postcard 33: legal immigrant
The one where one of us gets a visa.
Sometimes life abroad feels like one big vacation. I write these postcards, which truly are just journal entries, so I don’t forget a single detail of this whirlwind adventure we’re on.
But other weeks, I stare at the blinking cursor on a blank page and wonder, does this mundane slice of life really deserve to be catalogued? But, I think that’s the point. In a decade I want to look back and remember the time we got chased by cows in Austria and all the amazing things we ate in Italy, but I also want to remember what going to the market feels like or slow weekends where nothing noteworthy happens, except each little detail that makes up a life here which I know is short and fleeting.
It both feels like it’s been a split second and half our lives, but somehow our not so little puppy is two. We’d spent months lobbing ideas back and forth on how to celebrate her European birthday but the night before we have no plans. We take her to the beach to swim in the dying light and she chases a few sticks halfheartedly before following us to a cafe for drinks. We hastily wrap a new bag of treats in brown paper and I pick a hike in Slovenia. I know it’s silly, that she has no idea it’s her birthday and will appreciate any adventure we give her, but even when I wake up the next morning, totally not feeling it, I insist we press on. Per usual, Google Maps lets us down and the two hour drive takes four. By the time we start up the incline, I’m already feeling so done with the day. Finally, Topher calls it and we take her off leash to zoom in the leaves while I try not to cry. She runs up to me with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth and it’s very obvious she’s thinking BEST DAY EVER.
We stop in Lake Bled and order burgers and onion rings from a walk-up window and she gets her own order of chicken nuggets and fries. She sticks her snout in the cardboard container and pulls them out one at a time as we sit in a gazebo overlooking the lake. There’s a mishmash of folk music in the air and as we walk closer to town we realize we've stumbled upon an accordion festival. There must be a hundred people, mostly kids, I’m surprised to see, lugging instruments around town and playing them on corners. Hazelnut gives us her signature, “this is so weird but I think I love it” bounce and sleeps the entire drive home. I promise her we’ll get brave and post on the expat Facebook group to find her a dog friend.
If Google Translate is correct (which feels like a 50% chance based on Maps’ frequent failings), our visas have been approved. Or, at least, mine has. The whole process has taken 10 months and it's not over yet. We leave Hazelnut in the air conditioning and walk downtown, hand in hand, to do all of our errands. We print off the bill from the ministry at the print shop, because there is no online bill pay here and if you want to pay a bill, you have to have the physical copy. We take the bill to the bank and stop at the ATM to get cash for passport photos. The lady at the five minute photo stall next to the market has me tilt my head back and forth so many times I can’t stop laughing. She frowns and fixes my hair and finally snaps a few shots. She tries to fix Topher's cowlick, before giving up and just taking the picture. While we wait, we buy strawberries and eggs from our favorite vendors. We declare this errand day fun and grab coffees from our favorite bakery before heading to the post office to pick up a package. It’s 85° in there, at least, and we wait in line forever. By the time we leave we’re sweaty and wilted and pick up sandwiches on the way home as our reward for accomplishing all the things.
I have everything the ministry asked for in their approval email and we show up five minutes to 7:30am the next day, the time when the take-a-number machine starts printing tickets. We’re number 12 and we groan as we notice the groups of foreign workers, clumped around a single Croatian foreman, holding one number apiece ahead of us. It’s going to be awhile. We sit on the steps and wait as the numbers tick by. Two hours later, our number is called and we’re pleased to find the teller who speaks the best English at the counter. I hand over my documents and we are so close I can smell it, but then she frowns.
“There is problem with your OIB.”
We’re both ready to do battle. The OIB is a tax ID number that's supposed to come with your visa, but the problem is, you can't do anything in Croatia without one. Apartment rentals, paying a bill, even the vet wouldn’t vaccinate Hazelnut without one. So, we’d skirted the system in November and gone down to the tax office to get them in our own. I’m envisioning a bureaucratic headache with two OIB numbers attached to my name, but then she holds out the form and shows me the man at the tax office hit the space bar twice between my first and my middle name. We have to go to the tax office to fix it and come back and wait in line another day, all because of an extra space.
I might be mad if I wasn’t laughing at the ludicrousness of it all, especially when she sends us to the post office in the lobby with a note that details something we need to buy. The postal worker pulls out a binder and tears off several things that look like stamps. We eye them in disbelief. It’s kuna, the currency Croatia hasn’t used in 18 months since it joined the Euro zone. The ministry is still processing payments in the old currency.
When Topher gets a call from a random Croatian number later that morning, it feels like the cherry on top of our journey through the wonders of Croatian bureaucracy. The liquor store below us received a noise complaint sometime in the past, so now the city needs to send an inspector to do a noise level check from our patio. At 10:30 at night. And it’ll take an hour. The inspector knocks at our door at 10:49pm and says there’s a problem with the electricity downstairs, so they’ll have to come back next week.
The tax office is just as befuddled as we are, and it takes me 10 minutes to get the man behind the desk threatening to rain file folders down in an epic cascade, to understand what I mean by extra space. They are out of the correct form, so he prints me something else and shoos us out. I am solidly 50% sure it’s fixed in the online system. On the way back to the car we take a different route and gaze up at historic buildings we haven’t noticed before and get lost behind the train station.
Another four hours on Friday and I give the ministry my fingerprints in exchange for a little white slip that says I am allowed to be here. Topher’s is apparently an adventure for another day.
-Mikaela