Swedish citizenship and passports

[same_sky]

I have a few questions, and I know some of you are ideally suited for answering them. M needs to renew his Swedish passport here in the US. From what I understand, he needs to physically appear at a consulate to submit his application, and physically appear to pick the thing up. (Link.) Have any of you had to do this?

Second part--Swedish citizenship for a child born abroad. I remember that Dawn did this recently. Same rules, right? Appear in person and do.. something? I can't even find a good link on that one, though admittedly I didn't search too hard before deciding to ask people who know what they're talking about. Is that one trip or two?

The thing that's irritating is that the closest consulates from here are St Louis and Cleveland. A quickie city-to-city Google map search shows that St. Louis is five hours from here, and Cleveland five and a half. On one hand, it wouldn't be too annoying to jaunt over to St. Louis (I've never been) and have a little pre-baby getaway. Jaunting over twice is really pushing it. Jaunting over twice with a baby... now, that would just suck. M is of the opinion that driving over twenty hours isn't worth it just to have a Swedish passport and the questionably exciting ability to be able to choose either line as we travel over and back (especially since he'll have to wait on me anyway--he's gone through the slow line with me in the past anyway.) His American passport (which we also don't have, but it's on the list of things to do) is all he really needs anyway.

And while I'm at it, once a Swedish driver's license has expired, is it gone for good and no hope of renewing it? That's what someone, from some officialish website, told M in email when he asked. His license expired, and while he's pretty zen about it, as he can still drive in Sweden with his American license for any trip we make, it bugs me on some level and I think they should give it back to him, by golly.

Comments

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

You're swell. *laugh*

That will be the plan, waiting until Ducky is here to go with us... but it will still be two trips if we have to apply in person and then pick it up in person. I just wish we could get the travelling out of the way before she arrives, but I'm aware that makes no sense if she needs to be with us. (I am just in need of a vacation, I think!) Actually, I thought Cleveland was closer than it is, so I hadn't been worried about it at all until yesterday, when it occured to me to look into all of this stuff. I figure we'll ask about the license and they'll say no and M will look smug and say "I told you so". ;)

[e11en.livejournal.com]

I have the good folks on Amerikanska on the job. I can't read enough Swedish to tell if we've found some promising info or not, however, so it will have to wait until G can look at it.

His license is waaaaay expired though. As I sat here reading (in my poorly accented Swedish) all of the bureaucratic Swedish to him over the phone, he got curious about just how out of date his license was. He went home at lunch just to look (and eat) and oops, 2003.