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Sweden | Review on July 29, 2014: | Snow Crash
Rating: | Review Topic: K1 Visa
In all, a nice experience, and friendly and helpful staff.
Easy to get there; once you find the right bus stop hidden outside Stockholm's central train station, the bus stops right outside the embassy. (It's not one of the quaint little Victorian brick houses with colorful flags outside, but rather the big concrete building across the street; the one with the barbed wire fence, cameras and armed guards.
The interview was quick and painless. They didn't actually ask me anything about our past relationship - I had our son with me, consular report of birth and all, and that was viewed as a pretty solid proof of relationship. Some questions about how and where we were planning to live, etc.
Somehow my affidavit of support had disappeared from the file, but they were OK with me submitting it by mail later. (It wasn't at home either - my fiance ended up having to fill out assemble one and mail it from the US.)
I alerted them about me getting out of date information in my package: when I showed up at the clinic for my medical examination, this particular clinic had moved to a different address two years ago. I had to run like a burnt troll across town to get to the new place, and then sit around in the waiting room to get my blood pressure back to normal. Turns out the clerk who assembled my package was completely new that day, and had accidentally grabbed a pile of old papers that had escaped recycling.
While standing in line outside the gates the guard kept reminding everyone to have their addressed return envelopes ready, with all the certified postage attached to it. I didn't think K1's were supposed to do this, but the guard repeated that yes, everybody had to put the stamps on the envelope. So I sat there on the sidewalk, licking 20 stamps... and when I came to my interview, the clerk was like, oh no! You're a K1, you guys have special envelopes, you have to submit unlicked stamps! (I ended up getting a file in the mail with my addressed, stamp-covered envelope duct taped to it!)
Luckily this wasn't my first visit to the embassy - I had to take our son there after he was born - so I was familiar with the security restrictions, how to get there etc. (You still can't bring large bags, but now the guard's booth has little shelves where you can deposit your cell phone.) See, the appointment information was in a pdf attached to an e-mail. In this e-mail they asked a few follow-up questions about my application, and somehow I didn't notice the pdf attachment (I blame my phone layout) until 12 hours before I was supposed to be there. And I lived several hours away from Stockholm! But we made it, and now I'm here in the US, waiting for my AOS to be processed.
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