You'd think, given all our experience with passport snafus, we'd know how to avoid them by now, but you'd be wrong.
When we arrived in the Munich airport back in April, the passport control officer asked me how long I'd be staying in Germany.
I said, "four months. I know I need to apply for a visa."
USAmericans can enter Germany for 90 days without a visa. Since we'd be staying 30 days beyond that, we had brought a copy of our marriage license and other relevant documents so I could apply for a visa here.
The officer--the professional passport control officer who sits between arriving passengers and their destination and gets to decide, yea or nay, whether to let them enter the country, or at least whether to hassle them, based on how they answer his questions and whether he thinks they and their documents look OK or suspicious--that officer said, "you don't need to apply for a visa. Go to Austria instead."
"Go to Austria?"
"Yes. Go to Austria for a few days before your 90 days are up. Come back with proof that you left the country. That's easier and more pleasant than the visa application process."
Stefan and I both observed to the officer that sometimes people try things like that in the U.S., but we didn't know people did that in Germany.
"Yes, you can do that in Germany. It's easier than applying for a visa," repeated the professional passport control officer who absolutely should not have been telling tourists to sneak around visa regulations, but he was the professional, so who were we to question his advice?
We wouldn't even need to go out of our way to leave Germany: Stefan had a June conference in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, that would get us out of the E.U. a comfortable three weeks before I'd officially need a visa. We planned to get my passport stamped then, if not before.
Thirty-five days after we left the Munich airport, Elias came to visit us in Freiburg. He flew into Zurich, so Stefan and I planned a quick overnight trip to Switzerland on our way to pick him up. We hoped to get my passport stamped, but border control in small town Laufenburg was non-existent on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.
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| This Laufenburg cat doesn't care about international borders. |
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| No one noticed that we crossed this bridge between Switzerland (L) and Germany (R) twice. |
In early June, 63 days after arriving in Germany, we drove to Les Diablerets. It was a Sunday afternoon, and border control was again non-existent.
On day 68, we started to exhibit Covid symptoms. This is what happens when 150 scientists attend "masks-required" lectures and poster sessions and then eat leisurely meals together, maskless, three times a day in a crowded dining room, five days in a row. Scientists. We are all sheep.
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| Les Diablerets was right purty while our trip lasted... |
Stefan and I skedaddled back to Germany as soon as Covid self-tests confirmed we were sick. This was on a Thursday, and border control between Switzerland and Austria in Bregenz was in full swing--not that cars were actually being stopped, but at least border control officers were present. We pulled our wee 2002 Ford Fiesta over next to the massive 18-wheelers in the parking area, donned our KN94 masks, and daringly leapt across the snaking line of slow-moving traffic in order to enter the customs building and speak with an officer.
I showed the officer my passport and explained why I needed to get it stamped, saying "the passport control officer in the Munich airport told us to do it this way."
He didn't understand what I was asking. He said, "Switzerland is of course not part of the E.U, but Switzerland and Austria are both part of the Schengen Zone, and you may travel freely between Schengen countries."
"Yes," I said, "this is why we deliberately stopped here, at the border. Could you please stamp the passport to show we were outside of Germany?"
"We don't stamp things here. Look at the stamp in your passport..." He flipped to the page that had been stamped at the airport. "This isn't Germany's stamp, this is the Schengen Zone stamp. This stamp means you may travel anywhere in the Schengen Zone for up to 90 days. To be in the Schengen Zone longer than that, you need a visa."
"But the passport officer in Munich said..."
"I appreciate the conundrum; it is very odd indeed. But this is not about Germany's rules, this is about the Schengen Zone. We have no stamps for stamping passports here. You will need a visa."
Well dang.
We arrived home late Thursday evening. Covid had us in a haze on Friday, and it didn't occur to me until midnight Friday that we should have gotten the visa ball rolling before offices closed for the weekend. By 2 a.m., I had confirmed that a quick trip to the U.K. (hooray Brexit?) wouldn't fix this: the 90-day Schengen Zone rule was for a total of 90 days within any 180-day period, and my 90 days were rapidly coming to an end.
I could hear the Munich airport passport control officer cackling evilly at us in my dreams.
Stefan started making phone calls on Monday, and amazingly, Woerthsee city staff and Starnberg county staff came to our rescue. The surprise for both of us was that friendly local city and county employees could intervene in what is usually a long, painstakingly detailed federal approval process. No one said "sorry, you're out of luck"; everyone said "let me see what we can do."*
It took a mere five days and a lighter than expected load of paperwork to acquire the gem of a document shown below. (It would only have taken two days had we not had Covid and had Bavaria not taken yet another day off of work for yet another Catholic holiday.)
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| Fiktionsbescheinigung obtained on day 76 out of 90! |
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