The saga of the VISA #2

The embassy officials must have been having a nice day - I'd seen them allowing people to leave and then return to their appointments after having been told that they'd forgotten various bits of their visa applications. The nice lady took pity on me. She said, you need a computer and the internet and a printer. You'll need to fill in the document on line and print it out. If you can get back here by 11am, we'll reprocess your application, she said. It was 10:05.

I ran from the embassy and along the road looking for a taxi. My 1st thought was to go back to the hotel & try and persuade the reception to print out the doc for me. Whilst in the cab, I had a better idea - an internet cafe. The taxi driver was a star, he had to ask another driver for directions but within 10 minutes I was sat in a cybercafe filling in the form.

Nothing is ever easy. Of course the keyboard of the computer was set to a different international setting - every time I typed the letter 'A' a 'Q' appeared instead. To type numbers, you needed to press the shift key. It was all totally alien. I kept telling myself to calm down. It had only taken me 10 minutes to get there. I had until 10:45 to finish the form. At 10:40 I printed it out (twice for good measure) and paid for my time and paper. I grabbed a cab and we raced back to the embassy.

At 10:58 I was re-ushered through the security screening and ran to the front of the queue. No doubt I annoyed all the other people there, but by that point I didn't care. My kind official looked up and beckoned me forward. She said, I didn't think we'd see you back in here today!

After that it seemed like only a matter of minutes and my application had been accepted and I was being asked to sit down to await the results of the security check. About an hour later I was called forward to take my fingerprints, and then told to sit and wait again (it's a long process).

Probably 3/4 of an hour later I was called forward for my "interview" - this wasn't a sit down chat accross a desk as I had been expecting - it was a chat at a post office/bank style window in front of all the other people waiting for their interviews. A bit embarrassing for those whose applications were rejected.

Anyway, the guy calls me forward and we have a bit of a chat - he asks why I'm there in Brussels and not London, so I explain the saga and tell him about the nightmare journey to Belgium. He was very nice and chatty. He then asks a few questions - what's the work I'm going to be doing, who my customer is, where I'm going to be working.........and then he said, "so you are going to be travelling back and forth quite a bit?". I told him that this trip was the only one planned and that even that wasn't booked yet as it was all pending the visa approval.

He actually put his hands up and pushed them through his hair in an exagerrated gesture of shock and surprise. I said "you're going to tell me I don't need the visa, aren't you?"
"you're right" he said "unless you're going to be travelling to the US for more than 90 days, or you're going to be paid from the US, you can travel under the business visa waiver programme."

I was gutted. Looks like we'd been badly misinformed. All that trauma and I hadn't needed it in the 1st place.

The embassy were great though - dispite all the posters around the walls saying that "visas would be available to be picked up no sooner than 48 hours after they'd been approved NO EXCEPTIONS" the guy wrote a little note on mine asking it to be fast-tracked - and right enough, I went back to the embassy the next day - Thursday - and there it was..

I was free to book my flight to the USA for the next morning, and continue on my traumatic journey - read the next leg - from Brussels to Raleigh