Mark's Travels

10 years of travel blogging from 35+ countries around the world

Residence and work permits! 13th November 2002 in Bremen, Germany


I was issued my residence and work permits today. It"s a huge relief. Finally I won"t be thinking about immigration problems and I"ll be able to focus on my work and enjoy myself here. There has been a smile on my face ever since I was handed my passport today with two pages of colourful immigration stamps from the German Government. The only weird thing is that they translated my name into German on all my paperwork, I understand that Arabs or Russians with weird names get new ones and my last name was originally translated from Russian but it"s still a little odd.

Another weird thing I"ve noticed today, English is starting to look forgein to me. All my software, half the software on my PC, my website and everything else that I can get away with is in English but it doesn"t have the natural look and feel like it used to. Weird.

It"s not true that I won"t be able to forget about immigration issues, sometime in the new year I will need to apply for a perminant residence / work permit but that shouldn"t be a problem when my company gives me a perminant contract. All that is left now is to get Health Insurance, It"s required for the permits and my work.

Next week I will start going to Language classes 2 days a week. This should help give me more time to study and stop me from burning out. I can put together descriptive sentances now, they aren"t perfect but their getting better. I think studying / practicing at home with my flatmate will be a little more effective as soon as I can get my flatmate to talk in German.


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