Moving to Berlin, Part 2

This post is the second part of: Moving to Berlin, Part 1

After landing in Berlin and moving into our new apartment with Sarah and Peter, we took some time to explore the city and get to know our new roommates. From Tempelhof to Tiergarten, we also wanted to visit every park and lake.

What was next on my To-Do? Well, I entered to Germany with the tourist visa and my plan was to get an appointment as soon as possible in the Inmigration Office to apply for the freelance visa. While I was in Argentina getting everything ready, I checked their website and they were plenty appointments but now the earliest was by the end of September.

With all required papers printed the night before the appoinment 🏄🏻‍♂️, the only missing thing was my photo ID and I knew there was a photo boot on my way to the Inmigration Office. With the anxiety level in Jupiter I went sleep hoping for the best and never expecting the worst (ups!).

Inmigration Office, Berlin
Tuesday, October 5th at 10:00am

Me: Entschuldigen, Sprechen Sie Englisch? I ask to the officer with my best German pronunciation.

Officer: Yes, he said. What’s the reason of your visit?

Me: I want to apply for the Freelance Visa as a Software Developer.

Officer: Ajam, that’s what I saw on your form application. The problem is— when I hear the word problem everything goes in silence for 3 seconds...

Officer: "... as Argentinian you have to submit your application from a German Embassy." — the officers finished his sentence...

...

I only had 20 days left before my visa expires. How the hell I’m going to get an appointment, tickets, and accommodation in such a short time?

So I went back to my apartment, I had a list of all the URLs for each German embassy in Europe. And I was confident that I could write a Puppeter script that would be constantly checking for new appointments and as soon as it finds one could either fill the form for me or in the worst-case scenario send me an SMS using the Twilio API to let me know so I could go to my computer to get it myself.

But no, I wanted to suffer and instead of enjoying the beautiful summer days, the punishment was spending that time refreshing all the websites manually until getting the appointment. After spending countless hours with a friend hitting cmd + r on our computers, I finally got another appointment for October, 20th. Where!? In Bern. Holly cow, I’m going to Switzerland!

To be continued...