The Saustrup Family Blog

Nina sent me a link to an essay by Paul Graham about stuff and having too much of it. A very enjoyable read, and a big plus was the complete absence of the horrible expression simple living.

I first realized the worthlessness of stuff when I lived in Italy for a year. All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff. The rest of my stuff I left in my landlady’s attic back in the US. And you know what? All I missed were some of the books. By the end of the year I couldn’t even remember what else I had stored in that attic.

Read all of it right here.

Just wanted you all to know that Nina added a bunch of cute ninja and pirate sock puppets to her Etsy shop - they’re dangerously cute!

Ninjas and pirates!

You know you want them, so go get ‘em!

For our honeymoon, we’re going on a bike trip through Europe. We still need to plan the route, but this weekend we finished up the last things on the motorcycle. Now it has a fancy new touring windshield and room for our two Givi side cases.

Bike with new Givi bags and Puig windshield

I guess we’re ready to go!

Read on for technical details!

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Some people plan weddings for years, but for us that just seemed too easy - so we’re doing it in 4 weeks. Invitations were finished this morning, and they are almost ready to be sent out. Four weeks notice should be enough!

Really, we would have loved to not rush like this but unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of time. Luckily for us, we have some very understanding friends, and we still hope they can share this day with us.

We still need to rent a garden tent, organize food, a spectacular cake and various other stuff but I will make some phone calls today and hopefully we will have an idea of just how difficult it will be to make appointments. Again, time is not our friend, but we will find a way.

In other news, Nina turned 29 last Sunday and had her very first Danish birthday cake shaped like a girl! Pictures will be online soon.

“Good news everybody!” Nina got her visa on Friday, and after a couple of nice days in Copenhagen we’re finally back in Århus together. We just filed the marriage application about an hour ago, so things seem to be running smoothly.

Nina went to pick up her visa at the Danish Consulate on Friday. With it, she also received a paper that verified that the Russian authorities do not issue documents regarding civil status. This document should not be required, but since the wedding office in Aarhus are a little “difficult” we thought it might help us. It was a total bargain at 100 euros for a single sheet of paper. Nina arrived in Copenhagen on Sunday, which also happened to be her birthday! Monday morning we went straight for the Russian Embassy, where they kindly issued a paper that verified that her internal Russian passport did not have any notices or stamps regarding previous marriages. This is the official way of documenting that a person is not currently married.

After visiting a tiny bit of Russia in the heart of Copenhagen, we decided to chill out a bit and went to visit Copenhagen Zoo. The rhino and hippo were on vacation somewhere, but the giraffes and lions were in. Very relaxing. A nice change of pace when you’re in the middle of a paperwork war.

Tuesday morning - today - we filed the official wedding application with all the required enclosures. I’ve had a previous encounter with the lady working the desk, and I was surprised that the process went smoothly without anyone screaming or threatening to kill family members. The bureaucrat informed us that processing time for this paper would be 14 days. After this, we should take the issued “licence” and forward it to the place where we will have the ceremony. Processing time here will be around 8 days.

If none of these two offices have any objections, it looks like our schedule is right back on track. Papers will be ready in around three weeks and hopefully we’ll be set to get married on May 17.

It’s not even 13:00 here yet, and I’m already exhausted!

.. at least that what I kept telling myself when I saw my neighbor Ann waiting outside her apartment, while the lock smith was working to open her door. It did, though. Kinda. This morning I made absolutely sure my car was locked when I left it - not knowing that my keys were still in the ignition.

I carry around a lot of keys - two for my apartment, four for the office, one for the garage, one for the motorcycle chain and probably a few others I forgot about. They’re all in one neat key chain, including the car for my beat up 1987 Audi. Interestingly enough I used the car this morning when I went to the gym, and on the way home I dropped by a gas station to pick up some sprinkler fluid.

My car doesn’t have a central locking system, so after popping the hood of the car and re-filling my sprinkler system I made absolutely sure that all the doors were locked. To prevent people locking themselves out of the car, the driver’s door has to be locked by key from the outside, but of course it can still be locked from the inside just by pressing down the lock tap. Since I have to get my gym bag from the back seat, I’ve made a habit of first closing the front door, then opening the back door, pressing the front door’s locking tap, then the back door’s and then finally closing the back door, leaving both doors locked without the tedious messing around with keys. It sounds complicated, but really it isn’t. I’m so smart. I thought.
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We finally got verfication from the Danish consulate in St. Petersburg regarding Nina’s visa, and Nina applied some strange Russian magic and managed to get an earlier appointment at the Russian consulate in Copenhagen.

Again, a day of many phone calls. First the Danish consulate in St. Petersburg said that according to the spectacular efficient new computer system, Nina’s case wasn’t decided yet. Quite the opposite of what I was told yesterday. The Danish immigration service said that the consulate had been notified of the decision yesterday and said that they would ask the case worker to resend the message to the consulate.

I waited 10 minutes before calling them again, and while being on hold in their phone queue, my cell phone rang. It turned out to be the same guy that rang me yesterday from the immigration service, and he apologised for some screw-up caused by the new system, and confirmed that the decision was now available to the foreign ministry (meaning consulates etc.). I told him that I hoped that they would eventually get more familiar with their magnificent new computer system, and I was sure I heard a lot of frustration between the lines when he replied “So do we.”

The consulate in St. Petersburg confirmed reception of the decision and promised to issue a visa for Nina on Wednesday or Thursday this week. Plane tickets have been reserved for Sunday and I’m going to Copenhagen to pick her up. This part is the really good part!

The original plan was to spend the night in Copenhagen and then drop by the Russian Consulate in the morning, to pick up the civil status statement (also known as the “no, she’s not previously married in Russia”-paper) but after yesterdays call to them, I was rather pessemistic about getting an appointment there before April 24. Nina called them and passively applied some of that special Russian magic that seems to make the wheels of bureacracy turn a little faster. The girl at the consulate promptly offered an appointment on Monday, April 14, just like we wanted initially. No hazzle what so ever. Maybe they suddenly got an empty spot in their calendar - maybe I just send out some kind of bad vibe!

Anyway, things seem to be running smoothly now, but we still need a couple of pieces in the wedding puzzle. After we’ve claimed the civil status statement, we need to file this with the marriage application at the wedding office at Aarhus City Hall. I have many short describing words for this office, but to put it politely: they’re rather difficult. They couldn’t say exactly what kind of civil status statement they would accept, but they would be happy to review and dismiss anything we would show up with. This might take about a week to process. I’m guessing. Maybe. If they decide that we’re eligible for marriage, we’ll take their decision to the very nice little town of Ebeltoft and apply to have the ceremony at their old city hall. This might also take a while to process.

Not such a quick update after all. I hope you can forgive me.

Our faithful readers - of which there are at least two - already know how very very frustrated we have been waiting for Nina’s visa to Denmark, but finally we got some good news.

I just got off the phone with a friendly guy from the Danish immigration service. He called to let me know that they made a decision in Nina’s visa case, and had given an authorization to the Danish General Consulate in St. Petersburg, allowing them to issue a visa to Nina. We’re both thrilled about this naturally and that guy really was very friendly.

With that being said, the case still took way too long to process (9 weeks) and the information provided to us during the process was bleak to say the least. I could possibly think of numerous ways of improving the information level, but right now I honestly don’t give a sh*t. I’m just very happy that we finally made it this far.

Nina’s browsing airline tickets and I’m smiling all the way up to my ears!

I just got off the phone with the Russian Consulate in Copenhagen and the Danish immigration service. Both turned out to be huge disappointments. This time around the Danes win the prize for technological ignorance and the Russians for good old fashioned inefficiency.

I previously called the Russian Consulate, and asked if they could issue the civil status paper required by the wedding office in Århus. They acknowledged this, and said that Nina had to call in and make an appointment. We thought this was a trivial matter and possible to do on a day-to-day basis. Here, optimistically one week before Nina arrives in Copenhagen, we decided to make an appointment - and in good time, we thought. I was hoping to make an appointment for April 14, and was greatly disappointed when I was told that the next available appointment was on April 24. I never saw this coming and it feels like hitting a brick wall that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

This whole wedding thing is a very delicate and tricky puzzle, and now the Russian Consulate is pushing it even further. If we can’t get an appointment before April 24, things really have to run smoothly for us to get married on May 17.

The Danish immigration service wasn’t much help either. The last report I got when I made my ceremonial Friday call to them, was that they had sent a request for information regarding Nina’s passport to the Danish Consulate in St. Petersburg on March 26. The Danish Consulate said that they had received this request and had sent a confirmed reply on April 2. According to the lady I spoke to, no reply was received in their magnificent new visa system yet. I was puzzled to hear this, and asked if information wasn’t transferred electronically inside their new system - she kept telling me that it was, but letters and faxes first had to be scanned by their reception before it appeared in the system. Wheels were turning inside my head and then it finally dawned on me:

Even though they have a brand new computer system, some information is apparently still passed around by good old fashion paper fax and as paper information it needs to be scanned before it appears in their system.

I can’t even begin to explain how stupid I think this is. It’s like refusing to use more than the first gear in your brand new red Italian sports car.

I sent the relationship documentation to the Danish immigration office Saturday. Express. Rather expensive too. Wanted them to know that we meant business. A lot of good that did me.

The postal worker gave me a tracking number when I handed in the letter and cheerfully charged me 12 EUR for postage. Mail isn’t delivered Sunday here, so Monday morning I went to the national postal service website to track my express letter. The form I filled out was submitted to a website that didn’t exist, so I was unable to confirm whether or not it had arrived at its destination. I notified the postal service, not really expecting a reply. Ever.

I called the immigration office on Tuesday and Wednesday without much luck. As it turns out, they had all been on some sort of course all through Monday. According to the girl I spoke to, the normal procedure for received mail was to open it, scan it and attach it to the case it was associated with. Our case did not have anything attached to it, so obviously it wasn’t in the system yet. She said that this open-scan-attach procedure usually took 2-3 days. I said I would call them back. Like I’ve done so many times before.
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