Note: The procedure given happened to me, I do not guarantee you the same, may be I was lucky or you will be.

I leave the details of the trip (tiring but exciting) for my next post, and will try to outline the procedure to get the Schengen Student Visa for Internship from German Consulate at Kolkata. I specifically mentioned Kolkata because my friends faced quite a lot of problems at the Delhi Embassy.

So you start with your documents, here is the list:

  1. Schengen Application form filled correctly.
  2. Original Invitation letter from German Host, same must be faxed to the consulate by your university.
  3. International Health Insurance, only if it is not mentioned on your invitation letter that host will take care of it.
  4. No Objection Certificate from your home university for the whole period of intern.
  5. Valid Passport of course!!
  6. Photocopy of your air-tickets. They issue the Visa only between your dates of arrival and departure.
  7. Covering letter (see below), a formal request letter for the visa addressed to Consulate General.
  8. ZAV - mail them before leaving to check if you require this or not. In my case I did not need it.
  9. Details of the sponsor of the trip and the supporting documents.

That’s all. Once you have all documents with you, call them to make an appointment for the day convenient to you. ofcourse, the next step will be to reach the consulate. You can reach there by Rail or Airplane. Howrah station is just 20 minutes away from the consulate whereas Airport is 35-40 minutes away. You can hire a taxi from the station/Airport to reach the consulate (Do ask them to down their meter, so that they don’t fool you). Reach there at around 8:30 a.m. and collect your token. Then, you will have to wait inside for your Roll call ;-).

Note: I see that a lot of people come here looking for the covering letter. I believe that if you have the internship/job and the above required documents, then you can just state the facts in your letter, eg. “I have been accepted by … company/university for the post of … , so I need visa for a period of … months. Kindly grant it”. That’s it. I myself wrote it within two minutes while waiting at the embassy as I forgot to write one before leaving.

It takes no more than 10 minutes to submit the application, even less if you filled the application form online. Request them to give you the visa asap and they will readily agree to give you the visa the next day. Collect the Visa the very next day and you are done. You can even catch the evening flight on the same day as I did.

You can find cheap and good accommodation in the near-by area. We stayed at Hotel Asha (unfortunately, there was no asha there) which had both AC (Rs.850/day) and Non-AC (Rs.500/day) rooms and all other basic amenities (TV, shower, room service, etc). The best thing about it was that there was a cyber-cafe right in front of the hotel, so no communication problems :-). Also, be prepared for a very hot, humid climate and pack some extra t-shirts to sweat out.

I wish you luck for your visa application. For more inquiry, call the consulate or leave a comment. Click here to move to the website of German consulate, Kolkata.