When the Passport You Hold Makes the Difference

We plan to visit China for a few weeks in May. It was in plan since last year, and I’m happy to finally be able to do it. I have dual citizenship (Romanian and German), so travelling to China with my Romanian or German passport in 2026 is visa-free (max 30 days). All I had to do was filling the online Entry Declaration formular on China’s National Immigration Administration Government Service Platform website. When I travelled to India also, all I needed to do was to just apply online for it, pay around 80€ fee, and that was it.

However, for Dipty, who still has the Indian citizenship as of now, expecting to receive the German citizenship in a few months (she applied in August 2024, but here in Chemnitz the process is so much slower; as far as I know, in Berlin people get their German citizenship in around half a year), she needed to apply for a Visa for China.

Dipty’s adventure in applying for a visa for China was like this:

First, she needed to find the right city where she wants to go and pick up her visa later. She chose Berlin because it is „close“ (around three and a half hours by train) to Chemnitz, where we still live as of now (planning to move out soon).

Then, we saw the list of documents needed, such as valid passport, valid ID, recent passport photo, etc., and she booked a passport photo session for Chinese visa here in Chemnitz and paid 24€ (for a two minutes job, and just two photos!).

Then we needed to book all the hotels, international and national flights in advance, because she needed to upload all these documents already at the Chinese Visa Application Service Center. She needed to find the right website link where to apply for the chinese visa online. It was this one, where she needed to create an account and then fill in the application form, which felt like it takes forever due to so many questions related to personal, family, itinerary, studies, job, etc. On the same website, she needed to upload all required scanned documents (such as the digital biometric passport foto she just took, passport, Aufenthaltstitel, all the flight tickets, all the hotel bookings we had in China, and a consent to the processing and transfer of personal data to a third country document signed).

After that, she needed to wait around 3 working days until the online status of her online visa application was „Online review completed„; this is when she then also received an email with a Visa Application Certificate .pdf document (mentioning that her application was accepted online, meaning that she is eligible to go in person in Berlin with all the required documents and apply for the Visa) that she needed to print and bring with her along with all the other documents I mentioned earlier that she submitted online. She printed them all, and also had the original passport photo, original Indian passport, and original ID (Aufenthaltstitel).

Then, because she was informed that she can go any working day between 9:00-12:00 at Leipziger Platz 15, Room 523, 10117 Berlin, we decided to go as soon as possible, because we had around 2 weeks time before our trip to China starts. But there is a problem: she is employed and working (clients are very demanding this time of the year), so when she finally found the right day to take it as a „vacation“, it was on a Thursday. That means, after she was done with work around 17:00 on Wednesday, we took a bus to Chemnitz Hbf (paid 6€), then a train that evening to Berlin (which cost us around 103€). I could not use my car because the entrance is blocked due to half of the street I live in being under repairs. We changed the train in Leipzig, from where we also enjoyed a few pieces of pizza and a box of chinese nuddle box with tofu, paying around 20€ also for this.

Then, we needed a place to stay overnight, so we booked a hotel room near Potsdamer Platz (many hotel rooms in that area cost around 200€ a night, but we found this one for „only“ 154€ per night). We arrived with the train in Berlin around 22:30, so from there we also took a taxi to the hotel, which cost another 18€.

Then, Thursday morning before 9:00 we checked out already from the hotel room and went to have a Spice Chai Latte from Espresso House, the place I tried Spice Pumpkin Latte for the first time last year (they didnt have pumpkin spice flavour this time due to being out of season), and paid 18€. Then we walked for 2-3 minutes to Leipziger Platz 15, Room 523, which was on the 5th floor, right side, first door on the left. I was waiting for Dipty on a sofa there for 5-8 minutes. Despite selecting the basic service (usually takes around 8 days to receive the visa) on the online chinese visa application form a few days earlier, now that she was here in person, she asked if it is possible to pay for the Express service (to receive the visa faster per post in around 4 days), so that there is no risk in not receiving the visa on time. They agreed and charged her 200€ for this service which includes sending her passport back with visa page inside it per Express DHL post.

Then, by 9:15 we were already outside free to come back home in Chemnitz. We then looked on bahn.de website to buy a train ticket back home (we didnt buy a both way ticket before because we didnt know how long the visa appointment will take + we had in plan to maybe go to Saravanaa Bhavan and eat, or buy some Indian groceries from the Spice Junction ). Sadly, we saw that Saravanaa Bhavan was opening only at 11:00, and because we didn’t really wanted to waste to much time there, we decided to not go anywhere else but just return home, her mission of applying for chinese visa in person being completed already anyway. Therefore, we found a good train connection around 10:30 for 132€, with a stop in Leipzig (in the train we also bought something to eat and drink for 18 €), and reached Chemnitz by 13:45. For this train, we needed to be starting from Berlin Hbf, so from Potsdamer Platz until Berlin Hbf, we bought again a train ticket, which cost us another 8€. Reaching Chemnitz Hbf, before going out of the train station, we walked near Burger King. Being hungry and also curious to try the vegetarian plant-based burgers I saw advertised there, we decided to eat there. I don’t even remember when it was last time that we ate at Burger King or Macdonalds for that say. I think it was in 2022 while living in Oldenburg. I tried the Plant-based Big King – King Menü; the double „patty“ burger was tasty. We paid around 35€ here as well. Due to not being used to this type of food, I didnt feel so great in my stomach a few hours later. I’m used to eat delicious home cooked food in the last couple of years due to having an Indian stuborn goat as my „better half“, so lucky me. After that, we took the bus back home from Chemnitz Hbf, and paid 6 € for the tickets.

After exactly 4 working days later, on Wednesday, Dipty received her passport with the visa page inside it in the letter box. All I needed to do after that was only to fill the online Entry Declaration formular on China’s National Immigration Administration Government Service Platform website, as I mentioned earlier.

In the end, the numbers say it all. If I count only the strict visa-related costs, Dipty paid 224€ in total: 24€ for the passport photos and 200€ for the Chinese visa with express processing and DHL return.

But of course, reality was much more expensive than that. Once I include the actual trip to Berlin and back, the overnight stay, the local transport, and everything else we ended up paying along the way, the full adventure cost reached 742€ in total.

That is what this “simple visa” really cost in practice.

And that is exactly why Dipty keeps saying that one of the main reasons for applying for German citizenship was to avoid this kind of tedious process and unnecessary financial effort in the future.

If we had already lived in a bigger city such as Berlin or Frankfurt am Main, the amount would also have been much lower, perhaps around 80€ or so for the visa fee. But this was the reality of doing it from a smaller city, with limited flexibility, work constraints, and a trip that had to be organized on short notice. It was a very concrete reminder that bureaucracy does not cost everyone the same, and that where you live, which passport you hold, and how much room you have to plan ahead can make a surprisingly big difference. Moving out soon…