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Extended travel in Europe
Fri, 10/19/2007 - 15:16
New Member
I will be in Spain for about 80 days starting in January. I will be with a study abroad program, but because the program only lasts 76 days (Jan 3 to March 16) I will have a Schengen tourist visa (instead of a student visa). Once the program ends, I will probably stay in Spain for another 5 days then head out into the rest of Europe. I’d like to travel for another 2.5 or even 3 months after my Schengen tourist visa expires, but I won’t be in any one country long enough to apply for an extended visa there, nor will I be in Schengen countries the entire time (I hope to visit Morocco, Switzerland, Ireland, Latvia, Estonia, maybe Russia, the UK, etc). I won’t be a student, so I can’t apply for any student visas.
I know that the Schengen visa does not “reset” if I leave Schengen territory and then re-enter, but I can’t seem to find a way around being an illegal tourist in Europe for three months. Is there a legal way to be a tourist in Schengen territory for longer than 90 days, like an extended Schengen tourist visa? The Spanish consulate has been useless; because I’ll be out of Spain before the visa runs out, they can’t see the problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
We had similar issue come up not so long ago. Unfortunately, short answer is “no, you can’t do this legally.”
Apparently, if you wanted to travel first and then stay in Spain, theoretically you could have done your travel on a Schengen visa (or no visa, if US/Canadian) and then do your study on Spanish student visa, but not other way round.
Schengen rules seem to specify that you are in “Schengen” status for the first 90 days (of actually being there) from the day of your first entry. Then each individual country may issue you a single country visa as it sees fit. The clock restarts only after 180 days. In your case, once you spend 76 days in Spain you have only 14 more days to play tourist (within Schengen area) until July 1.
Of course you may try to find a sufficiently clueless consular official who’d issue you a visa, or hope that they won’t notice your overstay, but that’d be very iffy.
One option you may try (although I doubt it’d work) is to get a Spanish study visa for 6 months. That visa would still allow you to travel through any other Schnegen country on your way to Spain. (Just be sure to figure out how taking a ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki qualifies as “going to Spain.”)
Okay. I will email the consulates of the 12 Schengen countries I hope to visit to see about individual visas for each country…this could get pricey!
It sure won’t hurt to send 12 (nearly identical) e-mails. Not sure you’ll achieve much that way. Besides, cost of getting 12 visas is comparable to that of a r/t ticket to Europe.
I think the best bet is getting a study visa so you can stay longer then the 3 months allowed. I often go to europe and stay for the summer traveling around. I found some cheap cruises one year and after seeing a bunch of countries for about a day i had to come back and spend more time in each.