We heard before we came to Denmark that the process to
become registered is long and complex.
It’s longer and more complex if you are not a citizen of EU
so we got our EU passports thanks to our Dads who were born there.
On day 1 we went to the ‘States administration’ to register
ourselves.
Luckily we already heard that in Denmark you need to grab a ‘number’
and then take a seat and wait for the number to come up before being served
(not every place but usually all official places as well as banks, councils, post
shops and even some bakeries and other shops). I expect a few foreigners would
be seated a while before realising.
We had to fill in a form covering everything about ourselves
including all the reasons for staying; Barry as a student and me accompanying
him as his wife. We had to provide our passport, our marriage certificate, Barry’s
acceptance letter from VIA university, proof we can support ourselves, and an
additional passport photo.
Then we had to wait for the certificate to arrive. Which it did about 2
weeks later.
We need this document to then get our CPR (Civil Person’s Registration)
number. This is the vital card that is used by everyone here. You can’t get a
doctor, bank account, dentist, library card, etc… without one. We had to go to
our local municipal citizen’s office (Horsens Kommune) for this one. Once there
we had to take a number, wait, then fill in a form and provide the registration
certificate, our passports, our birth certificates, our marriage licence, our
tenancy agreement, Barry’s enrolment, a blood sample, a urine sample, an eye,
one of our hands…
OK so that’s silly but by now Barry was spitting tacks over
why the two organisations couldn’t talk to each other and save time and effort,
and how archaic-disorganised-inefficient-…&%%#*&^%$#$...
They wouldn’t accept our original marriage certificate either
as it had the word ‘copy’ on it. She wouldn’t believe us that it was the
genuine one despite the signatures having clearly indented the page. She also
said it didn’t matter so we are officially unmarried here in Denmark.
After waiting a further couple of weeks we got my card only
with a spelling mistake in the name. As this differs from my passport it will
cause problems apparently so we needed to go back in person to get it changed
but thought we would wait for Barry’s one to show up. Which it didn’t.
He finally called them and found out that as he hadn’t
selected a doctor it was put on hold. If he hadn’t called them we would never
have known as its not in their policy to contact us in these circumstances….[more
**&^%#$%^&*^… from Baz].
So the weird thing was, I can’t remember selecting a doctor
myself, and when Barry rang a doctor to find out if he could use them, they
said he needed the CPR number!!!! [*&^&%$#1*&^%$……]
So we went back to the Horsens Kommune; Barry telling them
he would select the same Doctor as me, and me correcting my name.
Then we waited another couple of weeks for the cards to
arrive.
Along with the card we received a letter telling us that we must tell then which country we
have health insurance with and since we used our EU passports, this would be Britain
which meant we needed to apply for the Blue Health card that entitles all EU citizens
to heath cover if they travel or live or work etc, in an EU country. This could
only be applied for online
and to go online to the government site, we needed to have a Neme ID. The only way to get the Neme ID is
to go to the local municipality (Horsens Kommune) again.
So another visit, number, wait, submission of passport again
– to the same person again!!! [*&^%$#@#$%^&**&&^%$#@..........
from the inexhaustible supply of *&^%$# in Barry’s vocabulary. Mind you he
has a point!]
Miraculously we didn’t have to wait for this one. We got an
envelope with a code which we had to enter in a portal, on the computer in
their office, then create a pin, then with our CPR number and pin entered we
are given a key to correspond with a code card so that we can enter the appropriate
code and get into the site – a bit like the BNZ login in malarkey at home.
So now that we have our neme ids, blue health cards, a
doctor and our yellow cpr cards, we can finally go ahead and get a bank
account, a library card and, if we need it, a dentist, optometrist, other-ist
if and when needed.
And hopefully I don’t have to hear more from Barry on the matter!
