During the fantastic summer here in Denmark, there is a lot of funny things to do. So I thought that I would take the chance to reward myself with a visit to the US Embassy here in Copenhagen. I did so in order to get my visas for my Caltech exchange during the autumn. At the embassy, I learned that there are some interesting ways to make wait in line for much longer than seems needed. Getting the visa consist of doing a couple of things:

  • Make a visa appointment, and pay for the interview (you must pay twice if you want two visas)
  • Fill out the correct forms (DS-156, DS-157, DS-158 and DS-2019 in my case)
  • Make sure that you have some other documentation for things that the visa-department wants to know
  • If you are a student, you probably also need to pay the SEVIS fee, which is $180

Finally, you must go to the embassy at the appointment-time with all of this documentation. And wait. The queuing system in the Danish embassy was non-existent (meaning that people tried to figure out when it was their turn) – because of this, I was quite happy that I had made the earliest appointment available. This meant that it only took me around one and a half hours to get the visa approval – the people arriving when I left must have waited for 3-4 hours.

Anyway, it was quite easy to get approved – I guess I benefit from being a citizen of the EU :)