Renewing My Visa

I just returned from Târgu Mureș, the capital city of Mureș county (where Sighișoara is located) to turn in the paperwork to renew my visa for the next year. After turning in the papers, I was invited to return in 3 weeks to pick up my new identity card.

Every time I file my paperwork with the immigration office in Târgu Mureș, I'm reminded of an experience from February 2004, in the middle of the year I spent in Romania between college and seminary. Here's that story, as I told it in my March 2004 newsletter:

In the beginning of February [2004], I took the paperwork for getting our visas renewed to the passport authorities in Târgu Mureș, only to be informed that we were turning them in late and had to be fined. Our visas were valid through Feb. 12, and I was there a week before they expired, but we apparently needed to bring them in a whole month before. So, we each had to pay a fine of 1 million lei (about $30).

The next day, a Thursday, Diane (another volunteer), took all of our fines and our money to the CEC [the state bank] in Sighișoara, where we were told to pay. But they said she had to go down the street to the town’s finance office. When she went there, they were closed, so she passed the task of paying the fines to me. On Friday, I went to the finance office, was told to go to Window #5. That person told me to go to Window #13. At Window #13, I was told that the code written on the fine was incorrect; what we had was about drawing blood for analysis, not for a late visa application. I was instructed to go to the police station in Sighișoara to get it changed. For that I would need a translator, so I waited until Monday.

On Monday, Svetlana (a Veritas translator) went with me to the police station. There, they had no clue what to do, so eventually they called the office in Târgu Mureș for instructions. We were told to return to the finance office. Back at Window #13, we are now told (by a different lady) that we cannot pay there, but must go to the CEC. At the CEC, we are told we cannot pay there because the code we now have is about an identification card, not about a late visa. We should go to the finance office. After we explain that we were just there, we are told to go to either a tax center or to the town hall.

At the tax center, we’re told to go to the finance office. Since we’ve already been there several times, we try the town hall. There we’re told that we can probably only pay it in Târgu Mureș, but we could try going to the finance office. We return to the finance office, this time to Window #4. This lady was willing to help us. She called CEC to find out why we couldn’t pay there. She then instructed us to return to CEC and ask for Mrs. Tamaș. Back at CEC, we found Mrs. Tamaș. She and the lady who originally told us to go to the finance office spent a few minutes arguing about whether or not we actually could pay it there. We finally end up paying the fine, but are told that the money probably won’t end up at the right place because with the code we had, we were paying the Sighișoara police instead of the Târgu Mureș visa authorities. In the end, since we had a receipt to paying the fine, we received our visas without a problem. 

Group of volunteers with new visas in Fall 2003. Back then, we had to renew them every 3 months!)

Click here to view a few pictures I took while in Târgu Mureș today.