I had briefly talked about in one of my past posts the challenge we had getting a Schengen Visa for my wife last year. Our initial plan was to travel to Italy and meet up with my sister and her family there along with my father and mother for parts of the trip.
We started by looking at applying for a Schengen Visa to Italy. All of the Italy embassy appointments are scheduled through a 3rd party contractor VFS. Their site showed no available visa appointments at all. Doing some research and talking to some of my Italian friends this is a real problem as there are never any appointments available. Some of them have found it impossible to even get their loved ones, finances, and spouses an appointment to visit their home country.
There seem to be two things going on with the Italian Embassy in Ghana. The first is they really are not that interested in entertaining visitors from Africa at all even if they were to meet all of the requirements. This means that they probably found it easier to put a 3rd party as a gatekeeper and really limit the number of appointments available to the public. The second being is that they work with a lot of agents, and these agents have picked up the few available appointments and are sold to clients.
Seeing this situation and already wasting some time waiting to see if an appointment comes up we needed to change our strategy. A Schengen visa allows you access to any of the countries in the Schengen zone, these are most of the European countries but you must apply through a specific country. To have a chance at doing this your trip must begin in the country of which you are applying and the majority of your time spent in Schengen should be spent in that country. Dzigbordi has a sister in Germany whom she had visited before it was very difficult for her to get a visa back then and she even had problems in Amsterdam when traveling there. We thought it would be much easier to get a visa to Germany this time considering that she had one before and she returned within the visa window and there were no problems with her prior stay.
So we adjusted our travel plans to fly to Munich, Germany spend a day or two, and then take a train to Italy, spend time with my family there, and then go back to Germany to spend some more time there before returning to Ghana. So we prepared our documents, itinerary, reservations, flight itinerary, and sponsorship documents from my sister and proceeded to apply to the German Embassy in Accra with all of this and set an appointment. The appointment we got was roughly a month before we wanted to travel so things were a little tight. We also needed to let my family know we were committed so they could all make plans around us. We were confident that this would work.
The day of the interview came and Dzigbordi went in and when she came out she was very unhappy. The same officer who initially refused her visa 4 years prior was the one who interviewed her again and seemed to hold some sort of grudge against my wife since she ended up appealing the last time and was successful in traveling to Germany. She basically told my wife that she should save her money and withdraw the application because she would not be successful and she would be denied the visa. This was so frustrating. I reached out to a contact I had in the German embassy and recounted everything to her, I think that this is the best way to tell it again for this post.
I wanted to let you know about a very frustrating experience my wife had at the German Embassy yesterday in Accra. Before I get to that I wanted to give a little bit of a back story but I will try to keep this as brief as possible.
Dribordi (my wife) in 2019 before we met applied for a Schengen visa to Germany and was refused at the embassy in Accra. Her reason for traveling was for the Christening of her niece in Munich where her sister is married to a German. After the refusal, the sister’s husband’s father who is a judge made some calls and she was granted a visa at the last minute to fly to Germany for the christening.
On the way to Amsterdam, she was detained and held for questioning by immigration due to an insider tip that she was traveling to marry an Italian man. This was not the case she was eventually released and allowed to go visit her sister where she spent 3 months and returned to Ghana under the terms of her visa. Since then we have met and got married and started working with (Name of the resort I worked) where you know us from.
Fast forward to the present and we have been planning a trip to Italy to meet with my sister and parents who will be vacationing there. We searched for a long time for appointment dates through VFS to apply for a Visa for my wife to Italy. But we could never find a date for an interview so we decided to adjust our trip to spend some time in Munich with my wife’s sister and family also and apply to Germany. It took us a few weeks to get an interview. She also has travel experience with Germany and we figured this would help. So our plan is to fly into Munich on the 30th of May and spend 2 days there, then travel to Italy and spend 11 days with my sister and family and then return to Munich and spend another 11 days in Germany with my wife’s family.
My sister is sponsoring my wife’s whole trip and she will be going with me and our 6-month-old son who will also have his US passport in a couple of weeks. We provided all the documents:
-Cover letter
- Application
- Airline reservation
- Itinerary
- Hotel reservations in Munich on arrival
- Reservations in Milan
- My sister’s Airbnb reservations in Italy (these dates are longer than our stay with them)
- My sister’s passport copy
- Sponsorship letter from my sister
- Bank statements and payslips from my sister
- My US bank statements (not substantial enough to sponsor on my own)
- My Passport Copy
- My wife’s sister’s German passport copy
- Insurance information
When she went to the front desk of the embassy for her appointment date yesterday they rearranged her paperwork taking what they think is needed. They asked for my son’s birth certificate also so we added it. When she went in for the interview she realized very quickly that the consular was the same one that refused her before.
The interview started normally enough but started to run into problems. My wife explained when and where we will be traveling. The officer asked who WE was, and she responded that would be Me (her husband) and Bjorn our son. She then asked for his passport. We actually had an appointment that same morning with the US embassy for CRBA and US passport application, which he will be issued in a few weeks. She explained this and explained that we made enquires and since he would be traveling on his US passport he would not need to apply for a visa to Germany.
This is when it got weird. The officer then said that so it was just a coincidence that you just woke up and decided to have this visa interview on the same day you were applying for his passport. You know we live out of Accra so that actually worked out well for us and we just stayed one night at a friend's house to be able to make the early morning appointments. From this point on the officer just seemed annoyed and looking to be done with this interview.
She then questioned the dates of travel she looked over the hotel reservations and did not see the Munich reservation and saw what she thought was the first hotel reservation in June in Milan. At this point, she just got frustrated and said that this was not right and that we should be applying in Italy rather. My wife reminded her that we would be arriving and flying out of Munich after our overall 23-day trip with 2 days in Munich, 11 days in Italy, and another 11 days back in Munich before flying out on the 22nd of June. She was once again cut off and told this was not right and she would have to talk to her boss.
She then left for 30 minutes and came back. She said she would not let this visa go through and would advise my wife to not go through with it. She said she should get her documents right and get another appointment or apply to Italy. My wife told her that she would not be able to get another appointment in time. She was told she was wrong and they are available all the time.
She looked in the computer at that time and then told Dzigbordi that she had refused her before for a visa and she ended up traveling how did she get the visa? My wife said she appealed. She told my wife that even if she tried to appeal this time it would take 3 months and her vacation time would be over.
She was also asked so why didn’t you go to the US for a vacation if the trip is for tourism? She responded that my sister is sponsoring the trip because she will be there and it is easier to meet up in Italy and cheaper.
The officer was also not able to find the airline reservation we put into the packet, it looks like it was removed at the front desk. We have since emailed this to the embassy.
She made a comment along the lines of it is too hot for her to waste her time on this afternoon with her.
She also felt that we needed an invitation letter from Dzigbordi’s sister which we felt was not needed because we were mainly traveling as tourists with a sponsor and hotel reservations.
Basically the interview ended with her telling my wife that she would not get the visa and she was given a date of May 10th to come back to get her passport.
As you know us as a family and even through (A mutual Friends Name) we only have the intention of going on vacation and returning because of my work at (the beach resort). I understand that sometimes the interview can affect the outcome of a visa application. But this came off as very unprofessional, petty, and even personal and perhaps vindictive from this consular officer. My wife felt pretty bad after the whole thing.
This lady said she would look into it and found that there were actually a lot of complaints about the consular section of the German Embassy. She told us she think that my wife will get the visa but if not we should appeal.
March 10th came around and we went for the return date. They made you spend half the day waiting again and as Dzigbordi feared the visa was refused. This destroyed Dzigbordi and really bummed out my family too as they had made plans for us to be there with them.
Dzigbordi went over the whole ordeal with her sister and it really pissed off her sister's husband who is a lawyer. He told his colleagues about it and they were annoyed also with how the German embassy was treating people. So they decided to take the appeal case on as prob-ono from their law firm.
They put together an invitation letter from the sister's family and an appeal letter from the law firm which had a cover page that included the names of of 150 lawyers from this prestigious firm in Munich. He was also treated very rudely at first when contacting the embassy in Accra. But when they figured out he was serious and had legal backing even threatening to turn the whole thing into the Ministry of the Interior in Germany they started playing ball.
Just a few days before our proposed travel date we were told to come to the embassy for the visa. They again wasted a whole day as Dzigbordi waited for the visa but she ended up getting it finally. We had to delay our trip a few days because I still had to purchase all the plane tickets and train tickets and let the family know we would be coming after all.
On June 1st we finally boarded our flight in Accra to Amsterdam. Bjorn had made some short flights before to Tamale so it was not his first time on a plane but it was his first time on a long flight. He was a good boy though.
The next morning we were in Amsterdam. Dzigbordi was still pretty nervous because 4 years prior she had been detained at this airport missing her next flight because we believe that the nasty lady at the embassy put some false notes in her file about an intention not to return from Germany. But this time all was smooth through the immigration checkpoint we had an 8-hour wait so we took breakfast and wandered the concourse for a while.
When our gate number was finally visible on the boards we made our way to the gate and hung out there trying to keep Bjorn entertained the whole time.
By late afternoon we had finally made it to Munich and Dzigbori's brother-in-law picked us up and took us into the city to their place. Here Bjorn is strapped into one of his cousin's car seats eating a slice of tomato.
I snapped a few photos of the drive-in
.
It was a beautiful day and we arrived safely at their apparent in Munich. We packed everything up stairs and settled in.
Bjorn made himself at home and crawled around chasing his older cousins.
I enjoyed the view and beautiful day from the balcony feeling the calm of finally making it after all the stress of the applications and the flights. I enjoyed a cold German beer with my brother-in-law.
Bjorn was lord of the high table at dinner enjoying the attention, new flavors and family.
Sunset came at around 9pm which is a big difference from Ghana and our first day in Europe came to a close. You can see the iconic Olympic tower peaking over the top of a building here.
The next day we had an afternoon train departure to Italy. Dzigbordi went with her sister for some shopping and I went with my brother-in-law for a few rounds including the wine store.
He also took me on a quick look at the central district of Munich before we went to the train station.
Before long we were on the train and on our way to Italy.
After about 8 hours through the Alps and the North of Italy, we changed trains in Bologna for the last short train to Florence.
We took one last selfie in the train station before our last train. We ended up in Lucca that night where the blog I wrote a week and a half ago takes over.
