THUNDERSTRUCK!!!!!

Well it seems lightning can strike at any time.   La Viajera was out this morning and struck up a conversation with a woman at a garage sale, during the course of which comes up the topic of our impending travel.   The woman (either bless or curse her) mentions the 'Schengen Agreement'. Once again good things can come from garage sales.    It seems that the Schengen agreement was signed in the 90's in Europe to allow the countries to dispense with all the border crossing hassles, but it also has a provision that any non-Euro citizen is limited to a 90 day stay within any 180 day period without having a specific visa allowing them to stay over the 90 days.   And to get the longer term visa you have to apply, go over several bureaucratic hurdles dealing with finance, background, etc. and should be completed BEFORE you leave the U.S.  Now as most of you probably know we're due to leave in 2 days now.  DOH!(self-administerd headslap)   Seems we're up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

Of course, being a good red-blooded american I figured, well we're leaving Spain in 90 days and going to France so that should cover it.  But NOOOO, it applies to virtually all of Europe as if it were a single entity.   So next I figured, heh heh, what if we just stay longer than 90 days and deal with it on the way out, how bad can the fines be?  I found a thread regarding overstaying your welcome where one person missed it by 3 days and they were fined 500 Euro; another guy was fined 5000 euros for a 10 day overstay.   They could also be barred from coming back to any Shengen agreement country for up to 10 years.  So that's not so much an option.

So now we're looking a perhaps a stay in Croatia, which is outside the zone, for perhaps 90 days at which time our 90 day clock would be reset.  Or some combination thereof.   Our other option is to present ourselves at an official Spanish Immigration/Visa office and try to navigate through an extension which is supposed to be very difficult.  The stark fact is that as of this writing the European Union only wants our money for 90 days and no longer.   So maybe we'll see you all in January.

Anybody got a friend with connections in a European country or a friend with a non-expensive rental in Croatia?  

 I made reservations to return from London just after the new year which gives us a definite out, but I can change them if things work out to our benefit. It has also prompted us to review what baggage we're taking and resulted in a lighter load.

Cheers it's only lemons afterall and there must be a lemonade stand somewhere close.