Did you recently have a baby in Germany? Are you an American citizen? Would you like the baby to be an American citizen and not a poor, stateless waif?
Just follow these easy steps:
1. Make an appointment to Register a Birth Abroad at the American Consulate in Frankfurt.
2. Buy a train ticket from Cologne to Frankfurt. Don't bother trying to figure out how long it takes to get from the train station to the consulate. Just guess.
3. Take several hours the night before to organize all of the forms and supplementary materials.
4. Wake up baby to take a passport photo. Be amazed that the swaddle keeps his hands out of his face as per passport regulations.
5. Catch the 6:55 am train to Frankfurt and fall in love with the special baby section of the train, far away from the pushy unwashed masses.
6. Make sure the train is delayed getting into Frankfurt. Try to contain panic caused by Step 1.
7. Run through the central station trying to find the subway.
8. Change Baby's diapers on the subway, moving the stroller at every stop to allow more passengers to get on and run the pee gauntlet.
9. Take a break to nurse Baby in the copious amounts of time stuck on the subway.
10. Get off at the correct stop. RUN.
11. Cut in front of everyone in line to go through security (haha suckers! Americans coming through!).
12. Make sure that you are awkward with the stroller, blocking the people behind you at the security checkpoint and taking forever to empty out the millions of stroller pockets.
13. Go to the special American citizens' section to wait for blessedly short amounts of time.
14. Make it back to the central station for the return trip with 10 minutes to spare.
5 comments:
Only an American! What an adventure! Please don't tell me you went by yourself?!!!!! Ask Hazel about becoming an American citizen.... He will hate his passport photo someday- but he sure looks cute today
BTW- Is he or isn't he? Does he have to wait months for the paperwork to be processed?
no, no, both parents have to go!
He's officially an American citizen since the day he was born-- the passport comes in a couple of weeks.
I'm exhausted from your easy steps. Wish my passport picture was soooo cute!
I got my passport a few years ago, and my picture looked just like that... didn't remember being wrapped up in a swaddle, but it was a long night before... I'm keeping mine!
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