It's Visa-ah, it's Visa time!

12Aug09

(posted by ellygrant)

(note the correct tune for the title oh Flight of the Conchords fans)

Stu and I (as this is Elly writing)  put on our visa socks and have spent the past couple of days brushing up on the Cyrillic and phonetic translations of our names and addresses in order to be granted our official full-year visas. We had name spelling difficulty: we saw at least 2 incorrect versions each of Grant (Greint and Grand) and Launceston (Londseston and Longseston). We registered with the police, opened Bulgarian bank accounts, promptly fudged having enough funds to survive for a year by having David transfer several grand into our accounts (saves the hassle of transferring our moola overseas!), got lots of documents notorized by a Notarius (like a Justice of the Peace, only grumpier) … just lots of things we didn’t quite understand due to our lack of Bulgarian.

Yes, you’re probably wondering why this is happening, and haven’t we got our visas already? Wasn’t that the cause of our 4 month delay? What happened earlier this year was essentially setting us up for this process now. It meant that we had a stack of papers all ready for submission and that we’d entered the country on the type of visa we ultimately wanted.

Humphrey (and for that matter, Kallan and Ben) be afraid: our Bulgarian bank has our Australian address and phone number. Yes, that’s your house and phone number! Mwah hahaha

We won’t hear anything about it until the 20th of this month when we’re required to go back to the police for questioning. David said it would probably be an interview about Australia that may involve ‘What is Australia like? I’ve always wanted to move to New Zealand…’ We will eventually get groovy little plastic ID cards that we’re supposed to hand in when they expire (usually to receive another one) but since we’ll most likely leave before that date due to return flights then we’ll hopefully get to keep them!

Prayer points in regard to this would be that we continue to breeze through this process, and that it wouldn’t cost too much – praying against exorbitant monetary demands (ie bribes) would be great!

Below is a beautiful photo Stu took this morning when he woke up at stupid o’clock.

Have a good one!

Elly

Sunrise over Haskovo - God's consolation for waking up before 7am?

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 at 8:08 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 comments so far for “It's Visa-ah, it's Visa time!”

Thomas says on

13Aug 2009 at 2:15 am :


As if we needed any hints re the title! I for one was already singing the song by the time your actual post loaded up, having seen the title in my rss reader. ;)

Not sure you should be announcing your visa fraud on a public blog…! Anyway, it all sounds a bit complicated. Hope everything goes smoothly for you guys. :)

I have my presentation today, though it finishes at 2pm, which is 7am for you, so by the time you wake up it’ll be all over!

Thanks for the post :D

Dan says on

13Aug 2009 at 6:29 am :


Stupid o’clock is my favorite time to get up! Kudos to stu-os – you’re like a semi-professional photographer. Maybe you could go pro and be the director of photogroaphy of ‘The Dry Cleaner.’

Humphrey says on

13Aug 2009 at 7:15 am :


Yeah, hopefully the visa people can’t read english don’t know how to type your names in the google to find about your f r a u d. :-P Maybe it was the bank who was calling this morning when the phone rang? I’m home sick today because of some cold thingo and that everything I say sounds like Kermit the Frog. Maybe when the Bulgarian Bank heard some weird English speaking frog answer the phone they freaked out and hung up! :-)

Oh yeah, good luck with Visas…. As for me, I’m just ok the show up at your country with an aussie passport right? I don’t needs visas or whatev do i?

ellygrant says on

13Aug 2009 at 8:01 am :


Haha, I’ve been sternly told off for the f word! Hopefully having a space after the f will prevent it showing up in Bulgarian searches of foreign blogs…

Thomas: Hope your presentation went well!
Dan: Yeah he is!
Humf: Yeah, it probably was the bank calling :P
I’ll explain visas to you more later but you need to buy a Turkish visa straight after getting off the plane (before lining up for passport control) and getting into Bulgaria is freeeeeeeeeeee! It’s a pretty easy process, you don’t even need to be properly awake for it!

stuartgrant says on

13Aug 2009 at 8:29 am :


Haha, thanks Dan. In actual fact, I stumbled out of bed grumpily and staggered out to the front room, cursing the blinding light that assaulted me as I did so. A few mins later I relented and grabbed the camera, propped it on the balcony and took one shot, thinking “nah, too bright – it’ll never come out”.

Did that make me sound un-pro enough? :P

Also, some people are about to be fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster, don’t you know?

mum and dad Grant says on

15Aug 2009 at 6:15 am :


Hi guys
nice photo Stu! I miss my son who used to get up with me at stupid o’clock!! hwping all goes well with the visas! Sending more miney Mon – some for you both and some for Elly’s birthday!! Happy happy! What do you do in Bulgaria for birthdays??
love ma

mum and dad Grant says on

15Aug 2009 at 6:16 am :


okay – that was “hoping” and “money”!!!!

Amelia says on

17Aug 2009 at 5:10 am :


hey guys!
loving the donkey on the road, weddings certainly wouldn’t be boring!
totally happy birthday Elly!!
hugs and invisible cyber cake
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