I’m so excited, we can finally begin the countdown on Alexander’s return to Adelaide to be with me and the birth of our baby. 😛
We have finally confirmed flights for him coming here and also for our return for the 3 of us back to The Netherlands!!! He’ll be arriving here at around 6am ( 😯 ) on Sunday 20th April. I’ve been missing him so much, so to finally have a date to look forward to is fantastic. Since I’m due mid-May, that should hopefully give us a bit of “us” time alone together before our lives change forever.
The 3 of us will then return to The Netherlands leaving here 10th July. That gives us heaps of time after the baby is born and time for us to prepare for the travel.
It hasn’t been all that easy arranging all these things and there’s still lots to organise yet (such as baby stuff, what should we buy here, what should wait till we get to NL etc). But getting my head around visas and passports has been doing my head in.
To start with, I would have liked to have booked a 1 way flight only to The Netherlands, since I don’t know how long I’ll be staying there. However, I cannot stay longer than 90 days in Europe without a visa, so therefore they will not let me into the country without having a return flight. So, I figured I’d try to apply for a Temporary Residence Permit before I go. Turns out, that you have to do this AFTER you arrive in the country, you cannot do it from here. That’s stupid, so I have to purchase a return flight, despite the fact that I won’t actually be coming back straight away. This has meant that I have to pay extra for the option to be able to transfer my flight…….sigh, just another extra cost.
Then, not only this I discovered that you can’t book a flight for a baby that isn’t born yet nor can you get a passport for the baby. After a few phone calls and some phone calls on my Flight Agent’s part, we’ve found out that we just have to add the baby’s details on after it has born and we have to pay 10% plus taxes on whatever the cost of the fair is then, which will probably be more than it is now but there’s nothing we can do about that.
Then with the passports, our baby will be entitled to dual citizenship and dual passports. So I made enquiries as to how to go about this after the baby is born. Obviously the baby automatically obtains Australian citizenship, but the Dutch citizenship isn’t quite so easy. Basically, either Alexander and I need to be married prior to the birth of the baby, or he needs to declare that he is the father of the baby…………before it is born. Right ok, so how do we do that.
We have to go to Sydney 😯
They said it may be possible for Alexander to perform this declaration in The Netherlands and after Alex made some phone calls and enquiries it turns out that I have to be there too. Damn if we knew of this earlier we could have done it while I was there over Christmas……..grrrr.
Are you still with me? Got a headache yet?
oh and when I go to The Netherlands and apply for Temporary Residency so that I can stay longer than 90 days, I have to have an Apostille stamp on all my documents like birth certificates etc……..right, next job is to find out how to do that.
No wonder migration agents make so much money out of this stuff…..