Bureaucracies -- how many tries does it take?

Today, we had a great achievement.

Slovenia doesn't have a visa program the way most countries do, so instead, upon arriving we have to register with the police (which gives us legal status for 90 days), register for a tax ID number, and then eventually submit our paperwork and be fingerprinted for temporary residence permits. This morning, during what looked like the only break in the rain before the holidays at the end of the week, we biked across town for my second and Jedd's third trip to the tax office.

When Jedd went the first time he had his paperwork and, after getting a copy of his passport, submitted everything to a woman behind a glass wall. He assumed he would receive his tax ID number in the mail. It never came, perhaps partially because his address was incomplete, but potentially also because the process is thoroughly opaque. A Fulbright Scholar we met went to the same office, sat down in an office with someone and received his tax ID number the same day. We have no idea why this didn't happen for us.

On our first attempt today, at a booth that looked like it was information, we walked up and said: "Dober dan! Prosim, samo anglesko." This means: "Hello, please we only speak English." Her response: "no." Then she sent us to the next booth over, the one Jedd had tried a few weeks before. We approached the second desk and she similarly visibly shuddered at the fact that we don't speak very much Slovene. She made us get copies of our passports. When we came back, Jedd had translated and written down the following: "I have already submitted an application, but I put the wrong address on it." We later determined that, in essence, what he had really written was: "We are very stupid people who don't speak your language and we really need extra help."

Somehow, this worked. We were given a letter and a number on a post-it. First, we thought it was a form, but then she sort of yelled "reception" at us as we were looking at all the forms and we went to the reception desk. After checking our passports they sent us down the hallway and we found a woman at a desk in an office. When we tried our usual, "Hello we are sorry we only speak English," she replied (in Slovene), "I only speak Slovene." It was immediately apparent that she spoke English quite well and she quickly made copies of our passports, stapled everything together, stamped our forms and told us we would get our papers in the mail in one week. We were very grateful. When Jedd said it's a complicated process she corrected him, "no, it's not."

As it turns out bureaucracies just might be exactly the same in every country. Lots of forms that are confusing to fill out and lines that seem to move slowly and employees who seem exasperated and annoyed and borderline angry that you would have the audacity to ask them to do what you think their job is. Today, we are grateful to have cleared one more hurdle towards getting our temporary residence permits. Or, at least, we hope we've cleared it. I guess we'll find out next week.