More consular stories

Here are few more stories from Consulates:

1) 2001, German Consulate. Being a stateless person (at that time) I am applying with US Travel document - a perfectly legal passport which already has few visas from other countries.

Frau: It says here that you were born in Ukraine
Me: Well, I was born in USSR, Ukraine didn't exist back then
Frau: You need to apply with Ukrainian passport
Me: But I can't have Ukrainian passport because I am not an Ukrainian citizen. I am stateless.
Frau: Then you must go to Ukrainian consulate and apply for passport.
Me: But I don't want to apply for Ukrainian citizenship...
Frau: Next!

It's actually the craziest thing I've heard - I never knew that to visit Germany one has to be an Ukrainian! Good thing that she didn't requested that I become Chinese.

2) 2001, French Consulate

Clerk: The visa approval takes 3 weeks
M: But my flight leaves in 18 days...
C: Well, you should have applied earlier... by the way, what are you going to do in France for 1.5 months?
M: I am going to take classes of French...
C: If you are going to study you need to apply for student visa
M: But it's not an official college, it's only private language classes
C: It doesn't matter, you need to apply for student visa. But don't worry, it's very easy, easier than with visitor visa
M: Ok...
C: You need to get a letter from your school. Once you get this letter you take it to our culture office [address, hours of operation]. They will confirm that your school is legit. Then you bring this confirmation to us along with all the other documents required for visitors visa. And we'll issue you student visa.
M: And then, how long will it take to issue student visa?
C: 3 weeks.

To give French credit, next day they accepted my application and issued the visa in only 2 weeks, in time my flight. But I had to tell them that I no longer want to learn French.

P.S. Today I applied for Lithuanian visa and for the first time I saw a bureaucrat who seemed to be ashamed of his job. I.e. he profoundly apologized that I'll have to refile the application on the new blank - because 2 weeks ago Lithuania became part of EU the form has changed. Than he apologized again that the processing will take the whole week - he explained that they haven't yet learned how to use new computer programs... I'm certainly not happy about the processing time, but at least he talked like a human being and not like a part of the machine.