Sometimes, being a foreigner is really hard...

So, for the most part, I've really enjoyed being a foreigner in Malta. Everyone has been really kind, I seem to be able to view the annoying things as funny, and generally things are going well.

Enter Maltese bureaucracy. To be honest, I am still entirely unclear as to why I'm in Norway this weekend. Yepp, I'm in Norway. While away at a conference in Canada I received a call from the office that the Maltese police were threatening to block my re-entry to Malta, because they didn't believe that I had the right to be in the Schengen (as a result of my Norwegian work permit). Again, I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with me being in Malta, but when the police threaten to block your entry, you don't have much choice, and I rapidly changed my plans to fly to Norway instead of Malta to get proof that I was legal to be in the Schengen.

I know what you're thinking, this could have been solved by anyone at the Maltese police picking up the phone and calling Norway.... but they refused, and similarly refused to accept Norwegian documents, or anything less than an official sticker in my passport. So Friday morning at 09:00 I was queued at the police office in Ulsteinvik (yes, had to be Ulsteinvik, nothing as simple as jumping off a plane in Oslo).

In retrospect, I'm lucky that I wasn't able to shift it so that I did a fly-by in Oslo, because the police officer who I needed to submit a scan of this sticker to was "not available" on Friday.

So, the silver lining and end result is that I ended up spending a lovely weekend with my husband in Norway, all the Maltese authorities are happy that I have been obsequious enough that everything is apparently now a-ok, and I'm off to Malta tomorrow morning.