Not long ago I wrote an episode about making progress toward getting a long-term visa here. Apparently I hadn’t made as much progress as I thought. The documents I signed had to be done again; I signed them incorrectly the first time. Just as in the US, most legal signatures are accompanied by a date. What I didn’t catch onto is that here often just the date is not enough, you also have to write in your location when you signed.
Czech prepositions don’t always match up well with their English counterparts; if you take the translations for the prepositions too literally you can mix yourself up. Thus I was not too concerned that I seemed to be signing something “in the 21st of March”. I’m not sure why the notary didn’t intervene, but there’s always that language barrier, and ultimately she’s just a witness.
On this visit, the notary was much more helpful, watching closely to make sure I got the date format right, spelled Praze correctly (that’s the form of Praha you use when you are saying you are in it). So, the second time’s a charm, I hope, and tomorrow I’ll hand the stuff off to Visa Guy. Once his legwork is done, the formal visa application has to be submitted from outside the country, so Soup Boy and I are planning a field trip to Vienna in April. Some parts of this process aren’t so painful.
