Paperwork
I'm not sure where it is more difficult to get residency, Denmark or the US. No problem for me to move back there, of course, but it is a bit daunting to get a residence permit for K (even though we're married and have been together for almost six years). It's not as simple as just going to the embassy and saying, "We're married. Give her a visa." Have a look at the requirements.
If you don't feel like reading it, I'll summarize. For me to be able to bring K into the country, I need at least the following:
- 54,148 Danish kroner in my bank account
- a permanent address (a 3 year lease or owned property)
- a job
- proof that we've lived together for at least two years
There are several other little niggling demands, but you don't necessarily have to satisfy them all. Each applicant is thoroughly scrutinized and a decision is made based on overall "merit". So, as long as we've satisfied a good portion of them, we'll probably be good to go. At the moment, the only problem for our decided timeframe is the fact that we couldn't get an appointment at the Danish Embassy in London until June 14th. This might mean that Kristen will have to stay here a little longer or we put off the move until August or September. We'd rather not do this because in terms of jobs for me, we need to strike while the iron is hot. Plus, it's not economically sound for us to stay here longer. The sooner we get out, the better.
This all seems pretty daunting, I know, but I have a few ideas and some tricks up my sleeve, so we might just be able to pull this off.
-RP-
Wednesday, May 11
Monday, May 9
Sunday, May 8
I'm sure you're not surprised
We fell in love with Copenhagen. So much so that we've decided to move there despite the fact that there are no job opportunities at the archive at this point in time. We were never planning to stay in the UK permanently and, let's face it, we aren't in love with it. This makes leaving the UK not only obvious but also easy.
Sometime during Kristen's visit to Copenhagen, we decided that we did want to relocate to this city. At that point, it was still a somewhat shapeless idea because we didn't know when, just that it would be this summer. Things have come into sharper contrast now though. Today we decided that we are going to move out of this apartment on June 30th with an arrival in CPH on July 1st.
Kristen will be working at the theatre through that date, so the relocation planning will be mostly my chore this time. Things need to get in motion ASAP because we don't have all the time in the world and there are A LOT of "threads to keep in ol' duders head" (for 10 points, name the film that I'm referencing here).
It's sort of humorous... the time-span between our moves seems to be decreasing: almost exactly a year in Belgium, 10 months in the UK, and ?? in Denmark? No, this time we're going to stick around for a while. I swear we're not on the run from the law or anything, we're just damned indecisive! But it would be nice to settle down for a while. Then again, for us, settling would be staying somewhere more than two years (the longest period of time we've lived in one place since we've been together). Honestly, it's starting to be a little bit of a hassle to have ties to all of these places!
This move might be one of the more challenging. It's not going to be easy to get a residence permit for K and then she's going to have to learn to speak Danish. Speaking of which, I could do with some schooling on that myself! I was really rusty when I arrived on April 4th, but had come a long way by May 7th. Even still, my grammar is quite poor, there are a lot of holes in my vocabulary, and I definitely speak with an accent (both American and, oddly enough, a little Swedish). K has her work cut out for her. Danish is not an easy language, but at least most people over there can speak English quite fluently. I need to send her to the same place Crown-princess Mary went (an Australian who was able to speak fluent Danish within a year).
-RP-
We fell in love with Copenhagen. So much so that we've decided to move there despite the fact that there are no job opportunities at the archive at this point in time. We were never planning to stay in the UK permanently and, let's face it, we aren't in love with it. This makes leaving the UK not only obvious but also easy.
Sometime during Kristen's visit to Copenhagen, we decided that we did want to relocate to this city. At that point, it was still a somewhat shapeless idea because we didn't know when, just that it would be this summer. Things have come into sharper contrast now though. Today we decided that we are going to move out of this apartment on June 30th with an arrival in CPH on July 1st.
Kristen will be working at the theatre through that date, so the relocation planning will be mostly my chore this time. Things need to get in motion ASAP because we don't have all the time in the world and there are A LOT of "threads to keep in ol' duders head" (for 10 points, name the film that I'm referencing here).
It's sort of humorous... the time-span between our moves seems to be decreasing: almost exactly a year in Belgium, 10 months in the UK, and ?? in Denmark? No, this time we're going to stick around for a while. I swear we're not on the run from the law or anything, we're just damned indecisive! But it would be nice to settle down for a while. Then again, for us, settling would be staying somewhere more than two years (the longest period of time we've lived in one place since we've been together). Honestly, it's starting to be a little bit of a hassle to have ties to all of these places!
This move might be one of the more challenging. It's not going to be easy to get a residence permit for K and then she's going to have to learn to speak Danish. Speaking of which, I could do with some schooling on that myself! I was really rusty when I arrived on April 4th, but had come a long way by May 7th. Even still, my grammar is quite poor, there are a lot of holes in my vocabulary, and I definitely speak with an accent (both American and, oddly enough, a little Swedish). K has her work cut out for her. Danish is not an easy language, but at least most people over there can speak English quite fluently. I need to send her to the same place Crown-princess Mary went (an Australian who was able to speak fluent Danish within a year).
-RP-
Saturday, May 7
A Viking returns
I suppose you've noticed how quiet it has been around here. This is because I have just spent the last 5 weeks in Copenhagen without a reliable internet connection. Since I am the primary contributor to this blog (ahem... no offense, ~K) and was not in the position to post, well, things tend to get a little quiet.
OK... I admit it. There were times when I "perhaps" could have written a short post or two, but decided to use my time in other ways instead. Some might call that laziness, I choose to call it "prioritizing" or "time-management".
Anyway, I was in Copenhagen because I was doing an internship at the Danish Film Institute's archive as a part of my MA program at UEA. I am so glad that I was accepted there because it was a fantastic experience. The DFI Film Archive is top notch and probably one of the best I've been to so far (not just saying that because I'm Danish either). There was quite a difference between it and the ones I've visited in the UK, for sure; specifically in terms of their equipment, collection, and ethics. As an archivist, it would be a fantastic place to work and I hope someday I am able to do so.
Copenhagen is a wonderful city. I was staying in an apartment across from the National Museum, near Tivoli - you'd be hard-pressed to get more central than that. I borrowed/cheaply rented an apartment from the son of one of my father's former colleagues. He and four other friends from the film college in Denmark were going to move in on May 1st, but had to rent the apartment from April 1st if they wanted to hold onto it. Luckily for me, this meshed perfectly with my plans. It was a virtually empty 5-bedroom apartment with nary a light-fixture. I slept on an inflatable mattress (actually pretty damn nice... rivaling some "real beds") and read by the yellowish-green light of a flourescent sconce-light that had been laying (unattached to a wall) in the laundry "room". It was a somewhat spartan existence, but comfortable. Kristen came to visit for one week during the middle of April. A cozy time in that big apartment. It's a great place, but definitely a fixer-upper. From the kitchen window, you can see the freefall tower at Tivoli. Countless people were hoisted up there each day and then released when they least expected it. Watching this occur became my "television". Lots of noises to get used to: the screams from Tivoli, the belltower at Rådhuspladsen (city hall), the traffic on Vester Voldgade, the neighbors below and across from me, the early-morning deliveries in the courtyard, and the garbage-collectors twice a week at 7am. I slept hard before, but now I can sleep through ANYTHING! Except for the huge party the neighbors below had which lasted until 5am and resulted in a puddle of vomit in the stairwell -- this was the same day Kristen arrived.
I got up every morning (on the weekdays) around 7am and took a train to Glostrup and then a bus to the archive, a 30-minute trip. At the archive, I did all kinds of things that I won't go into here because it will likely bore you (archiving is a "special" field for a "special" kind of nerd), but basically, I tried a little (and sometimes a lot) of everything that they do during their workday. It was a very educational and fulfilling experience. For blogging purposes, let's just leave it at that. If you really want specifics, you can read the journal that I wrote. By the time I finished, it had just surpassed the minimum length for an MA dissertation: 12,000 words (about 35 pages, double-spaced).
This past week, I got 6-7 roommates and moved out into the living room. I had been staying in one of the bedrooms, but decided to move out of there before they were going to move in. If I was moving into a new apartment, I'd probably like to do so without some stranger living there. I did my best to stay out of the way and to lend a hand whenever possible. In fact my introduction to everyone was during trips up and down the stairs, helping them carry things up to the fourth floor. They seemed to be a bit taken aback by how many flights of stairs there were, something I had long-ago gotten used to! At any rate, it went from being an empty, echoing apartment to a packed, socializing lounge. A bit shocking at first, but everyone was cool and made me feel at home.
---
We like Denmark. We love Copenhagen!
-RP-
I suppose you've noticed how quiet it has been around here. This is because I have just spent the last 5 weeks in Copenhagen without a reliable internet connection. Since I am the primary contributor to this blog (ahem... no offense, ~K) and was not in the position to post, well, things tend to get a little quiet.
OK... I admit it. There were times when I "perhaps" could have written a short post or two, but decided to use my time in other ways instead. Some might call that laziness, I choose to call it "prioritizing" or "time-management".
Anyway, I was in Copenhagen because I was doing an internship at the Danish Film Institute's archive as a part of my MA program at UEA. I am so glad that I was accepted there because it was a fantastic experience. The DFI Film Archive is top notch and probably one of the best I've been to so far (not just saying that because I'm Danish either). There was quite a difference between it and the ones I've visited in the UK, for sure; specifically in terms of their equipment, collection, and ethics. As an archivist, it would be a fantastic place to work and I hope someday I am able to do so.
Copenhagen is a wonderful city. I was staying in an apartment across from the National Museum, near Tivoli - you'd be hard-pressed to get more central than that. I borrowed/cheaply rented an apartment from the son of one of my father's former colleagues. He and four other friends from the film college in Denmark were going to move in on May 1st, but had to rent the apartment from April 1st if they wanted to hold onto it. Luckily for me, this meshed perfectly with my plans. It was a virtually empty 5-bedroom apartment with nary a light-fixture. I slept on an inflatable mattress (actually pretty damn nice... rivaling some "real beds") and read by the yellowish-green light of a flourescent sconce-light that had been laying (unattached to a wall) in the laundry "room". It was a somewhat spartan existence, but comfortable. Kristen came to visit for one week during the middle of April. A cozy time in that big apartment. It's a great place, but definitely a fixer-upper. From the kitchen window, you can see the freefall tower at Tivoli. Countless people were hoisted up there each day and then released when they least expected it. Watching this occur became my "television". Lots of noises to get used to: the screams from Tivoli, the belltower at Rådhuspladsen (city hall), the traffic on Vester Voldgade, the neighbors below and across from me, the early-morning deliveries in the courtyard, and the garbage-collectors twice a week at 7am. I slept hard before, but now I can sleep through ANYTHING! Except for the huge party the neighbors below had which lasted until 5am and resulted in a puddle of vomit in the stairwell -- this was the same day Kristen arrived.
I got up every morning (on the weekdays) around 7am and took a train to Glostrup and then a bus to the archive, a 30-minute trip. At the archive, I did all kinds of things that I won't go into here because it will likely bore you (archiving is a "special" field for a "special" kind of nerd), but basically, I tried a little (and sometimes a lot) of everything that they do during their workday. It was a very educational and fulfilling experience. For blogging purposes, let's just leave it at that. If you really want specifics, you can read the journal that I wrote. By the time I finished, it had just surpassed the minimum length for an MA dissertation: 12,000 words (about 35 pages, double-spaced).
This past week, I got 6-7 roommates and moved out into the living room. I had been staying in one of the bedrooms, but decided to move out of there before they were going to move in. If I was moving into a new apartment, I'd probably like to do so without some stranger living there. I did my best to stay out of the way and to lend a hand whenever possible. In fact my introduction to everyone was during trips up and down the stairs, helping them carry things up to the fourth floor. They seemed to be a bit taken aback by how many flights of stairs there were, something I had long-ago gotten used to! At any rate, it went from being an empty, echoing apartment to a packed, socializing lounge. A bit shocking at first, but everyone was cool and made me feel at home.
---
We like Denmark. We love Copenhagen!
-RP-
Sunday, May 1
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