My Visa Story
October 15th was the day, when we (Darsei, the president of Uni Group organization that collaborates with Think Young and me) went to the Embassy of Belgium to apply for visa. Along the road, we started discussing details about our trip in Brussels, about the people, the weather, the buildings, and everything else that can’t be very important for someone else, but which for us was the brighter future.
My drama starts here: after we met the person in charge at the Embassy, we sent our documents. She checked them, and everything was fine. But, something was very strange. They didn’t tell us about the day when we had to go for the answer, like other embassies do. It also there that the first doubts started. The days passed by, I was preparing the stuff for my trip, and at the same time, was working hard on my exams and everything else that I considered that was very important to finish before I was going to leave Prishtina to go to the Capital of Europe. There was no news from any direction.
After two weeks, I started checking up, first by asking the president of UNI Group, as the closest source of information, then the other contacts from Think Young. Sometimes, I felt like I was asking too often for an answer. Darsei and me stayed in touch, either via phone or via e-mail, consulting each other on how could we could indicate that we wanted to get a faster answer. During the third week, after a lot of debates, the president of UNI Group contacted with the Embassy of Belgium in Prishtina, and the answer he got was that the best way to accelerate the procedures was by making pressure to the Foreign Office in Belgium, and it would be the best if the members of Think Young were involved in this matter. They contacted with the Foreign Office, and what I understood from the correspondence I had with them was that the people at the Office were too rude and non-cooperative. According to them, the decision can be obtained between two weeks to a month.
As the days were going by and the deadline was getting closer, the doubts increased, the hopes and everything else were slowly going down. We were not so enthusiastic as we were before, the level of the stress was getting higher and this situation started to become an obstacle in my routine, not only in my professional field but in my emotional one too. Despite attempts to hide this from my family and friends, sometimes I was feeling so bad and it seemed to me like I had worked hard for nothing. Worst of all was that I was not able to do anything, just to wait. Sometimes, when Darsei and I met, he was so cold and in those moments I thought I was alone in all this. All this stress was not about receiving a positive answer, but only about receiving an answer, be it Yes or No. This happened on December 10th, while I was checking my mail, one month and 11 days after our application for visa.
The thing I least expected to see in that day was a message with the subject: bad news - VISA REFUSED. But it was there, waiting for me to be read. In those moments my brother was standing there near me and helping me reading. I couldn’t believe that they had let us waiting for one month and a half, and all this for a negative answer?! After a few days, Darsei and I went to the Embassy to take our documents. That day, on December 14th, the atmosphere wasn’t the same like one month ago. We were very upset, even though we had already got the answer four days before. After we had to wait for one hour, we got our documents and a letter where the reason for the refusal was written reason. It was written in French. None of us speaks this language, so we translated it and finally understood what the only thing that was written, meant:
La decision de refuser la delivrance d’un visa prise conformement a/aux article(s)
- de la Convention d’application de l’Accord de Schengen du 14 juin 1985,
- de la loi du 15 decembre 1980 sur l’acces au territoire, le sojour, l’establissement et l’eloignement des etrangers.