Berlin Festival of Lights
Outside of making my awesome portfolio packs and drinking home-made lattes, we haven't done much. In fact, we realised last night that it was the first time we had been outside after dark, except for the one time I made Jed help me carry the free fridge I found home... (depressing and pathetic? or... practical and frugal?)
We decided to bike to the center and look at the festival of lights. It put the rest of the festival of lights' I've ever seen in the past to shame!
I'm surprised we lasted as long as we did, considering we were up at 4:30am to go wait in line at the foreigner's office. We were prepared though, yes we were, with hot coffee, stroopwafels, podcasts, and books. We had to go to seperate counters because our last names were not in the same group, so of course, despite the fact that the counters were right next to each other, we ended up with 2 completely different answers. Jed submitted his application for the YMV (youth mobility visa) and was told to wait for about 2 hours while they processed an interim residence sticker for his passport. He got an appointment to receive the visa in December... I was still waiting for my number to be called....
Finally I got called and was told that they didn't have time to make me a residence permit sticker (?), but they made me an appointment for next week and I'm not sure whether I will get a temporary sticker like Jed, or if it will be the actual Youth Mobility Visa. It's very strange and I tried to explain that Jed had the exact same situation as me but it was no use. My lack of German and the person's lack of English just made comprehension impossible. Either way, we are both allowed to stay here, which we knew anyways. It's just a matter of when we will be allowed to work. Could be for me as soon as next week, or could be as late as December. It doesn't matter much anyways right now since neither of us have job offers.
Which brings me to the result of Jed's interview last week: the firm was very interested in his work but doesn't have anything until January. Not sure what they thought he would do until that point. Contract work? Wait around?
AMAZING SIDE NOTE: we found MSC sardines for like EUR 2.39/kilo and they are bloody delicious! Also just bloody, Jed had to chop their heads off and gut them yesterday. I'm too delicate for such tasks.
Heading to the post office to mail out some more applications. If nothing else, at least my hard-copy portfolios give me the opportunity to contact the firms I've applied at and go directly to pick up my portfolio if they don't have a position for me (good excuse to meet people and make sure they've seen my awesome work).
