The Schengen Visa – Traveling around Europe on Peanuts

After getting my UK visa, I was a bit more excited and pumped up. I had one approved valid visa and I was pretty sure the Schengen visa wasn’t going to be much of a trouble. I had already filled out all of my application, booked places to stay in mainland Europe. Now I just had to get an appointment and submit the documents which I had already set up, thanks to the UK visa.

The next thing for me to do was call them and book an appointment “2-3 days ahead” like it was mentioned on the website. As the Schengen visa covers a lot of countries, there are certain ways to determine the primary country you are visiting and which country to apply to for a Visa. From what I understood, it was either the country you spent the most days in or the country that you first enter. I was spending 9 days in France, and it was also the first country that I was visiting so with my hopes for France I called the French consulate in Sydney; to my surprise, I was prompted to check the consulate website and book a day for the interview in. I didn’t have a good feeling about this clash in information on the Schengen website and the French consulate. Regardless, I proceeded to book an appointment with the French consulate on their website and knowing my luck the next available date was only available in July. IN JULY! I was supposed to fly on the 23^rd of June from Sydney and had a booking for an Airbnb in Paris for the 28^th of June. And I had to apply from a country of residence. That crossed out my idea of possibly applying for it from the UK.

 

At this point, I was probably having a panic attack and what not. My soul would’ve been crushed if I went to the UK and did not go to mainland Europe, especially France. A country that I have longed and loved for so long. I actually wanted to study in Paris but my parents didn’t think it was a good idea, and now that I’ve been to Paris – I sort of second that. But the problem at hand was still unsolved. I needed to get a Schengen Visa before I left for the UK and manage to get my passport back in time too. In a desperate attempt, I tried to resort to the other option of applying to the country of first entry. This was a bit tricky and also a gamble because I only had 4 days between UK and Paris to fit in another country, but at this stage it felt like I had no choice. I started scouring for Schengen countries which had the earliest appointment available. And then I found it – Denmark. The next available date was two days after; simply perfect. This would give the embassy enough time for the passport to get back to us because unlike the UK visa, the Schengen visa only takes 14 working days. I booked my accommodation for Denmark through Airbnb and I was at VFS. 

The Denmark thing didn’t really work out because he told me that you needed to spend the most days there and it didn’t matter if I entered the country first. Only if school taught you all of these things in a subject rather than all the random things I learned and have never used and more than likely won’t use. Ever since I’ve left school, no one has ever actually asked me to find the value of x or find the value of an angle in a triangle. But I’ve had to go out of my way to learn more about traveling. In a desperate attempt to find a Schengen country that had dates available for an interview, I stumbled across Netherlands. the people at the embassy were the nicest. And even though I didn’t have all the documents, the very kind lady just asked me to email them to her and even noted down that I was flying on the 23rd and will be needing my passport by the 22nd.

It was Monday morning and my flight was on Wednesday and  I still didn’t have my passport. I was panicking at this point but I got an email that at 8 am saying that my passport was ready to be picked up. And that is officially how I managed to be able to go to the UK and Europe.

A lot of people contributed a lot to this, my very supporting boyfriend who agreed to pick up my passport in peak hour just for my sanity, his family who always gave us positive vibes and support and helped us throughout the way, my sister who has been my absolute support system, and a special shout out to Sue who found a interview date for Netherlands. Yes, this post is very cheesy and soppy. But this trip has been nothing but a dream come true. And I’m grateful for all of these people for helping me out and making it possible.