Everyday It’s a Gettin Closer

Only a few weeks left. A few things were resolved but a major bureaucratic hassle emerged over medicines.

Housing
We signed a lease for a two bedroom apartment in Pest, centrally located near the metro and bus lines. We found it on a list distributed by the Hungarian Fulbright Commission. It is furnished and comes with dishes, silverware, pots and pans, washing machine, dishwasher, cable TV, and broadband internet. The owner is an American professor who teaches in the US during the school year but spends summers in Budapest. I can pay the rent in US dollars which means we can use the housing allowance in Hungarian forints for local purchases. That way we don’t have to convert as much from dollars to forints and pay the 3% fees.

He wanted the apartment back a week before our return flight. We agreed to vacate early and will spend our last week in Europe in Venice (well not on the island but 15 minutes by water taxi.)

But now we have to get a proof of ownership (Tulajdoni lap) document from the owners and fill out a accommodation reporting forms for third country nationals (one for each of us). The Hungarian authorities want signed originals on standard European sized paper. Annamaria at the Hungarian Fulbright Office is working with all of us so we can bring the signed documents with us when we arrive in early January.

Money Matters
I requested a leave of absence without pay. It took a letter to the Provost from me counter signed by my chair and dean. I got a bit antsy after a few weeks, but it was approved. Since the Fulbright is a prestigious award, Michigan State is willing to continue to pay its share of our health premiums. When I called MSU Human Resources they had it in their system. They are going to bill me each month, but I think the easiest thing for us to do is to prepay it all before we leave.

Most of our monthly bills at home—mortgage, communications, and utilities—are deducted monthly directly from a checking account. So all we have to do is make sure we have enough to cover the next six months. Our credit card can also be paid directly from a checking account. The Fulbright stipend will go into the account in mid January (to be on the 2010 rather than 2009 taxes). We can monitor and shift money electronically if necessary.

Prescription Medicines
We have had a lot of bureaucratic red tape getting a six months supply of our medicines. We discovered we needed to request a vacation override. These are given out in three month 90 day allotments, and fortunately Michigan State’s policy allows for two a year. We hoped we could request two at the same time.

When I checked the Caremark website and also the MSU human resources website, I found absolutely nothing on how to go about this. This was exasperating since a vacation override would be requested by retirees going to Florida or Arizona for the winter. A call to Caremark revealed Caremark deals with a lot of employers with varying coverages, so nothing is standardized. (Just ask anyone dealing with Medicare Part D!). They also wondered why we need six months. Couldn’t we simply have them mail us the drugs like they do for most other people? I then learned that the standard operating procedure is to automatically deny any and all submitted vacation overrides. Caremark then promises to review these within 72 hours.

We then contacted our physicians and requested they file prescriptions for a 180 day supply. Sure enough I got a call from Olin Health Center on campus informing me that my prescription had been denied. Tom the pharmacist explained that since my prescription was generic, I could pay $33.00, which was less than the co-pay if I were to fill two separate three month refills. So I did that.

Tari’s was another story. She went to Olin and Tom agreed to call in her scripts. When he was through he said it seemed too easy and something was probably wrong. Caremark took slightly more than the promised 72 hours to approve only three of her scripts. Turns out the Caremark computerized form only provided for three scripts. Tom found out that the person he spoke with when he called it in said that the additional scripts would be “attached.” Either that didn’t happen, or the review committee didn’t notice the attachment. So Tom called them again and urged them to turn it around ASAP. After another 72 hours Caremark approved the remaining scripts, but for a 90 day supply. Tari need a 180 day supply. So Tom called them again, explained that they had already approved the first three for 180 days and got them to approve the rest for 180 days as well.

Getting There is Half the Fun!

We’ve been slowly preparing for our trip.

Airfares. We will receive what we thought was a reasonable reimbursement for our travel expenses to and from Budapest. A round trip was between $900 and $1,000, but then I got emails from Fulbrighters going in August who were aghast at the prices. When we tried to book more than three months out, we found that the price doubled. The university travel office explained that airlines are very reluctant to book more than three months ahead given fuel prices, uncertain demand and expected scheduling changes. We thought of flying to Amsterdam or Pairs and then taking a train, but that was equally expensive and required some transfers as well. We could have bought two round trips and not used the return portion, but that saved only a little bit. Finally we bit the bullet and used our frequent flyer miles which we had been accumulating over the years. So we fly first class from JFK to Budapest overnight but then coach on the way back. We have separate tickets from Detroit to Newark (which even six months out was much cheaper than flying from Detroit to JFK or LaGuardia.) Fortunately we have family in New York we can crash with and the taxi fare from Newark to NYC and NYC to JFK is still less expensive than the difference of flying from Detroit to JFK

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Health. We looked up Hungary on the CDC travel website and got an idea of what inoculations we needed. We then went to the University Health Center’s travel office. We met with a nurse for almost an hour who filled us in many things from rabies to ticks to water and food precautions. We received Hep A and B shots, were given a set of four pills for preventing Typhoid (which we had to take every other day and it really did something to our intestines), and got some anti diarrheal prescriptions. The day before we had received our seasonal flu shots before they ran out. Since we were around in 1958, 1969 and 1975 we figured we were exposed to the H1N1. We still have to petition our drug insurance authorities to grant us vacation extensions so we can take purchase and take more than a 90 days supply.

Housing We were given a housing rental allowance of approximately $475 from Fulbright plus a bit for utilities which are always extra. We asked around and found a faculty couple who went to Budapest fairly regularly. They knew of a nice apartment but it turned out to be more of a medium stay hotel and more expensive than our housing allowance and what we were willing to put in on top of that. We found a number of websites offering rentals in Budapest and spent some time looking at them. We finally asked the Fulbright people in Hungary if they had a list of apartments that previous Fulbrighters had used. The list proved very useful. We currently are following up on two possibilities.

Visas We have started to work through the visa process. Since we are staying for more than 90 days we have to apply for a residence permit. In addition being a Fulbright lecturer means we are in the “other reasons” category. We wanted to get most of the paper work done before we left. The residence visa requires not only passports but original wedding licenses, documents including the Fulbright appointment, our health insurance, savings accounts to show we would not be a burden on the Hungarian state, and of course the roundtrip airline tickets. We cannot complete the local address and landlord information at this time. Fulbright strongly recommended we work with the Hungarian Embassy in Washington DC since they handle a lot of Fulbright paperwork. But since Tari was going to visit her mother and sister in New York anyway, she made contact with the Consulate in Manhattan. They said she didn’t have to come, but they finally agreed to see her if she showed up during the visa office hours. We filled out as much as we could and signed them. Tari will meet with them and get the answers on how to fill out the rest.

Leave of Absence I have applied for a leave of absence without pay from the University. I did this for two reasons. First the University is in dire economic straits and I wanted to be a good citizen and free up some salary money. Second, since it was a Fulbright, the University was willing to cover its share of my health insurance during the leave.

Getting Started

I was notified that I received the Fulbright Award in mid April. Since then we have started to think about what we have to do in preparation--renting an apartment, making sure our bills will be paid, health insurance coverage, etc etc etc