Thursday: Bureaucracy (But It Could Have Been Worse)

Thursday afternoon, we went down to the offices to submit paperwork for my immigration to Austria.

The office is closed in mid afternoon and reopens at 3:30, so we arrived at 3 to stand in the inevitable line. Sure enough, there were a hundred or more people in line ahead of us.

The office handles all sorts of matters, not just immigration. But there were very few people in line who looked like native Austrians. Most looked like they came from Turkey or Albania or Africa or other places, and we saw more than one woman wearing the traditional Muslim veil and robes. We were lucky in a way because a lot of people are still on vacation----another couple of weeks and it might have been a disaster.

As it was, things went more or less smoothly. They opened the doors. There were windows at a counter, like at the post office. You went to a free window, told them the purpose of your visit, and they gave you a number (No number: no service. No exceptions!) Then you waited in line to take the elevator up to the 5th floor, or walked up there if you were more gung-ho about it.

There, you sat down along with 150 other people and watched a screen. The screen showed your number, and the room you were supposed to go to. When your number came up, you got up and went to the office and began the process.

Our lady was nice, but at first she didn't want to accept the documents until I'd taken my offical language test, which is a few weeks off. But then for some reason she decided she'd start the process based on the fact that we'd informed the testing agency I want to take the test (we had a copy of the form I sent in.)

WOMAN: Photocopy your documents and then bring the copies back to me, please.
US: Where do we photocopy them?
WOMAN: In the waiting area, there are two machines...

There were two machines, but one was kaputt (your vocabulary word for the day), probably due to excessive button-pushing by an army of over-zealous Serbs, Albanians, Ukranians, Turks, or possibly Americans whose stack of documents choked the machine. The surviving machine had a line of people waiting, so we frantically starting digging for coins to feed it, finally finding some. (The trick was not to fuck around when it came your turn, because the line was getting longer and the clock was ticking---the office was about to close for the day.) Ten minutes or so later, we finished, then returned the copied documents and waited among the poor, the tired, and the huddled masses for our number to come up again.

The number came up after ten minutes or so. We went in and saw another woman. She took my fingerprints, then sent us upstairs to pay a fee of 80 Euro. We paid, and took the receipt back downstairs.

WOMAN: Now we need a copy of B's credit report, and proof that John has passed his language test---when that happens---and a statement from the US regarding your criminal record. [or lack thereof, in my case. So far.] And then we will begin to process this case.

And here the woman saved us a big hassle----she told us the US consulate could provide the "criminal record" document. Our research had led us to believe we'd have to get it from my local police department, or the State of Oklahoma, or the Federal government---faxing stuff back and forth, etc. Nope. Go to the consulate and they'll have what we need, said the lady.

I have to say the entire process went more smoothly than we'd expected. Or feared, as the case may be. Of course things haven't really started, as such----we've just delivered most of the papers they needed: certified translations of our marriage documents, my birth certificate, her birth certificate, my passport, her residency papers, etc. When we deliver the other papers, I guess they start the ball rolling. After that, who knows?

The whole thing took a couple of hours, plus many hours of preparation beforehand, mostly by B----researching what they'd need, gathering the stuff, having the English-language papers translated, making phone calls, etc. etc.

It's a hassle moving to any country. Still, I think it's easier here than trying to get a US "green card."

As I told my German-school classmate while we were waiting for our respective trains home after class, a guy from Canada whose sister resides in the US, "Getting a US green card is like trying to break into prison."

He gave a knowing smirk of agreement. Then our trains arrived. He jumped on his, I jumped on mine.

Somehow or another, we're always taking a train (metaphorical or otherwise) some damned place.