So many administrative troubles I have already described in my blog... here is one more story.
The story of how I almost missed one of the main events of our INFRASTAR project.
Again, it is not at all easy to live in Europe if being born in a non-European country. And one of the issues is a question of visa. I got many administrative issues during my more than 5 years of living in Europe. All countries have their rules and requirements to issue touristic visas or residence permits for us to enter from our homelands.
However, there is another possible step - to apply for a visa to some third country, having one citizenship and another current residence. I did it several times before (i.e. to visit Australia for a conference or India for ayurvedic treatment), and it always went well.
This time, this story has happened with a visa to the USA. I wrote a good article to attend the conference IWSHM 2019 in September. My paper was accepted without any corrections, and I received an invitation to present it. However, applying for a visa from my place of residence (France) being a citizen of another country (Russia) has been not so easy this time.
Unfortunately, after the interview, my passport was held by the embassy for a few weeks. That would make it impossible for me to attend the third Implementation Day that took place in another country (Denmark) since I couldn't take a plane without a passport.
A week of stress, phone calls and discussions, a demand for a return of the passport, waiting for a postman during two days in front of my door, extremely bad work of the French post... I needed to cancel a hotel in Denmark, to be all the time unsure if I go to the event or not. It affected my productivity and sleep.
And at the very last moment, the late morning of the day before Implementation Day would start in Denmark, I had finally managed to get my passport from the post office! 😅
This was the first time when I needed to book both, plane tickets and a hotel room, on the day of arrival!
So much effort, so much stress, so much help (many many thanks to our project manager Hakim!!), and finally I could attend the event.
It was one of the best events organized during our project! Useful information on a future career, discussions of scientific results, training on how to get a job... But this should be another post (once I have all pictures 😊)
So, even if I am still waiting for a visa to attend IWSHM 2019, I have been very happy to attend such an important event of INFRASTAR. 🌟
Cowi, Lyngby, Denmark
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