The wonderful world of visa applications – the third and (hopefully) final instalment

Ready to apply for the family visa!
Ready to apply for the family visa!

My Austrian experience started with a student visa, progressed onto a red-white-red skilled worker’s visa and was now ready to move on to the big one – the family visa. In comparison, this visa is fairly easy to obtain (assuming of course, you are family) and requires only proof of marriage and passing of the A1 German test.

Pretty easy, we thought. Well I guess it was. But being a visa, it was still fraught with fun complexities and extra challenges that we hadn’t originally anticipated. Read on for the journey into my (hopefully) last visa in Austria.

Continue reading

The wonderful world of visa applications – Take 2 – Rot-Weiss-Rot

Around the middle of 2014, job seeking became my main focus. To be honest, I wasn’t overly motivated, and I wasn’t really expecting to find a job in Austria. I sent off a letter maybe every few weeks, and very few of those job ads were actually in English, so consequently, the return rate was very low. Actually, it was pretty much non-existent. I had the skills, but without the German language, I was pretty much useless to most companies. Continue reading