The Romanian Visa Paradox - IV

PART IV - The Romanian Salary Indeterminacy

        So we got the list of documents necessary for the damn visa and it included a warrant from her company that she has a salary equivalent of 2 minimum salaries per economy according to the Romanian law. As her salary was way above that, it wasn't going to be a problem at all. Right? Yeah, right.

        I took the train to Hungary. 12 gruesome  hours until Arad. Then I had to wait for the train to Curtici, at the border and a couple more hours until Békéscsaba, change trains again and then a few more until Szeged.

        After all these months in Ploiesti, I was already getting used to people assuming that I am Chinese. So I almost choked laughing when at the border, the Hungarian immigration officer asked me if I am Mongol :-)

        I told him I'm Brazilian and gave him my passport. He said: "Ah! Brazil! Ronaldo! Football!" and started to check my passport. He then asks me where is the Hungarian visa.  Ooooo... that's what I was afraid of. The Brazil-Hungary agreement was so recent (only a couple of weeks ago) that the immigration officers didn't even know about it.

        I explained to him about it and he had to call his superior. Which didn't also know about it and had to call someone else in the office, who had to make a phone call to someone else.

        After an agonizing half-hour he came back with my passport and stamped the visa on it. Whew!

        I left Ploiesti at 19:00 and arrived in Szeged by 10:00 in the next morning. No Hungarian in the train station, shops, currency exchange offices, taxis or shops speak English so I had to keep my Hungarian Phrase Book handy (I will not buy this record, it is scratched! - For those who know Monty Python :-) And as no one besides Hungarians can pronounce Hungarian, I had to show it to them, not read from it.

        Anyway, despite all the problems, I finally arrived at the Romanian Consulate in Szeged and met the consul himself. I introduced myself and told him I expect that Cristina has already talked to him and he probably knows what it is about. He said yes and asked me to give him the papers. He checked them and when he got to that salary warrant, he told me that this paper was irregular. I asked him what does he mean and he said that according to the law, my wife's salary is not enough to support me.  I told him that as I understand, the law says 2 minimum salaries per economy. He then argues that what the law really means is 2 minimum salaries per economy PER PERSON. 

        As my wife's salary was still way above 4 minimum salaries per economy I pointed it to him that it was still within the limits. And then he says: No, because I am calculating 4 minimum ROMANIAN salaries. As I am requesting the visa in Hungary, I have to prove that my wife has 4 minimum HUNGARIAN salaries, which btw, was 1200 American dollars. In that period not many people had this kind of salary in Romania and I am not convinced that there were many people with this kind of salary in Hungary either.

        I told him that it is absurd because I am requesting a residence visa for ROMANIA, not for HUNGARY. And that my wife should be able to support me in ROMANIA, not in HUNGARY, and that the immigration law we are talking about is ROMANIAN not HUNGARIAN, therefore the salaries should be obviously ROMANIAN.

        He used the traditional Romanian catchphrase: "Hey, YOU need ME, I don't need YOU. YOU do what I tell you." and literally threw all the documents on my face.  I picked all the papers from the floor and put them back in my briefcase and picked my phone, to which the consul says: "What now? Are you going to call Cristina? Go ahead, go cry to Cristina! You can call Cristina all you want, it won't change anything!"

        Well, well, it looks like this Cristina was wearing armored panties when Mr. consul tried to tap her.

       

        But no, I wasn't going to call any armored panties Cristina. I was just going to call my wife to inform her that she will never, ever be forgiven for this. For as I see it, I had the visa in my hands and she yanked it from me because some armored panties bimbo thought she's so hot that the consul would do anything for her.

            And in the end, to demonstrate his infinite generosity,  the consul gave me a one month (instead of three months) tourist visa for me to go back to Romania.