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| Frankfurt, Germany |  Review on February 3, 2017: |
TexanInExile
Rating:  | Review Topic: IR-1/CR-1 Visa
tl;dr: A++ consulate, would immigrate again
My wife had her IR-1 interview last week, everything went very smoothly. We live about ~4 hours away by car, and her interview was in the morning, so we drove there the day before and stayed at the Best Western IB Friedberger Warte hotel. The hotel is a business hotel (kind of overpriced) but very nice with an excellent breakfast buffet, and less than a 5 minute walk away from the consulate entrance. She was thus able to leave her cell phone and other unnecessary objects in the hotel room, which was very convenient.
I and our two small kids accompanied her to the consulate, but decided against going in with her which was a good call as they would have been totally bored inside and there apparently wasn't a play area (like in the Berlin consulate - my kids still talk about that lego "alligator" they have there that you push across the floor and it 'eats up' any stray legos on the ground - but I digress).
There were two waiting lines outside, one for non-immigrant visas and one for "everything else", and two windows, and we had a bit of confusion about which window to go to when, but it wasn't a big deal after the person at the window asked us nicely to go back and wait until we were called. We were the only people waiting in the "everything else" queue so waited about 5 more minutes before being called, and they just checked through my wife's paperwork etc.
After that we went to a security guard standing outside with a box full of clear plastic bags. My wife had to put the contents of her jacket pockets into the bag (tissues, etc) and then she entered the security shack and we went back to the hotel. All told we only had to wait about 10 minutes outside. All of the guards outside were very nice and easy going.
From what my wife said, after security (like at an airport) she went into the main part of the consulate into a large room that reminded her of a train station waiting room. She was called up to one of the windows where someone talked through all of my wife's paperwork (in German) to ensure she had everything there, and then kept the paperwork as well as took my wife's passport at that time.
My wife went back to wait about another 10 minutes and then was called to a different window where she talked with the Consul for less than 10 minutes (in English). The Consul asked her a few simple questions like how we met each other, etc, and then quickly approved her visa.
All told, she was inside for 45 minutes tops and was back at hour hotel less than an hour after we left. According to my wife, everyone she talked with inside was nice and relaxed, and the entire process went smoother and more quickly than she was expecting.
My wife felt exactly like another reviewer here on VJ has said: after so many months of paperwork and stress, it was extremely anti-climactic and smooth.
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Consulate / USCIS Member Review #21327