A tale of two embassies.

Vacation to Europe!!! "Sounds cool", gushed my friend Neelakshi. "But whom are you traveling with ?", she asked and I replied, " A travel companion would be great, but if not I'll visit the few friends I have across Europe". "Hmm...I can come along, I've never visited Europe, and I would love to travel around too" exclaimed Neelakshi. "Wow, that sounds like a trip, right on, let's get going", I replied with excitement and enthusiam.

After the initial euphoria and excitement settled in, the reality of this trip hit us - planning and giving the shape to our idea. And boy! what a hell lot of work it was - agreeing on dates, applying for leave, pouring over maps, making an itenary, arranging for the international health insurance, talking to as many people as possible to dig out all possible information, making air and hotel reservations ... it just never seemed to end.

But finally all the hard work did seem like coming to an end, atleast we thought so. Now, with all the paperwork in place, we now had to get a visa. Amongst the unprivileged few in the US, as far as international travel is concerned, we as Indian nationals now required a Schengen visa to travel through Europe.

Neelakshi mailed her visa application to French Consulate in New York city. Paris was our entry point in Europe, and in our interpretation of Schengen visa rules from the French consulate website, we had to apply to French embassy. Thinking that all the paperwork was in order, she now waited for her visa.

Meanwhile, two days later I went to the French consulate in San Francisco. Early morning at 10, "We have too many people for the day, please come in the afternoon", said the security guard. Halfheartedly I went back to work, but drove back in afternoon. No big lines and no rush, things seemed fine. And then my turn came, the visa officer looked at my papers. Everything looked fine. Then he started to scrutinize my itenary. Still everything looked fine. Now the decision time for my visa application. "Hmm... you are spending 3 days in France and 4 days in Italy and you need to go to the Italian consulate", he said. "What! But Paris is my main entry point and by the rules I need to get visa from French embassy", I said. "No, you are staying the longest in Italy and that is your main destination, even it is by 16 hours, so go to Italian consulate", he said as matter of fact. Having no choice, I went back to my car and called my friend, and asked to check the working hours at Italian consulate online. She gave me the consulate phone number, and as luck would have it, the Italian embassy was open. I rushed there only to find huge lines. I stood in line waiting for my turn. But as I was to find, the Italians in San Francisco were overworked and were only accepting visa applications only for departure dates after a month after. Since I was flying in three weeks, I had no choice but come to work, angry and upset.

Utterly frustrated I didn't know what to do. I told my tale to my European co-workers, who were shocked and felt anger at their own people. Well, I needed a solution. Hmm...I didn't want to go to French again, but my co-worker suggested to go to them again and create extra reservation in France. I did that, and next day went again to the French. Now the same visa officer had no reason to complain and granted me a visa. Well all done, I was relieved that hoped to never see that visa officer's face again in my life.

But the saga seemed far from over. Next day, my friend got her application back. Quite nervous after my experience, she opened her application with bated breath. flipping throught the passport, only to find no visa in place. We feared the worst and it just happened. The reason for not giving the visa, "We need fax of hotel reservation confirmations, e-mail confirmations won't do". "But the French in San Francisco accepted that", we said to ourselves. It now seems that embassy don't have consistent rules. So with no choice, we now called the hotels and requested them to send the fax. They all complied and in less than 24 hours we now had all the fax confirmations.

Next day we mailed the applications, still 12 days to go. We are still waiting for the visa. There is no live person to talk on the phone, no response to e-mails. What happens next, I don't know. Sad end to the excitement, or is the adventure still on the way.

Well, I'll keep you posted...