Shengen visa

[AJI]

My girlfriend is Chinese and holds a Chinese passport and is here in England on a working visa for 2 years. (She has a UK ID card).
I am wanting to travel into europe in summertime 2010, mainly Germany for sightseeing etc.

I think she needs a 'shengen' visa due to the fact she doesn't have an EU passport. (Or does she? because she does have the aforementioned UK ID card).

My question is, how do I go about applying for a shengen visa?
How much are they?


The information I find on the internet is very confusing. Some say we have to apply to the first country of entry embassy in London..so this would be the French embassy if we were to go by Dover-Calais.
Some websites say that we have to apply to the country where we would spend most of our holiday time....so this would be the German embassy in London.
But then also, as we live in Cumbria, London is not exactly around the corner....has anybody done this via the post or some sort of agency representation?

Thanks for any replies.

[Silver993tt]

Yes she will definetly need a shengen visa. When I was working in Germany, a South African girl who had been living in Germany for at least 5 years planned a trip to Prague with her boyfriend. When she gotto Duesseldorf airport, they looked in her South African passport and no schengen visa. Therefore she wasn't allowed to get on the flight.

Even if you travel on the trains in Europe, for example from Germany to Netherlands, the Dutch border police regularly check ids/passports on the train for this very reason.

[CooperD]

You will definitely need a Schengen visa and you would need to apply to the country's embassy where you will be spending most of your trip, in your case Germany. You can then travel around all the 15 Schengen signatories unhindered.