Comedy and Tragedy at The Greek Embassy

A little while ago I shared the most updated information on our visa process with my mom and she burst out laughing and exclaimed, "You need to send this to Saturday Night Live!"  With more outlandish experiences since then, I thought it would be worth recording the saga.

It all begins at the end of 2016 when we began to look into how we'd get ourselves to France.  Americans can go for 3 months or less without any paperwork, but to go for a year we'd need a special visa.  We decided that Nico would apply for a Greek passport and the boys and I could enter France as the family of an European Union member, with a backup plan of any or all of us going as Americans.  Greece and France are both part of the Schengen Area, a group of European countries that signed an agreement in which they abolished border checks across boundaries between Schengen countries, and agreed to allow citizens of other Schengen countries to live and work without a visa.

Greek embassy in Washington DC.
Image found in online search.

In December 2016, with a warning from his brother that the entire Greek government is "one giant DMV", Nico called the Greek embassy in Washington DC to begin the process of acquiring his Greek passport.  The first step, we already knew, was to get his mandatory military service waived.  A year or so before, we had received a letter and a voicemail, both in solid Greek, requesting that Nico show up in Athens to serve his time.  (How did they get our address and phone number?!)  Luckily Nico's brother speaks fluent Greek, or else we'd have had to ask Daniel and Brian, the most scholarly of our neighborhood's New Testament Greek students, to apply their ancient written skills to our modern spoken phone message.  Ultimately we knew the bottom line was: no military service, no passport.

On the phone in December 2016, Nico spoke with Mr. Tsonis, who said that waiving military service was "no problem", Nico only needed to make an appointment at the embassy.  Nico asked what to bring to the appointment and Mr. Tsonis told him not to worry about it, that they would talk about it when he got there.  (But why couldn't they tell us on the phone?  It's all mystique to me!)

Not owning a car makes it more than a little effort for us to get 130 miles away to Washington DC, and Nico did quite a bit of organizing to get himself back and forth to all the meetings over the next six months at the Greek embassy.  Sometimes he could coordinate an appointment at the embassy with someone going to or fro the airport in DC, or sometimes he could find a ride on Zimrides, a ride-sharing website.  (It's all backseat to me!)

Nico caught a ride to DC to meet with the Greeks in mid-January 2017.  At the appointment, Mr. Tsonis welcomed Nico into his office and asked, "So, where's your family from?"  They spent the bulk of the time discussing Greek heritage, then at the very end of their meeting, Mr. Tsonis handed Nico a sheet of paper with a list of documents he needed to gather in order to prove he hadn't lived in Greece for the last 11 years.  (It's all "not from Crete" to me!)

Between the December phone call and January appointment, we were given a good feel of the slowness and inefficiency to come.  If the ambassador had mailed Nico that single sheet of paper, Nico could've prepared all the required documents and brought them in January.  Over the next eight months, Nico had many more appointments and each time they would tell him the next step, which often could've been completed in tandem with whichever step he had just finished.  On the bright side, everyone we met with was personable and very laid back.  They love an opportunity to talk about where their ancestors are from or what wonderful crops grow in Greece!  (It's all sugar beets to me!)

One of the hoops Nico had to jump involved calling Australia during their business hours, beginning at 10pm our time, to gain proof of his semester abroad in Melbourne during college.  First he needed to speak with the Australian Department of Immigration to request an official proof of entry into Australia, and second to the Greek embassy in Melbourne to acquire a proof of residency there.  In order to process his request, the Greek embassy in Australia needed a certified copy of his passport from the Greek embassy in the US, which meant another trip to DC, **sigh**.  The Greek embassy in Australia also needed "a relative or friend of [ours to] come to [their] office and pay the equivalent of Euros 50,00, which is the administrative fee for the certificate."  Since Nico's friends were other transient college students like himself, most of whom he's not in contact with anymore, this felt unachievable.  (It's all hide-and-seek to me!)  Thankfully, the email from the Australian Greek embassy went on to say, "In case it is not possible for someone to come on your behalf, let us know, so we will able to notify you the Consulate's Bank account."

Moisés and Yaya Besi watching TV
in October 2015

In May I opted to join Nico to DC for an appointment.  We had hope that his final step would be finished and we could shift to processing the boys and me.  I was excited to go because I love seeing how other cultures work and delight in noticing subtle differences here and there.

The embassy looked large from the outside, but inside opened to a tiny waiting room.  As Nico signed in with the clerk, Theodosis, I found a seat and looked around.  A television played romantic scenes of gorgeous tourist sites in Greece, and I could see into someone's office.  He was on YouTube, watching the same Greek news and talk show that Nico's grandmother watches every morning.  (It's all... Eek! I don't mean to be offbeat, but the show is all in Greek, which I don't speak.)

We were called in rather quickly and shown to Mr. Gatos, the ambassador who takes care of passports.  "Do you speak Greek?" he asked us and seemed discouraged that we didn't.  It turned out that his English wasn't very strong, but we were able to communicate fairly easily anyway.  Nico handed over his most recently gathered papers and Mr. Gatos, though he had a computer on his desk, pulled out several ledgers and leafed through until he found Nico's information.  He referenced a file cabinet and many books and ledgers while we were there.  (It's all antique to me!)

Nico's turn finished and we moved on to beginning the process to obtain Greek citizenship for the spouse and children.  "All we had to do" was produce our marriage license.  We found out in January that "all you have to do" is a phrase of false hope, which actually means "all you have to do that I can think of right now while I'm talking to you".  (It's all doublespeak to me!)

Guarding our hearts against any hope of procedural swiftness, Nico and I presented our church marriage certificate, an elegant document with handwritten calligraphy by our nomadic Christian friend Keshiah, and which Nico and I had signed together on the hottest wedding day that there ever has been.

"What is this?" the ambassador said with disdain in his thick Greek accent, pushing the document back at us.  Nico explained, "We're members of the Mennonite church.  We signed this document with our pastor and witnesses.  We even had it notarized."  Mr. Gatos kept staring at the page in front of him, probably noticing how beautiful it was.  I added, "The United States accepts this document for all legal processes; we use it for our taxes."  To explain that we wanted our marriage to be based in the church and not the state might have been a foreign concept to him; there is no separation of church and state in Greece.  All of a sudden, Mr. Gatos yelled in Greek.

Now, I worked in an office for a few years and I've seen how other white collars function in the US.  When you want to talk to someone, even when you're in the next cube over, you pick up your phone, dial their extension, and talk quietly and politely through the mouthpiece instead of peering over the fuzzy 4-foot wall, despite the reality that they could probably hear you if you spoke quietly and politely without the phone.  This is apparently not universal office etiquette.  Almost immediately after the shout, Theodosis appeared and Mr. Gatos handed him our certificate.

"What is this?" Theodosis said with disdain in his thick Greek accent, pushing the document back at us.  We explained again.  He took hold of our certificate and inspected it as the two men spoke briefly in Greek.  Then, Theodosis turned to us again and said in English, "No, you have to get a document from the government," and nonchalantly tossed our beautiful certificate onto the desk.  (It's all bleak to me!)

Outside the embassy, Nico and I wondered together if we should give up this route for entry to France or even begin to consider giving up our original conviction about the marriage license.  By choosing a church certificate instead of a state license, we knew that some things may eventually be hard for us.  This was a battle that we, along with others in our church congregation and even more folks throughout Anabaptist history, were willing to choose, as one way to practice living into our citizenship in God's kingdom.

"France in the United States", as they say.
French Embassy in Washington DC.
Image found in online search.

We realized that if the boys and I couldn't go to France as family of a Greek citizen, we'd have to shift gears quickly to begin the visa process as Americans.  Since we were child-free in DC, we decided to do some research about American visas to France at the French embassy, which we assumed wouldn't be too far away since we were on embassy row (but actually it's quite a distance between the two, especially if you accidentally go a slightly indirect route nearly doubling the journey...).

Now, why would we go in person to ask questions instead of simply call or email them??  Stay tuned for the next posts!  It turns out that blocking communication is a key element of humor for the French, who are very funny.