Trying to get a residence permit

Months ago, back in Australia, I did 'all' the hard work to get a German residence permit.
This included:

• getting all the documents in order
• making a formal application to the local German consulate
• regular dealings with the interstate consulate
• posting my documents along with passport interstate.

Apparently the process could take up to three months, so I did this well ahead of our leaving date. However, within three weeks I had my passport back with a residence visa. Only problem was that they handled this all within Australia (good for time reasons) and could only issue a visa of maximum 90 days. 

This means I still needed to go through some formalities once we arrived in Germany to get the short term visa exchanged for the long term one. The lady from the German consulate in Australia said 'just go to the office in Berlin and exchange the visa'. Sounds easy. I was given a contact in Germany, so I immediately emailed her. Got nothing back.

Prior to departure I emailed again, this time to a general email address in Berlin. I got a reply back saying that they could make an appointment for me but that the first available one would be March 2013. An alternative they suggested was to just go to the office and get a number and wait to be seen. Stuff the March appointment, I thought I would just go and get it sorted immediately.

So we had to wait for the office to re-open after their Christmas and New Years break. The first day open was today (3 January). The office hours were stated as 10am to 2pm.

We caught the S-Bahn to the Ausländerbehörde (Aliens Authority) in Moabit (West Berlin). The walk from the station to the office was reasonably long and we got there at 10:30am.  Should still be early enough we thought. 

Signs indicated that we should go to a certain room. We went there and there was already a reasonably large line.

This wasn't the setup that we were expecting. Pretty crude really. We waited in line, eavesdropping on each persons' 'case' as they explained it to the one officer on duty. She pretty much told all of them that all waiting numbers had already been issued and that they should come back the next day at 6am. I don't do well with early starts so was hoping we weren't going to be told the same thing. After all...we were told we just needed to 'exchange' the visa.

When it was their turn to talk to the officer, people took various amounts of time - some short and some very long. It was so boring. We ended up waiting almost an hour and a half on our feet before it was our turn.

To give this lady her credit, she must have a pretty shitty job giving everyone this semi-bad news, but she was still very polite and patient with everyone including us. She also spoke English well which helped us.

The outcome for us unfortunately was no different from all those that preceded us. No more numbers left to be issued, come back tomorrow at 6am, or the next day, and try again. No guarantees that we would get one of these golden tickets though.

Uncharacteristically for a German bureaucrat (well our pre-conceived notions anyway) she said that getting this residence permit is not really much of a thing, and we could just not bother.

Talking this over with her, and holding up the line, I said "What if I want to get a job and I can't prove to an employer that I am legally entitled to work here?' To which she said 'Get them to ring me." Can you imagine this happening in reality?

Stuff that, we are really trying to do things the right way. Don't want to get deported or blacklisted from the EU forever. I watch those border security programs, I know what happens to the illegal immigrants (at least in the US - they get sent back to Mexico!).

We left having pretty much wasted the better part of the day and used our return ticket to explore some of the local area and also venture to Reinickendorf - a place we had once (and may still) considered living. Reinickendorf is out of the main 'ring' of the city and is know for its big green parkland expanses and more 'towney' feel. It definitely lived up to these expectations and seemed like it could be a lovely relaxed place to  live.

Back at home I got back in touch with my recent Berlin contact who had offered to make an appointment for me - asking her to go ahead and book me in. She was quick with email replies and by the end of the day I had an appointment for March. Back to square 1!

We are not sure if we are going to bother in the meantime to line up for unscheduled appointments at 6am sometime in the future. For right now we can afford to wait to March, but I am impatient and would rather get this sorted out ASAP.

To be continued...