Consulate Review: Bucharest, Romania
Review Topic: K1 Visa
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| Event |
Description |
| Review Date : |
June 26, 2007 |
| Embassy Review : |
After sending in the docs to the Consulate on a Monday, I called in for the interview on Friday. They asked me to pick a day from the following week. I was very much surprised, cause I knew it takes around one week to 10 days to set the interview day, but I figured something had changed. So I said Thursday, as I was not prepared at all for such a soon interview (Monday night, just after sending in my packet to the consulate, my father died).
So there I was, myself and my 3 year old daugther, Thursday at 1 p.m.
It was a torrid day. Around 1,10 an officer came out and started to read a list, and we were not on that list. I told him we were also scheduled for that day and after 5 minutes he came back and told us to come also. They let us in first, as I was the only one with a child. But this is where the "favours" ended.
We heard our name 10-15 minutes after we got in; we went to a window to present our docs, to a not-friendly lady, who let me know that we were scheduled for the next Thursday actually. To which I said that it must have been a mistake, cause usually when it's friday and you say "next week" nobody will understand "the week after next week". Maybe it was just me being a lawyer, but I really hate these things.
Anyway, she got our docs, and she wouldn't take the whole file as I have prepared, a well-arranged binder with general content and sections content also, motivating that it did not fit through the narrow slit under the window. Of course, the doors that connected the room where I was in to the room where she was were just of decoration 
So I started to take my docs out of the binder one by one, first taking them out of the plastic protections, as she requested, but eventually she got tired before me (cause I had hundreds of pages  ) and she told me to give them with the protections. Then I paid the visas (100 USD per person) and then a nice man took my fingerprints (children are not required to take fingerprints, obviously).
After half an hour I got called again. Fortunately, not with the same lady who took my docs, but with a nice, young, dark-haired woman. She talked Romanian, so I did not want to talk to her in English as I did not want to give the impression I was overdoing. She could only see that I was talking to my daugther, but she could not see her, cause the window was too high, so we both started to laugh.
She then asked me how we met, how our relationship evolved, when did Angel come here, what was his job, what exactly does he do in this job, then what was my job, if I was divorced, if he was, when did he come to the States (I suppose that was meant to be the "tricky" question, as he is born in the States). Then she smiled as going through the papers and asked me, as in a friendly manner "And don't you plan on learning Spanish"? It might have been another tricky question, as in our e-mails she might have seen part of the conversations in Spanish, apart from the majority in English, plus that at the spoken languages I have written Spanish also. Or it might be that they do not have time to go through quite everything and she just asked a friendly question... I don't know (but I lean more on the first explanation). The thing is that I realized immediately after starting the interview that she was latina, so at her question I just answered in Spanish and her smile finally became relaxed and then we started to chat in Spanish, and discovered both our sisters live close to Barcelona 
Then she said "everything seems ok" and she asked us to take a seat and wait for our passports. So we took a seat, and we waited for another 2 hours almost, and watched everyone else going, but us. I was already loosing all my patience, as Iulia, my daugther, was hungry, a bit tired and... cold. It was nice and cold inside when we got in, after waiting in the heat outside, but after 3 hours her arms and legs were cold, as she was dressed for the canicular weather outside (well not me, cause I wear office suits).
At 4 o'clock, when there was nobody left in the consulate but me and Iulia, we finally got called, given back the evidence and I was told that due to some technical problems they cannot issue the visa in the same day and I had to come back the day after.
So I did go the day after, took my passports in 10 minutes, and only at home I noticed that the name of the petitioner, my fiancee, was incorrect spelled with one letter 
So I called the consulate the next day and they said "no problem". But I am not satisfied with this answer, as it seems such a "Romanian answer" ("merge si-asa" - works like this too) so my fiancee sent an e-mail to the Consulate and we are still waiting for an "official" answer. I am in no rush for the moment, as I will be leaving Romania only August 11th. |
| Rating : |
Good |
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ver 5.0