Administrative Adversities

Having overstayed my visa in Taiwan, albeit for a paltry total of three days, I am not allowed to return to Taiwan on the terms of Taiwan’s waived visa arrangement with the Schengen. This was not an option for me in the autumn semester, as one’s stay on the basis of this arrangement cannot exceed ninety days, but I thought that I would be able to return without a visa for the winter and spring quarters. Being disallowed from taking advantage of this option threw a bit of a wrench in my plans, as it meant I would have to arrange for a visa not only during Christmas, but also during Easter, which of course is a difficult feat.

Before setting off for Vienna, therefore, I stopped by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Prague to work through the problem. The fact that they had given me the wrong visa in the first place was a good point of leverage. I explained that applying for an extension to my residential visa had not quite worked out for me last time, so I needed a better solution this time, preferably one that would allow me to stay for half a year with multiple entries. The consular staff were completely baffled by the problems I had encountered in Taiwan, which I attribute to the fact that they are not used to students travelling to Taiwan without government sponsorship (a pre-requirement, apparently, for directly applying for the residential visa).

I did not have very high hopes for my endeavours, as my experience with the office increasingly convinced me of the staff’s incompetence, but they promised to contact their counterparts in Taipei and figure out why the visa they gave me last time did not work. In my head, I was already preparing myself for being given the same visa and being told to try the same thing again. However, to my great surprise, when I returned from Vienna and stopped by the office, I found a 180-day multi-entry visa glued in my passport. I am still suspicious of this success.

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