Visa Appointments #
This is an incoherent rant. Read at your own risk.
You show up for your Schengen visa appointment on a Tuesday morning - you’ve taken two hours off work. Your roommate learned about the Schengen agreement for the first time today, it’s been seared into your brain since you were 10. The security guard refuses to let someone else in - they don’t have an appointment but were told to come back by an employee. They slow the queue down, but you can’t help but empathize with them. Travel, after all, frees the mind.
You, the black and brown sheep, are herded into a room with your brethren. The workers - your people, now working for the colonizers - cheerful. The room is understaffed, slow and filled with anxiety. Wait two hours for your turn - the token number is CRAP-71, which matches your mood. Get called up front, spend 20 minutes going through documents, to be told, finally, that you are missing 1 piece of paper - an employment verification letter. Never mind the pay stubs you do have, and immigration proof that you still work at this company.
You leave, and come back 3 days later. Go through the same process, now with all documents in hand. Two hours later, you’re free (or so you think).
Two weeks later - you get a call. “We messed up taking your fingerprints, so can you, please, come back, again?” It’s a Friday morning, so you actually can go right away. You fill out a new application on a website that can best be described as retro, print it out at a nearby Fedex, and make your way over.
You’re supposed to meet C and get the process expedited, but as you enter you see him busy with something. C is spending his time pinning 8 individual QR codes, carefully, onto a board. It’s a Finnish visa board. C cannot do this job alone - so two people stand behind him and watch. A third person (who was originally assigned this job), sees this from a distance, and her insecurities about not doing her job well come out in her words.
Anyway, 20 minutes later, the QR codes are put up on the board, and you can get your fingerprints taken. Your token today is CRAP-85. You get the white glove treatment (only 30 minutes, instead of 2 hours) much to the chagrin of every other person there. This is a zero-sum game though, in this room, so you take your advantage. You submit your fingerprints for the second time, and the clock starts, once again, waiting for a response from the embassy. Will they let you into their country?