Das Buch Wer mitmacht, hat Recht!

...have your company change it’s address.

you wont belive it. too bad, it’s true.

the company i’ll work for in the states starting in 2 weeks, relocated today.

the change is very minor.
a little more than 30 miles, different town, same state, just the other side of the bay.

but, this kind of killed my DS-2019 (if you can’t remember what it was, read up here).
now, what does this mean?

first of all, without a DS-2019, there is no visa.
without visa, there is no entry into the US.
and without that, my internship is .. ye well.

good thing: i can get a new DS-2019 !

...
..
.

the problem: CIEE can’t update my info since i already have my visa, which locks the data at SEVIS.
now the first thing i have to do the moment i get over there is log into SEVIS, which unlocks my data, and then have CIEE update the info and issue a new DS-2019.

guess it’s about time to start praying.

as mentioned in roadtrip KN FFM S KN – pt1 i’m now writing about my, well, pretty interesting, visit at the US consulate in frankfurt.

first of all, if you think germans are the uber bureaucrats, you haven’t visitied the US consulate yet. so please dont get bored while i list the paperwork stuff first, you really need to know what work i had to do to appreciate the final outcome.

here we go!

to be able (well, allowed) to work in the US in means of an internship isn’t exactly and easy task, and it’s quite expensive, too.

first of all,

the obvious paperwork

(in my case, a healthy, male german)

a new biometric passport (~26EUR)
DS-156 (got money?, nazi?, criminal?, terrorist?)
DS-157 (do you have experience with explosives or weaponry? are you educated?)
DS-158 (strip naked, we want to know what and where you’ve been working before)
DS-2019 (yes, i have insurance, and yes i paid 800EUR for a rough 7 months)
I-whatever (aka yes, i paid the $100 SEVIS fee so you can track me online, kthx)
a digitally signed printout that certifies i paid the visa fee (85EUR)

sums up to almost 1000EUR

FYI #1: at this time you do not know whether or not your visa will be granted!
FYI #2: even if you have a visa, the friendly customs officer at the US airport can send you back home.
FYI #3: add another 900EUR for the roundtrip flight.

the stuff that’s not so obvious

DS-156

5×5cm picture of your pretty face is required.
interesting…. let’s find a photographer that does these in germany (lucky me, i found one who did 2 US and 2 DE shots for 10 EUR, thanks!)

DS-2019

this has to be issued by a state-certified US entitiy (in my case CIEE)
it’s quite a pain, since you have to do a shitload of writing for that – proof of english ability (yes, i can speak and write english) – proof that i am allowed to take a break from my studies – proof that i earn more than $750/month or get money from somewhere else – a CV – something that states why i want to do this and what my gains would be – complete work history – a host company training proposal (HCTP), basically a traning plan with several steps and each step includes stuff like: what are you going to work, how is it evaluated, who is supervising you, which skills are needed, and which are trained, etc – other stuff

bonus #1: the HCTP has to be written by the host company in the states, you and the HR person or whoever is in charge at the US company has to sign the paper like 200 times on different pages. (yes, my boss forgot 1 signature (lucky me, he’s in germany 95% of the year))

bonus #2: everything is proxied thru a german company (in my case: travelworks)
you send them the huge pile of DS-2019 related forms, they forward it.
you pay them the ~900 EUR and they pay insurance and SEVIS.
nice: you can also send them the other 3 DS-forms and they’ll check if they are ok.

oook

that’s it?

no.

one is encouraged to bring proof of a strong relation to one’s home country.
eg a rental agreement for your flat, some nice letters that say you are member in local clubs or societies, and by no means book the flight!, just reserve it, etc.
of course you have to bring a written agreement that you
1) will have enough funding for your stay
2) will return to your home country after you finish the program

make an appointment for the visa interview

can only be done using the live phone service.
ever heard of 0900-1… ? it’s 1.86EUR/min.
to make it even more fun, you’ll get a nice female voice (a recording) telling you what forms and stuff you have to bring to your interview.
you can even decide whether you want the service in german or english. niiice.
after a while a (actually very kind) person picks up the phone and tells you the same stuff once more.
as a little added thingy you’ll get an appointment, too.
9:30am, be there 15mins early but not earlier! (frankfurt is a 400km drive X_x)

the conversation lasted a rough 15 minutes. do the math (strange, it’s pretty much in the area of 23EUR, i love that number)

the day has come! visiting the consulate

waiting outside…

well, i was more than 15 minutes early. it was like 1h.
so i stood there, on the sidewalk in front of the consulate, the sun got up, and it got warm (poor bastards who had to wait there around noon). there’s no way to get cover from the sun, the only roof they have is glass.

when the time finally came i queued myself on the far left, a guy went around checking if i had the DS-156 and the thingy saying i paid the visa fee.
he gave me a nice little card with the letter “T” on it.

i had to give my passport and said card to a person behind a glass window.
i guess he checked if i had an appointment and after he did that he gave me a little paper with a number on it and returned my passport. he kept the card :(

get searched

i then was allowed to get actually inside. where i had to empty my pockets and step thru a metal detector.
makes you kinda feel at home in an instant. (the folks there’ve been pretty friendly, maybe cause it was still early in the morning).

waiting inside – pt1

i then left the building where they did the scanning and entered another one.
this was basically a huge hall (a sign on the wall told me that 299 people are allowed inside at max) with chairs and a number of glass windows at the wall with people behind them, sitting in front of computers, doing.. work, i guess.

i had to wait for a approximatly an hour till my number was called.
i went to the window with my number above it. gave all the paperwork to the man behind the window and all he wanted was the DS-* forms and the passport.
ok.
i got told i’ll be called again to a different window for my interview.

he was a little quick to make that assumption, since it was him calling me again.
he noticed that my passport is 6 months and 4 days old, and the picture i stapled to the DS-156 is the same. 6 month picture age is max.
damn.
lucky me they had a photo booth there where you can take a new picture.
unlucky me, it set me back 5EUR.
funny fact: it was a german sized picture, which seemed to be OK.
i could have gotten my pictures taken at a booth to begin with, not having to spend 10EUR on em (which was actually pretty cheap anyways).

waiting inside – pt2

i waited for another hour till i got called to the second window.
the guy was kind of.. very happy, must have been the cereals he had for breakfast.
anyways, i left my left and right index finger print there, he asked me a few questions about where i was going, what i was doing, if i was a student, some nice chatter, took around a minute.

got visa?

he told me: “we’ll issue your visa, have a nice day”

yay!

final conclusion

err wait.
he didn’t want to see the letter i wrote, the letters from my clubs, my rental agreement, nothing.
great :/

so i spent over 2 hours inside the consulate, for an actual 3 minutes of interaction.

funny fact: those windows in the wall.., it was 23 of em (ha!)
not so funny fact: the passport including your visa is sent to you by snail mail (not insured!)
mood booster: leaving the consulate at 11:45am, seeing a ton of people waiting in the, now hot, sun and telling them how long they have to wait :D

it’s done!

after two nasty weeks of writing exams, the semester is over… finally!
but the hardest part had yet to come.

after i finished the last exam (numerical mathematics) there wasn’t really any time to party.
i had to do some last bits of paper work and pack my stuff for a road trip par excellence.
getting to bed at midnight and having not really slept due to the heat that’s been almost killing me for weeks doesn’t really help you if you have to get up at 3am.
but well, whatever, i drove the 400km to frankfurt to visit the US consulate to (hopefully) get a J-1 visa.
and hell yes, i got one, tho it has yet to arrive here. but more about that part of the journey in another post.

around noon i finally left the consulate and got back to my car. time to drive stuttgart!
the party was scheduled to take place the next evening, and i thought, well, why not crash a day early (:x the party was re-scheduled because of me being in frankfurt that day :x).

while the drive to frankfurt was pretty much ok (it was night, and kinda cool), the drive from frankfurt to stuttgart was awfull. it was hot as hell.
i somehow mistook the A6 for the A8 and when it was at the time to take the exit for B27 i was kinda wondering why the exit looked so different.

it took me quite some time and atleast 4 times driving around from north to south and vice versa, visiting various neighboring villiages to notice that i wasn’t south of stuttgart, but north.
ye well, i blame the heat.

i (savely) arrived at housetier’s a rough 2 hours later than expected X_x”.

there it was that i enjoyed my first bread with sausage slices and wasabi.
sounds yuck, but omg was that good (maybe blame the heat for that, too).

after talking about pretty looking fractals (luyaschpunpwhateverhisnamewas) and the work housetier did on those a while ago we somehow ended up talking about the usual stuff, quantum physics, planck time, and planck distance, etc. well, it was fun, really :)

ika arrived on saturday morning and the first thing he did was loosing his rucksack on the train. geez. (he got it back 1h later)
the rest of the bunch, namely diones, diablo, neon, and sebi arrived around 2 to 3pm.

the party started slow, as usual, since there’s no fixed starting time. people just come.
actually, the party officially started friday evening, when i arrived :P.

the party was great, and even tho it was the last party in stuttgart, i think we’ll somehow manage to get a HB4 set up in berlin for next year.
it just has to work out. we did it 3 times, now it’s tradition.

i wont write about the party, since…. if you haven’t been there, it’s your fault :D.

getting home on sunday evening after a roadtrip of over 900km (over the past 3 days) i was kinda exhausted.
i had to get up at 6am for work the next morning…