Tomorrow–Friday, June 29–is a watershed day for the girls: it’s Molli’s last day of 7th grade, and Maddie’s last day of 3rd. It’ll be documented in the June post, which may or may not appear on these electric pages before Molli’s 14th (!) birthday next week.
But today was a watershed day for me: having discovered just yesterday that I am now officially registered as a Danish citizen in the government databases, I determined to apply for my passport as soon as possible. In looking into the process online at about 16:30 this afternoon, I discovered that applying was not only easy and local, but that I could arrange an appointment this very day! So I (sort of incredulously) set an appointment for 17:00 and biked off to the library with my wallet and American birth certificate, which were all the website said I would need (even after I informed it I was a foreign national applying for a Danish passport for the first time as a Danish citizen).
I had to bike, by the way, because Molli Malou was cleaning the car.
I got there and my appointment was right on time. It’s staggering how efficient the whole process was: you enter your phone number into a little digital kiosk when you arrive to get your “number,” and it prints out not a number but a time (mine was 16:56), and because it “knew” me and the nature of my appointment, it recommended I use the time while waiting to get my passport photo taken. The “booth” is right there in the middle of the library: it has a sign on it saying to use it by scanning the QR code on your ticket, which I did, and it immediately set about directing me how to stand and look for the photograph. It took one photo, told me it could not be approved because I had glasses on (!), and asked me to remove them and try again. I did this, and this time my photo was accepted but awful. I was given the option to try again: I did, to better results. The computer and I agreed to use that one.
A few moments later I was called up to one of the (human) clerks. She was very pleasant and chatty until she asked for my proof of citizenship.
“I don’t have any,” I said. “But the law passed a few weeks ago, and I can see online that it’s in the [social security] database and everything, and the website said all I needed was a birth certificate and Danish photo ID, so here they are.”
She wasn’t entirely sure she could accept my application without that proof of citizenship. She was sort of surprised I would even bother presenting myself to her without some kind of paper proving I was a citizen. She went off to talk to a manager or something while I began sweating bullets. How could I have been so goddam naive? It’s a giant bureaucracy, of course you can’t just wander in with a New York birth certificate and a Danish driver’s license and get handed a passport!
She came back to me, still puzzled.
“You haven’t received anything in the mail?” she asked. “Or digital mail?”
“Nothing,” I said, “that’s been driving me crazy: if I hadn’t been following the law as it passed through parliament, and as the Queen and integration minister signed it into law, I wouldn’t even yet know I was a citizen!”
“Well,” she said, “I can see in the system you are a citizen, effective June 15, but it looks like you were sent a proof of citizenship on June 21. Are you really sure?”
“I’ve been checking the mail every day!” I said. Which was true. Mostly.
Inwardly I thought: have I been? Didn’t I just kind of give up out of frustration a few days ago? Well, no, I’ve been sick for a couple of days, so a few days before that would be more than a few days ago. . . and yet, I’m not the only one in the house who checks mail — even Maddie loves to check mail. Surely someone’s been checking the mail.
So despite the inward doubts, I insisted that really, truly, I had not received any proof of citizenship of any kind.
She processed my application anyway because I was obviously a citizen, the law said I was a citizen, and whether I had a piece of paper saying so wasn’t indicated anywhere as a requirement. So although she thought it felt strange, she took my digital finger prints and accepted my application. (And my payment. There’s never a problem accepting the payment.)
So. . . my Danish passport will arrive in the mail in a matter of weeks!
I told Trine the whole story, breathlessly, the second I got home. (I’d been texting her nervously while the clerk had been wandering off looking for her manager.)
“But,” I said, “I mean, you have checked the mail, right?”
“Hmm…” she said.
She sounded even more dubious than I felt.
I ran out to the mailbox, opened it — and there was a big old envelope addressed to me from the Integration Ministry. And naturally, it contained my proof of citizenship paper.
There was only one thing to do: I jumped in the very nicely cleaned car, drove like hell to the library, ran in, and waved the paper at my clerk until I got her attention (I had to do this from across the room, because you’re not allowed to cross the black line).
“It was in the mailbox!” I cried. “I got it! Do you want to see it?”
I must have looked like a lunatic.
She just smiled, laughed, and gave me a big old thumbs up.
And that was that.
Fifteen years, untold amounts of money and anguish and frustration, and there is no longer one single form for me to fill out or indignity to endure. I’m a Danish citizen awaiting his Danish passport — and an American citizen with his American passport.
Finally!
But, uh, yeah. Last day of school tomorrow. Woohoo!
