Married

Once we figured out, there is simply no way that our countries will let us get married, we ran off to Copenhagen to do it (just the two of us). The sign that gave it away was the “can the Albanian Government, issue a document that says they do not issue documents verifying…” (no joke).  The story was similar, though less graphic, on the Albanian side as well.

Now comes the the multi-step process to get the Hungarian government to recognize that we got married in Denmark. Translate the document, (which is fast if you pay a lot), 3 weeks of originality check was pre-empted by running to the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get some stamp. Then it takes 1 month to do something, and two months for the Hungarian government to put it in their records. The fact that this is an EU marriage is not helping at all. And only then we can apply for residency for Stela. Not before. This is, of course, problematic because Stela can only stay in Schengen for 90 days in any 180 day period.

So, what this means, if you have not been in the country for 3 months, you fly in and do all the procedures when you arrive, you will still have to leave Schengen for a few weeks to make sure you don’t run out of days allowed to stay in Schengen before you can start the residency proceedings. This is despite paying a fortune to have the translation ready very quick and unless the government gets done quicker with the paperwork than they promise. (Which I would not count on.)

Yeah…