her funky blue passport with a kangaroo and an emu on the front.
Might not sound like much, but these two stickers mean that yours truly has (finally!!!) been granted permission from the German Immigration Department, which I like to call "Höllenbrut" (roughly translates to "Hellspawn"), to remain a resident of the poor but sexy capital of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland until May 2011.
On top of that, the Federal Employment Office approved my work permit until 2012, so technically, it's a two-year residency, with automatic renewal for a third year, and as the icing on a truly stupendously amazing Kuchen, after three years, this permit becomes permanent. As of 2013, I'm a permanent resident of Germany, with unlimited employment rights. UNLIMITED!!!
Who knew it would only take two phone calls and five emails a day for the last two weeks to get an answer from them?
Oh, and in case you're curious, just because they gave me a visa today, and a two-year one at that, doesn't mean they're no longer hellspawn.
Telling an expat, and one from Australia no less, a country that is not only on a different continent, but a mere thirteen time zones and 14,500km away from Germany, and therefore a destination for which travel plans, let alone permanent relocation arrangements, require months of planning and lots and lots of €€€ (and even more $AUD), that the processing time for their residency application will take approximately six to eight weeks maximum, then proceeding to ignore all contact attempts from said Australian applicant, including but not limited to calls, emails, faxes and smoke signals, until four working days before their previous visa expires (ELEVEN WEEKS after the initial application was submitted), is beyond cruel and unusual torture.
Then, imagine my disbelief when the case worker assigned to me had the nerve to tell tell me today with typical German bureaucratic attitude "It was completely unnecessary to call and email us every day in the last few weeks. We were going to contact you eventually. You just need to learn to be patient."
The steam coming from my ears could have powered Puffing Billy for a good few months.
The Ausländerbehörde still = Höllenbrut.
(German Immigration = Hellspawn.)
But I have a visa, and that's reason enough for beer o'clock. As an added bonus, tonight I'm heading out to the movies with a friend: "Wolverine" - in English (yay!), Hugh Jackman looking incredible, and all of this with my mate Hans. Good times are in store.
1 comment:
11 weeks for a visa application -that's quick! You should apply for one in Tanzania where it takes at least 3 months for them to even contemplate beginning to process it... then they say they've posted it to you and you end up waiting for a few weeks before they realise that its still sitting on the desk in their office!
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