For all of you who want to know how it went at the British consulate:

Well…it went. It was a very early start in the morning and a very long train ride to a fairly bleak little suburb of Düsseldorf. My appointment was at 2:30, and when Jeremy and I showed up at 2:00, we were asked if we could go away again for about 20 minutes because they were swamped with people up in the visa section. So we walked around aimlessly for a bit, and then went back and headed up to the sixth floor of the consulate.

The visa section was quite a miserable little place really: cold fluorescent lighting, a row of numbered counters with no one standing behind them, a few doors leading to the cashier (visas are expensive) and to a few booths (“cabins") in which people are interviewed, and tightly-packed rows of hard, uncomfortable plastic benches for the numerous people waiting for their visas. It was harsh and dismal and did absolutely nothing to improve my state of mind. The only things that lent the place a touch of “personality" were the three or four pictures of the royal family scattered randomly across the back walls. The pictures actually got me to chuckle. Rule Britannia.

There was an unhappy atmosphere in the visa section. There were maybe 25 people sitting and standing around the room, most of them nervously wringing bits of paper in their hands, all of them avoiding eye contact with everyone else. There were little families and edgy men in new suits, there were young people who looked like students, there were single women with kids. There were some Germans, and there were at least two Americans besides me, and there were people from Africa and India and China and who knows where else, and we all sat together with the same expression of weariness and trepidation and the same aura of discomfort and fear and hope.

I sat and wondered who all these people were and what kind of stories they had. Did they want to just study or work in Britain? Were they married to British citizens, or did they want to marry British citizens? Were they going to England to visit someone, or were planning to move to England and stay there forever?

Were they desperate? Were they optimistic? Were they as scared as I was?

The waiting dragged on forever. The lights were getting harsher and the pictures of the royal family were rapidly losing their charm when finally my name was called. What was apparently said over the very loud intercom after my name was called was, “Cabin A.” What I heard, however, was, “Come in here” - and since the voice calling me was completely disembodied and there was no official-looking person to be seen behind any counter or through any window, I fought my way through the people waiting around and searched frantically for some indication of where “in here” was. After endless, helpless moments, a not-terribly-friendly German man waiting in line directed me brusquely to “Cabin A, right there!”, and I noticed that I was standing next to a door labeled with a strange black symbol that I had taken to be a triangle but which was in fact the letter “A" with the ends of its “legs" worn off.

Cabin A was a little booth divided in half by a counter and a glass partition. I sat on one of the two seats on my side of the counter and after about 30 seconds a young man came in and sat down on the other side of the counter. He sounded vaguely Scottish and had a nice silver Celtic knotwork ring on his finger. He also had all of my forms and documents and information with him. He was my interviewer-man. He didn’t introduce himself. He wasn’t hostile, he was just very, very, very neutral. No smile, no frown, nothing. I guess it’s part of the job.

He started by asking me four standard questions about whether I felt mentally and physically fit enough to be interviewed, and then the actual interview started. He basically just asked me questions which I had already answered on my application forms, but it was still one of the most nerve-racking experiences I’ve ever had. He asked me some easy questions (“When did you meet your husband?…Did you live together before you were married?”) and some questions that should have been easy but that required explanation anyway (“How long have you lived in Germany?…Where do you plan to live in the UK?”). But he also asked me things that I couldn’t really answer at all (“How much money do you and your husband expect to make in your first year in the UK?…What are your long-term plans for the future?”) or that I couldn’t seem to answer convincingly.

All in all I felt terribly unconvincing, and I fully realized then what I have known more or less all along: my life is weird. My life simply doesn’t fit on any form or application. It can’t be squeezed into the little boxes, it doesn’t fit on the blank lines. I always need the Space for Additional Information. I always need to Attach an Extra Sheet of Paper. I always need to explain and clarify, and everything comes out sounding confusing and dubious.

I think I first became aware of this when I was applying to colleges in the States. The application forms would always have one blank line on which I was supposed to write which high school I attended. Being an Army brat, I always needed at least three and preferably four lines to answer that question. And it’s just gotten more confusing since then: America for two years, Germany for two years, America for one year, Germany for four years, studying, studying and working, just working…Nothing has been by the book. Sometimes it even confuses me.

And the whole “going to England” thing isn’t really any easier to explain. I guess most people don’t just pick up and move to another country for the heck of it. I do, of course. The one question I didn’t get asked in Düsseldorf - and the one I was really expecting and really dreading - was, “Why do you want to move to the UK?” I had no idea how I was going to answer that. Because it sounds like fun? Because I’ve been an Anglophile since I was about 12 years old? Because it’s just time to move on? In my world, these are perfectly legitimate reasons to move someplace. In the outside world, these answers just seem naïve.

The “what are your long-term plans”-question made up for the fact that I didn’t get asked why I want to go to England. I couldn’t tell the guy my long-term plans. He asked if I planned to settle in the UK, and I had to say, “I don’t know.” I don’t know. Right now I’m planning to stay for 3 years. But if, three years from now, Jeremy and I have brilliant jobs and we’re enjoying our lives, then maybe we’ll stay longer. If, two years from now, we’re absolutely miserable and things don’t show any sign of improving, then maybe we’ll take off again. Maybe that’s frustratingly non-committal. But that’s just the way it is.

There are so many things to do and there’s so much of the world to see and things happen so unexpectedly - how can I possibly say what my long-term plans for the future are? I don’t require much. I don’t aspire to be CEO of some big company. I don’t want to own 5 cars and three houses, and I don’t want to spend my summers on the French Riviera. I want to have a job I enjoy in a place I like. I want to be able to travel and eat really really well. I want to have friends and music and love in my life. I want to be fulfilled. That’s all.

But I digress. My desire to be fulfilled did not interest neutral young interviewer-man in the least, I’m sure. Interviewer-man just wanted to be sure that I was not going to move to England and sign on the dole and live as a bum on the beach in Brighton. And unfortunately, interviewer-man couldn’t simply take my word for it that that was not at all what I intended to do. Interviewer-man needed to see documents and documents and more documents, and despite the fact that he already had tons of documents and I brought him additional documents, he still needed more, more, more…

And that is why this odyssey is not at an end.

Interviewer-man wants to see three more things, and I have to fax these things to Düsseldorf and then, interviewer-man said, he would be happy to give me a visa for the United Kingdom.

I suppose this should have made me very happy. In a way it does make me happier than I was, because I guess I am somewhat closer to getting my visa. But still, I left the consulate and started to cry. It was partially just a reaction to the emotional stress of the ordeal I had just gone through, but it was also frustration and disappointment. I had hoped so much that I would be able to leave the consulate with a huge feeling of relief, and instead I left feeling like I was back where I started. I still felt the same worry and the same stress. I still had the same weight on my shoulders. It’s not that I can’t get the extra documents he wants - two of the three documents shouldn’t be a problem at all. It’s just that it’s not over. And I so, so wanted it to be over.

But there you have it. I did what I could, and I’ll do what I can, and I’ll plow forward with my plans for moving and just assume that, in the end, it will all work out - and it will all be worth it.

Further reading…