Bratislava Blues

My apologies for the lack of blogging. But I’m extremely lazy. Anyway, I spent the weekend in Moravia and Slovakia, as promised. Jana’s mother taught me how to cook goulash, which I will unleash upon my family once I reach the shores of the motherland. I also had the strange experience of watching the ESPN website during the Texas-CU game in Moravia. I’m absolutely sure I was the only person in the whole province that cared what was happening. Nonetheless I was overjoyed with the non-choke of UT (compared with the other two big 12 championship games I attended). 70-3 is a stupendous ass-kicking, but I absolutely could not watch it in person due to my extreme sensitivity. After the goulash and small Czech town, I headed for the small Slovak capital of Bratislava. The city is always portrayed as a piece of crap in travel writing and movies, but it’s actually a nice, cute little town. Like a mini-prague. The historical center is tiny but beautiful, with several nice churches and a number of palaces and baroque buildings. The best part is that it is all a pedestrian zone, so you can walk around the whole thing without worrying about cars. I can’t overstate how great that is. Besides that, there are some cool cafes – very Vienna influenced. And there are all sorts of humorous statues and joke monuments around the center. We arrived on Sunday evening and immediately headed to the main square, enjoying the hot wine in the Christmas market. There were a couple thousand people hanging around eating kolbasas, drinking wine and generally enjoying themselves. The unusual thing (compared to Prague, at least) was that everyone seemed to be local – no british stag parties, trashy Italian schoolkids, or arab women in blankets scaring the children. Just local Slovaks enjoying their Town Square, Christmas market, and hot wine. Prague, on the other hand, has become a sort of Disneyland – downtown is only tourists, businesses consist of brothels and money changers. I don’t know what people should do, I have no solution, but I definitely appreciate that some cities are doing much better. My reason for being in Bratislava might be familiar – my work visa! Such a Kafka-esque bureaucratic nightmare can only be expressed as ‘complete bullshit’, which is more-or-less what I told the Czech woman working at the embassy. She didn’t take it kindly. I had to show up there at 8am in order to get in line. The odd thing about this is that the Czech embassy in Bratislava is right next to the American embassy. There was a line in front of the American embassy consisting of Slovaks trying to get to America…and there was a line in front of the Czech embassy consisting of Americans trying to get into the CR. Just a strange juxtaposition. I battled my way to the front of the line and found myself at a window with a faceless bureaucrat. She had a face, but no initiative or creativity, therefore I consider her an automaton – a useless holdover from the communist era where the purpose of government ‘services’ was not to serve but to convince people to stay away from the government. This woman took a look at my application and said the following: 1) I need a third picture of you (because 2 couldn’t possibly be enough Nick) 2) Your application might get rejected because some of your documents say “Nicholas Moles” instead of your full name, ‘Nicholas Ian Moles’ 3) I need more copies of your entire application. Go get copies and come back later. After this I was practically shoved out the door and forced to wander the early morning streets of Bratislava in search of the post-communist equivalent of Kinko’s. Amazingly enough I found one, cheap, with stupefyingly awesome service. Your typical Kinkos is manned by an indifferent college student who views your failures at the copy machine with scorn and derision. Inside the Slovak copy I was met by a hot young woman who happily took my pile, copied everything, then charged about 6 dollars for 40 copies. And she smiled. Amazing. Back to the bureaucracy I went. The bitchy bureaucrat suddenly changed her attitude, asking me about the weather outside. I said it was cold. This led to the following exchange: Her: You must be used to the cold weather now. Me: Not really, I’m from Texas and probably will never be used to it. Her: But you’re from Maryland, it says so here on your passport Me: That’s where I was born. I later moved to Texas. Her: (Incomprehension) Me: (Astonishment) The conversation ended after that. She stamped my papers about 8 times, signed them, then directed me to the other window for my short term visa. This is where the fun began. A quick history of my visa: 1) I had a long-term working visa. This ran out in September. My renewal was rejected due to a small technicality on my housing paper. 2) I got a short-term visa in Dresden. This covers me for 3 months. 3) I need a long-term visa from Bratislava, valid for a year. I also need a short-term visa that will cover me during the 6 weeks it takes them to process the long-term visa. I moved to the short term visa window. An even older bureaucrat met me. She immediately told me that there was no such thing as a short-term work visa. I said there was, and that I have two. She rushed to meet her younger automatoncolleague, and they spoke together in their bureauczech. They both came over to me: (and I paraphrase) Younger: You can’t get a short-term work visa Me: But I have a work permit and all my papers are in order Younger: You already have 4 short-term visas. You can’t have another Me: I only have two. I need a visa to work Older: It looks suspicious that you want so many short-term visas Me: Why does it look suspicious? I have a work permit meaning I can legally work in your country. Younger: You should apply for the long-term visa. Me: I just did that. I turned it into you and you stamped it 8 times. Younger: Then that’s okay. Just wait for that. Me: I can’t. My short-term visa expires at the end of the month. The long term visa will take six weeks. I need something in between so that I can legally work! Younger: Don’t get angry with me. You should know the law Me: But I have all the legal documents in order to get the visa. You just want me to stop working for 6 weeks while I wait for you to issue the visa? Her: Yes Me: But I just want to work! I have all the legal documents Younger and Older: (Stare at me with disgust) Older: I will call our vice-consul. Please wait. At this point I SMS my girlfriend (who is awesome, by the way) and ask her to call the HR woman at my office and have her call me (my stupid phone not allowing me to make calls in Slovakistan.) She calls me and asks me how things are going. At this point the older bureaucrat starts yelling at me and shaking her finger and pointing at a sign that says ‘no mobile phones’. I stare at her while I continue talking on the phone, describing to HR my problem. I take a seat and wait. About ten minutes later the older woman politely calls me over, smiling, and says that they’ll process my visa. I am confused. I call HR and she tells me that she called the agency handing my visa (yes, it’s so bad that they hired an agency for me). The agency called the Czech foreign police, who in turn called the embassy and told them they had to do it. I am simply amazed by the complete nonsense of this. Everyone was having this trouble too. I kept seeing the same people running in and out of the consulate with new stamps, copies, and much anger and confusion. But I didn’t care – I was done, and I walked out into the pleasant, dreary drizzle of a mitteleuropan autumn.