A day in Vienna or: All the things I do for Canada
Some people might already know this but I will state it here officially now: I am currently working on getting a Work & Travel Visa for Canada and experience quite a few funny adventures along the way.
The biggest adventure I had during this application process so far was my one day tour to Vienna.
The visa application process for Canada
To get a Work & Travel Visa for Canada you have to organise and show a whole lot of things - identity papers, information about your own family, portrait pictures and a certificate of good conduct for all the countries where you lived for more than half a year.
And after sending in all this information you have to give your biometric data, too, through a Visa Application Center (VAC). These VACs are most often connected to Canadian Embassies but they can be their own enterprises, too. And not every embassy for Canada also has a VAC.
One of these embassies without a VAC is the Canadian Embassy in Hungary. And the next closes VAC - I asked that from the Embassy in Hungary - is in Vienna.
From the Prater to Schönbrunn Palace
Because I had 30 days to submit my biometric information, I wasn’t under a huge amount of pressure, but the VAC in Vienna isn’t opened on weekends. My team didn’t have a problem with me disappearing to Vienna for a day, and the Austrian capital is only about a three hour bus or trainride away.
After submitting my data I still had a few hours of wait until my bus back to Budapest left, and these hours I used for a trip to the Pater - with a ride in the Prater-Turm, the highest swing carousel in the world - and a long stroll through the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace.
Even though it was neither Christmas nor Easter or the summer season there were a few tourist standing in the Palace yard, but the gardens are big enough that you don’t really notice the amount of people. Still, I would love to return to Vienna in spring, when the gardens are in full bloom and not the grey-brown-black of winter.
Sadly there wasn’t enough time to go and visit even more things, because I wouldn’t have been able to get home again from Budapest if I had stayed any longer. But Vienna is a truly beautiful city and maybe I’ll be able to visit it with a few other volunteers again, because a city tour is a lot funnier with company to share the experiences with.
travelling_evs · aboutme_evs