We had our appointment at the US Consulate in Munich today at 10am. We leave the house at 7am, giving us 3 hours for a 2 hour drive. Thank goodness we had that hour leeway! There was a horrid wreck on the A93 south of Schwandorf, which added an extra half hour to the drive. A semi decided it wanted to try to break through to the other side...it was great that I wasn't driving so that I could be a full fledged rubber-necker. It looked pretty bad, but it also looked as if no one was dead, so that is a positive thing...the middle railings...well, they were really bad off and would have to be replaced. Then there was road construction galore, which we totally expected though.
In the car with all the paperwork (the paperwork that I thought was full and correct that is!)
But, alas, we make it to the consulate at about 9:30. We make it through security...no phones or cameras, but that was expected. They also took Amelia's musical elephant...that was not expected. She was cool with it though.
Walking over to the consulate
The amazingly beautiful US Consulate in Munich...I hope you notice the sarcasm!
About to go in...no cameras are allowed inside, so this is the last that I was able to take...plus, the batteries died about 2 seconds later...
Then the waiting game starts. Luckily, now, for all services, you have to have an appointment. You still have to wait, but it isn't AS long as before. After about 20 or 30 minutes, we get called to a window to hand over all our documents so that they can start processing all this stuff. At the same time, Amelia decides that she is starving. Luckily, this mommy was smart and pumped the day before, so I had about 3 ounces of mommy goodness. Markus went to warm it up under running water and fed her while I delt with the paperwork.
I come to find out two things are wrong. WTF!! I checked everything roughly 9 million times to be sure it was all correct! Well, turns out, we had the wrong type of birth certificate...oops. And then I didn't have enough paperwork to prove my citizenship! Again, WTF? I have my passport, what more do they need? Well, they need proof that I lived in the US for 5 years. Dude...that was no where on your little checklist that is on the website. It just says that I need to bring something to prove that I lived in the US, they didn't specify the length of time I needed to prove. No worries though, I can mail all this in and we don't have to make another trip down to Munich.
The officer that helps us out is nice and so that is good. Markus made a comment that they imported everything from the US...the doors, the chairs, the weird movie that they had playing. It was cool...It was also Amelia's first trip to the US (sort of :)...).
So, now all I have to do is pop all this in the mail and in a few weeks, we should have all of Amelia's US citizenship stuff (passport, Consular Report of Birth Certificate, social security card). It was a pretty successful trip to Munich I must say...oh, and we had enough time to run to a Starbucks for a half caf caramel macciato and a blueberry muffin...just a little taste of home...even if the guy behind the counter looked at me like I was retarted when I wanted a half caffinated haf decaffinated coffee. Whatever.
Oh, and on the ride home, I made some smart ass comment that Amelia hasn't pooped since Friday and that she's just waiting for a chance to have her daddy change that one...yeah, she pooed roughly 5 minutes AFTER Markus left again for work...thanks Amelia!
UPDATE: My friend Tammy explained the reasoning behind proving you lived in the US for 5 years...You have to live in the US for 4 years as an adult citizen in order to pass on US citizenship to your children. So miss Amelia, looks like you'll be living in the US for 5 years at some point in time in your life! :)
My friend had both her children in Germany and both are South African's and not German...As the parents are not German the children had to take on the parents nationality - so they had no problems, they had to go to South African embassy in Berlin to get their papers done before they could leave the country...
ReplyDeleteI also have a pair of South African friends here who also just had a baby...I believe they will have it easier since they are both of the same nationality. I guess it is just a bit more difficult since Markus and I are of different nationalities. Oh well...she'll become a citizen eventually!!!
ReplyDeleteThey have a really nice consulate building in Frankfurt and it's guarded better than Fort Knox. They actually took a tiny little flashlight from us. The things you forget you have on you...
ReplyDeleteThey hassled us over the living in the US thing also. Of course I lived there 21 years of my life...but almost not good enough. Had report cards from U of Miami because I couldn't find my transcript. The officer totally didn't like that. Thankfully he eventually had mercy on us.
Unfortunately I filled out the paperwork in the hospital and thought I was super thorough...but somehow I got the birthdate wrong. Guess it was the hospital insanity. Can't blame it on the drugs since I didn't have any lol.
Getting that passport in the mail was the coolest moment ever :) Although the German process was vastly easier and they hand it to you right there.
Tiffany: I've heard that the one in Frankfurt is pretty nice...I'm interested to see what the new Embassy looks like in Berlin. Yeah, the officer we had was nice enough, though he wanted more proof...all of which is at my parent's house in the US. I did have some stuff though...Oh, and on the CU transcript, it showed that I spent two years at the University of Oregon, so in my letter to them with the other documentation, I pointed that out as well. So far so good...haven't heard that they need more (even though I've got more documentation coming to me from the US). We'll see! :)
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