My Big Fat Greek Long-Stay Visa

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It's been a hectic month or so here. We decided to pursue a residence permit in Greece which would allow us to stay up to 3 years there (and is renewable). It also makes travel within Europe much easier because you don't have a clock constantly ticking--Americans can only stay up to 90 days at at time before needing to leave most of Europe for the next 90 days (per Schengen zone rules). It seems like a good idea to not be forced across borders these days, right? We just completed the first step of the process by getting a one year long-stay Greek visa after a trip to the Greek Consulate in Boston. Once in Greece we'll meet with local officials to get an additional 2 years via a residence permit (after securing a lease on an apartment, etc. etc.). As luck would have it, our friend Amy and her daughter Vivian were leaving Rockland, after a boat trip here, the day we needed to head to Boston for our appointment, so they personally delivered us to our hotel.  As for the consulate visit, here's what we diligently collected and/or worked on the past month or so:

  • a Greek visa application form that is oddly states at the very top--"THIS APPLICATION FORM IS FREE OF CHARGE"
  • birth certificates (and even though we have our original birth certificates, you need recently processed versions and they are supposed to have an apostille attached, which is basically a fancy seal from your birth State and of course takes extra time to get and requires vast amounts of mail and postage)
  • our marriage certificate, also with an apostille
  • an FBI background check demonstrating that you don't have a criminal record. We had a pleasant time getting fingerprinted at the Rockland police office as part of the process---hard to believe, but this was honestly the easiest, most pleasant part of the whole laundry list of visa related tasks! We even ran an errand for the police because they ran out of fingerprint forms(?!) so we went up the road to the nearby correctional facility--how's that for small-town life?
  • a note from our doctor certifying that we don't have TB or syphilis (and our doctor had us take tests for each!), or other conditions that could pose a threat to Greek society, etc. 
  • proof of health coverage while in Greece which required lots of shopping around
  • lots of bank statements
  • $216 dollars each which we had to bring in cash to pay for the 1 year visa (We're glad we didn't have to pay for the application form, too 😜!).
We benefitted from finding a few people via Google who have done this process relatively recently. These generous souls provided information about what documents to bring to the appointment--the Greek Consulate never actually sent us a list of what to bring. And as foretold by these ex-pats' experiences, different Consulates seem to place varied importance different materials you bring. So, although we sweated getting our documents with apostille stamps, we didn't actually need the apostilles for this trip after all (but apparently we will need them in Greece).  And they kept some of the materials that we thought we'd get back! Through the process we've now helped subsidize the Post Office with tons of expedited envelops, been fingerprinted by the police, and even lost blood so we can stay longer in Greece... but luckily we can start to think about heading to Greece later this summer!

The top of our Greek visa