Not much time left. What is definitely going to be my biggest and longest trip will begin on Monday and I am still not completely done with my preparations. I don't even have a place to sleep yet.
After my long stay in Madrid I left Spain, after some not so nice things. Finally free from all the mad rental situations I was still waiting forever for my last (and seriously terrible) landlady to pay back the security. Finally when I was already considering legal options and after a last (unanswered) mail she paid up and I thought things would go a bit smoother now. However I waited a bit long since I was considering to go visit one last city in Europe before leaving the continent. In the end I booked a flight with three stops and almost 40 hours in total.
When I finally did that I filled out the Visa application and learnt that I had to do a chest x-ray and send the image to the immigration office within 15 days. This is a tough deadline since the image has to go around half of the world and I had to get an appointment to get it done first. All that just because I travelled too much within the last 5 years.
The other thing is that you have to go to one of the doctors on the list you get from the immigration office. So I also had quite some distance to cover just to get to the doctor. My appointment was last Tuesday and I got up at 5:15 to be able to make it because the only bus connection on time was rather early. Then waiting at the bus stop for ever.. There were two girls waiting with me and said I'll go into the airport(the bus stop is at an airport) and ask. I go in and ask around finally at the information booth the clerk called the bus company. When I looked out I didn't see the girls anymore..
The clerk asked me whether I really had been all this time and if others were waiting there. It seems the people at the bus company were confused(they didn't even know about it) about the missing bus as well, but said it should come soon. I went out and was worried that I missed the bus, because the girls had disappeared and just when I was about to give up a bus came .. and the girls came out of the airport. We thinking this was the bus waited for the people to leave and then approached the bus.. With the driver promptly telling us that this was not the bus we were looking for. A similar exchange to the one with the clerk ensued.
The driver then called the company again aaaand told us .. the bus would come soon and then there was an accident and the other driver had just called in a bit late. After more waiting a bus came, but they told us the driver would come later it was just so we could wait in the bus. Then a driver came who drove us to the company headquater where the final driver then entered to tell us the truth:"This is the first time that I overslept this year!". I thought to myself "the first time? so the plan is for more times?" This(admitting it) was obviously not very bright of him to do, because this meant the company was liable in case someone would have gone legal. I was just annoyed that I got up so early just to wait at a bus stop, because a slightly later start would have been perfect for me, well now it was a lot later.
When I finally arrived I didn't have enough time to get to the appointment on time having a relaxed walk instead I had to rush through the city and arrived 2-4 minutes because I didn't find the proper entrance to the hospital immediately. Then I had to wait a short moment and was called, entered the room, stripped down, got roasted in the radiation and then left to wait more. I guess that was about a minute. I waited 10 more to get the image and results and left. The image is huge so my plan was to go to the post office and send it off then visit the city a bit. So 1 1/2 hour later I found a sign at the door of the post office, which said: "We are closed today". They randomly decided to close on the Tuesday I wanted to send off something urgently. Oh well that was to be expected. I scrapped my plan, looked for something to eat, after a while gave up and took the first thing I had seen.
Then I went to the trainstation passed some time there and ultimately went for the next bus back. On arrival I went to the local post office and they didn't have a fitting envelope, then after a short odyssey through the whole settlement a foto store had something accpetable that they would have thrown away. So then just on time before the office closed I managed to send it off for a whopping 42 €uros. Add the X-ray and bus etc. That's a 100 €uros extra because I was honest. (the whole thing is a bit odd though it's to prove that you don't have tuberculosis, but then if they exepect someone to be honest about giving all this data in order to judge someone to be risky, then why the hell don't they just ask for signs of tbc directly, because if you wanted to lie about it you'd do it in the first step and avoid all this costly mess.)
Now I am waiting to see if the image arrives on time. If not I'll have to pay a lot more to redo the chest x-ray along with other examinations.
Another requirement is a health insurance and of course everybody knows that insurerers do everything to not do their job so you should research carefully... but at that point I was just out of time and tired of it all and just read through two different contract text. So without much further ado I just took the cheaper one was done with it.
I can't wait for the flight and it seems I'll be eligible for Dubai Connect, which means I get a free stay at a hotel there while waiting for my next flight.
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