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Busy day today.
Woke up early, bopped over to the post office to pick up a thirty-dollar money order to get a new Good Conduct Certificate from the NYPD, then the 4 train (crowded at nine AM) to the Brooklyn Bridge and One Police Plaza, to order the certificate (good for two months from the date the request is made, but takes two weeks to be ready). Back up to the apartment, grabbed a bunch of files including the copy of the letter from the Periferia giving the OK for my visa, then on to the Consulate General of Greece in New York.
The guy who'd been handling my case is on vacation for two weeks, but another guy took up the slack. No, he said, it's not their responsibility to call the Foreign Ministry in Athens and ask them what the hell happened to my papers that were okayed by the Periferia back on February 4th, and they couldn't do it anyway because of the time differential. Tell the office in Athens to call the Foreign Ministry, I was told. He gave me the numbers to call, though. And he scratched his head as to why there's no sign of the paperwork, six weeks after it was issued from the Periferia with a very clear note that it's to be dispatched to the Consulate General of New York via the Foreign Ministry. The diplomatic bag's reliable but slow, he said, and there's a lot of consulates and a lot of people like me applying for visas.
Maybe my application and contract are gathering dust somewhere in the Ministry, I joked. No, he said. These sorts of things generally don't get lost.
He took the rest of my papers, including an earlier Good Conduct Certificate that expires this coming Monday - "no criminal record is no criminal record, this one you gave me is fine", he said - and promised to call if anything turned up in the weekly diplomatic pouch. Slower than the mail, but more reliable. I refrained from mentioning that it's taken my paperwork longer to cross the Atlantic Ocean than it took for Columbus.
Came back to the apartment and found a letter from the Consulate General of Greece in the mailbox in the lobby. Upon careful reading, it turned out to be a notification of the other attempt I've made to get permission to stay in Greece for longer than three months at a clip: my claim of Greek citizenship through my mother's birth has been accepted by the General Secretary of the Periferia Attikis. Now it's on to the local authorities at Filothei, where my mother was born and is registered, to see what I need to do to get on the citizenship rolls. A phone call from one of my cousins in Athens may do something about that.
Still don't know when I'll be heading back to Athens. But there's more than one road back.
Time will tell which way I go.
Woke up early, bopped over to the post office to pick up a thirty-dollar money order to get a new Good Conduct Certificate from the NYPD, then the 4 train (crowded at nine AM) to the Brooklyn Bridge and One Police Plaza, to order the certificate (good for two months from the date the request is made, but takes two weeks to be ready). Back up to the apartment, grabbed a bunch of files including the copy of the letter from the Periferia giving the OK for my visa, then on to the Consulate General of Greece in New York.
The guy who'd been handling my case is on vacation for two weeks, but another guy took up the slack. No, he said, it's not their responsibility to call the Foreign Ministry in Athens and ask them what the hell happened to my papers that were okayed by the Periferia back on February 4th, and they couldn't do it anyway because of the time differential. Tell the office in Athens to call the Foreign Ministry, I was told. He gave me the numbers to call, though. And he scratched his head as to why there's no sign of the paperwork, six weeks after it was issued from the Periferia with a very clear note that it's to be dispatched to the Consulate General of New York via the Foreign Ministry. The diplomatic bag's reliable but slow, he said, and there's a lot of consulates and a lot of people like me applying for visas.
Maybe my application and contract are gathering dust somewhere in the Ministry, I joked. No, he said. These sorts of things generally don't get lost.
He took the rest of my papers, including an earlier Good Conduct Certificate that expires this coming Monday - "no criminal record is no criminal record, this one you gave me is fine", he said - and promised to call if anything turned up in the weekly diplomatic pouch. Slower than the mail, but more reliable. I refrained from mentioning that it's taken my paperwork longer to cross the Atlantic Ocean than it took for Columbus.
Came back to the apartment and found a letter from the Consulate General of Greece in the mailbox in the lobby. Upon careful reading, it turned out to be a notification of the other attempt I've made to get permission to stay in Greece for longer than three months at a clip: my claim of Greek citizenship through my mother's birth has been accepted by the General Secretary of the Periferia Attikis. Now it's on to the local authorities at Filothei, where my mother was born and is registered, to see what I need to do to get on the citizenship rolls. A phone call from one of my cousins in Athens may do something about that.
Still don't know when I'll be heading back to Athens. But there's more than one road back.
Time will tell which way I go.
