September 1. We have been here nearly a month, but I still do not officially exist. We are waiting for me to be assigned the Dutch equivalent of a social security number, without which I cannot get a job or even open a bank account. We should have had it by now already, but one thing that hasn't been a culture clash is dealing with bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are bureaucrats, wherever they are. It's a mind set, a behavior pattern, yea I suspect genetic underpinnings! You'd think I'd be inured to the sheer idiocy of it, after having been a U.S. federal victim employee for 12 years and a life-long victim recipient of various federal agencies' demands and services. But no. My first experience here, when we went to the city hall to register our residency in Breda and apply for my BSN number, was classic.
The Dutch government requires apostilles of everything. An apostille, in English, is an authentication from the state that your certified state vital statistics-type document was certified by someone actually recognized by the state to have the authority to validate the particular vital-statistics-type document in question (god, I hate sentences that have the word "certified," "authentication," and "validate" in them, much less all three. And now let's just go ahead and add "apostille" to the list, shall we?). The processes of obtaining apostilles for my birth certificate, our marriage license, and Ben's birth certificate were a pain in the pick-your-body-part, but we duly applied for, paid for, received, and brought with us all of these documents (can we add the word "documents" to the above list?) to the scheduled appointment. The idiot bureaucrat in question - oops sorry, that was redundant, wasn't it? - failed to find any evidence of said appointment on the books. Nevertheless, she graciously condescended to officiate (add to list above). When she got to the apostille for my birth certificate, she was disapproving. For whatever bizarre reason, my official, apostilled, State of New York birth certificate nowhere lists the names of my parents. Which I grant you is strange and unexpected. She was not sure she could accept said document due to lack of said names. I was very well behaved and didn't say a word to her (Wijo was handling the whole transaction and I decided to keep my mouth shut rather than share my true feelings). Now, here's my position on this sort of thing. DO NOT TELL me exactly what I am required to do, make me jump through all the hoops necessary to DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU ASKED, and then tell me the final official (add to list), authenticated exactly-what-you-asked-for-document is unacceptable. If that's my official NY birth certificate, it's goddamnwell my official NY birth certificate, and ain't no other form of my official NY birth certificate $&! available, I tell you! I could have throttled her with the yarn I was sitting there spinning on my drop spindle in a futile attempt to hang on to a shred of sanity. We were saved, ultimately, by the fact that our official, authenticated-by-the-State-of-Virginia marriage license, does, in fact, list my parents' names, which I had to point out to her after she checked and remarked, in feigned regret, that their names were not there either (at which point I did jump into the fray and play the Game of Bureaucracy, informing her that the names were listed as items 21 and 22 on the document). I think Wijo was absolutely amazed that I did not, at any time during that protracted and painfully bureaucratic meeting, attempt homicide. Nope, I'm still a free and at-liberty non-citizen.
My next scheduled dance with Bureaucracy is on Thursday, when we go to den Bosch to apply for my permanent residency status. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.
The Dutch government requires apostilles of everything. An apostille, in English, is an authentication from the state that your certified state vital statistics-type document was certified by someone actually recognized by the state to have the authority to validate the particular vital-statistics-type document in question (god, I hate sentences that have the word "certified," "authentication," and "validate" in them, much less all three. And now let's just go ahead and add "apostille" to the list, shall we?). The processes of obtaining apostilles for my birth certificate, our marriage license, and Ben's birth certificate were a pain in the pick-your-body-part, but we duly applied for, paid for, received, and brought with us all of these documents (can we add the word "documents" to the above list?) to the scheduled appointment. The idiot bureaucrat in question - oops sorry, that was redundant, wasn't it? - failed to find any evidence of said appointment on the books. Nevertheless, she graciously condescended to officiate (add to list above). When she got to the apostille for my birth certificate, she was disapproving. For whatever bizarre reason, my official, apostilled, State of New York birth certificate nowhere lists the names of my parents. Which I grant you is strange and unexpected. She was not sure she could accept said document due to lack of said names. I was very well behaved and didn't say a word to her (Wijo was handling the whole transaction and I decided to keep my mouth shut rather than share my true feelings). Now, here's my position on this sort of thing. DO NOT TELL me exactly what I am required to do, make me jump through all the hoops necessary to DO EXACTLY WHAT YOU ASKED, and then tell me the final official (add to list), authenticated exactly-what-you-asked-for-document is unacceptable. If that's my official NY birth certificate, it's goddamnwell my official NY birth certificate, and ain't no other form of my official NY birth certificate $&! available, I tell you! I could have throttled her with the yarn I was sitting there spinning on my drop spindle in a futile attempt to hang on to a shred of sanity. We were saved, ultimately, by the fact that our official, authenticated-by-the-State-of-Virginia marriage license, does, in fact, list my parents' names, which I had to point out to her after she checked and remarked, in feigned regret, that their names were not there either (at which point I did jump into the fray and play the Game of Bureaucracy, informing her that the names were listed as items 21 and 22 on the document). I think Wijo was absolutely amazed that I did not, at any time during that protracted and painfully bureaucratic meeting, attempt homicide. Nope, I'm still a free and at-liberty non-citizen.
My next scheduled dance with Bureaucracy is on Thursday, when we go to den Bosch to apply for my permanent residency status. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it.
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