die Ausländerbehörde

Well, the big news is that I am not going to be deported, but have been granted a 1-year language study visa. This entitles me to be in the presence of the glory that is Germany, but not to work or study anything but the language. Basically, I am allowed to exist here and can leave/enter the country as many times as I want. As far as I can tell, it's next to impossible to figure out which documents you need unless you have a nice German boyfriend to call and ask. You'd think they could post it on the website or something straightforward like that, but as I've mentioned before....the German efficiency thing is a big lie. Once you figure it out, though, the process is pretty simple if you can pull together all the documents. Unlike Spain, you don't have to spend the hottest day of the summer in Lower Manhattan spending $50 to prove that in the last 5 years you were never arrested and convicted of a crime.

Anyway, the bestest part of the experience was the cranky woman who bestowed me with the visa ... she said about 20 times (only a very mild exaggeration): why don't you just get married? Ummmmmmm ok. I prefer not to make major life decisions based on the advice of totally uninformed former East German officials who yell at my nice German boyfriend for thanking someone for letting him use a chair, but on the other hand, it would have saved us 60 euros (as she pointed out). The other really fun part was taking a picture for the visa. Do they have biometric passport photos in the US yet? This is a stupid machine that you must feed 7 euros and then it yells at you over and over again: DO NOT SMILE. Anyway, I have been receiving a lot of angry emails about the lack of photos in this blog. It's really just a reflection of my being technologically challenged, but I have persevered and here, for your viewing pleasure is an actual digital photo of my new, shiny visa. I know it's too small and fuzzy and sideways to really see, but that's for the best.

We are off to Hamburg this weekend to visit the godmother of mein Freund, or probably to her country home near Hamburg if the weather is good. Pray for eel soup, not more fake hollandaise sauce.......