Arriving
The unwritten rules of a building take a fortnight to learn and a moment to break
Shared residential buildings run on local conventions about noise, rubbish, stairwells and communal costs…
· 3 min read
Globetrotter Talks — For the months, not the weekend
Arriving
The first fortnight is an administrative sprint and it should be planned like one
Arriving for a long stay front-loads almost every piece of officialdom you will face, and treating those two weeks as a settling-in period is why so many people lose a month.
By Sofia Almeida · · 4 min read
The short list
- What you carry for a year is decided by what you can’t replace where you’re going
- An address is the first thing you need and often the hardest to obtain
- Temporary accommodation buys you the time to choose the permanent kind
- Arriving without a return date removes the structure a trip supplies
- The first supermarket visit is a mapping exercise more than a shop
- A local number is infrastructure, and a foreign one blocks more than you think
- The transport a resident buys is not the transport a visitor buys
- Which errands still have to be done in person, and why that list is long
In depth
More →
Visas & Paperwork
Permission to stay comes in tiers, and a tier is not a step up from the one below
Most countries sort foreign visitors into roughly three bands by intended length and purpose, and the bands…
· 4 min read
Visas & Paperwork
One document gates the next, and the sequence is most of the difficulty
Residency paperwork is rarely difficult item by item; what makes it hard is that each piece requires…
· 3 min read
Visas & Paperwork
A visa and a residence permit are two different objects
One is generally permission to travel to a border and ask to enter; the other is a record of permission to…
· 3 min read
Visas & Paperwork
Registration with a local authority is a separate act from being let in
Many countries keep a register of who lives at which address, and being admitted at the border does not put…
· 3 min read
Visas & Paperwork
Official sources, forums and hearsay rank in a fixed order that is never reversed
Almost every serious paperwork mistake made by a new resident can be traced to acting on information from a…
· 3 min read
Arriving
More →
Arriving
The first fortnight is an administrative sprint and it should be planned like one
Arriving for a long stay front-loads almost every piece of officialdom you will face, and treating those…
· 4 min read
Arriving
What you carry for a year is decided by what you can’t replace where you’re going
Packing for a long stay is a sourcing question rather than a volume question, and the things worth their…
· 4 min read
Arriving
An address is the first thing you need and often the hardest to obtain
Most of the systems a newcomer has to enter are keyed to where you live, which makes proof of address the…
· 4 min read
Visas & Paperwork
More →Visas & Paperwork
Permission to stay comes in tiers, and a tier is not a step up from the one below
Most countries sort foreign visitors into roughly three bands by intended length and purpose, and the bands…
· 4 min read
Visas & Paperwork
One document gates the next, and the sequence is most of the difficulty
Residency paperwork is rarely difficult item by item; what makes it hard is that each piece requires…
· 3 min read
Visas & Paperwork
A visa and a residence permit are two different objects
One is generally permission to travel to a border and ask to enter; the other is a record of permission to…
· 3 min read