The Trip to get my Visa

Posted By: IanThom
Posted On: November 26th, 2017
Attending:

The alarm goes off and my phone says 6am.  The last time I woke up at this hour I was most likely on my way to college practice or workouts.  I get up, get showered, throw on some clothes and my Boston Red Sox hat and get picked up by my Irish buddy Ronan.  Maddy and I then arrive at the Guarda (or police) station at 6:30am.  Now the reason we had to arrive so early was because there were only 50 tickets given out each day for international citizens to receive a visa.  The Guarda opened at 8:30am. We found this out the time before when we went the first time to the station. We didn’t know anything about this system the last time, and we heard that people start lining up at all hours of the morning to get a ticket so they could then in fact stay in the country legally.  When we arrived there, there were only 5 people and we thought yes, we have finally made it and will get a ticket.  So as Maddy and I sat on the Guarda Station floor, Maddy remembered her deck of cards, which was a brilliant idea.  We then went on and played gin rummy for the next two hours… don’t worry I won! The Guarda people then started to come out and make sure that all the people in line had their documents so they could then receive a ticket, to then obtain their visa.  Finally, it was our turn to get our documents checked.  Maddy already turned all hers in last time so she was fine.  Me on the other hand, I started to panic.  I remembered that we needed a Bank of Ireland receipt from the day of and since it was so early I forgot to get one that morning.  So when they finally came around to me and saw I had all my documents except that bank receipt they asked if I had it.  That is when I went full on panic.  We have been waiting here for two hours and if I didn’t have this I may not be able to receive my ticket for my visa.  I searched my wallet hoping that the one I had from the first time we went would be in there, but I was out of luck.  I then went on to give her a grocery store receipt hoping that she wouldn’t check what it was and would trust me… she checked it.  So I thought, she surely wouldn’t think I’d be trying to fool her again, so what did I do? I gave her a Quinlan’s (our team pub) receipt… again hoping she wouldn’t look, but she did.  Luckily she was a very nice lady and gave me a ticket anyways!!! She told me just to go and get it while she was checking everybody else.  Finally though, after all the hurdles Maddy and I had to jump over, we received our Visas!!!!

Stay Updated! Sign up to our newsletter

Stay Updated! Sign up to our newsletter