Bureaucratic Nightmare
Imagine that you have a choice. On one hand, you can walk into the scorched and flaming realm of Purgatory; a place of charred and misshapen rock, fashioned from faces that scream their silent, eternal screams as their mouths are filled with great globs of bubbling black pitch, dripping and and spattering eternally from the darkness above. On the other hand, you can endure German bureaucracy. I’ll take the Hellfire, please and thank you.
This week has been an unending nightmare of red tape and redirection, as we navigate the labyrinthine maze of opaque and ever-shifting processes necessary to secure a work visa, book an appointment at a local hospital, and register our newly purchased van. Only one of the many people we have met with has been genuinely helpful, seeking to guide and direct us toward the speck of light that is our goal; the others have all been petty, pedantic or outright patronising; each contradicting information gathered from another or found online, each seeming to have the sole aim of finding a way to get out of doing any actual work as early as possible. Thankfully, there have been glimmers of joy amidst the slush of hopeless, helpless feelings that have darkened our minds, else we might have given up entirely.
Whew. Now that I’ve gotten that out, let me explain.
The biggest issue was getting Siegfried registered. We thought finding the right van would be the hard part - now all we need to do now is register him, we thought, and we’ll be on our way. We had no idea what we were getting into. We have spent a whole week attending appointment after appointment, asking questions, double- and triple-checking our forms…yet every appointment, we were met with people shaking their heads; ‘no, that’s not possible as a non-resident;’ ‘no, you’re missing such-and-such;’ ‘no, we don’t do that at this office, but you should be able to at this other office.’ We drove as far as forty minutes out of the way, filled out the extra forms, phoned ahead to make sure we had everything we would need - none of it mattered. We need to register as residents, too, and that has been its own impossible task. It is as though the blank granite face of ‘the System’ is staring down at us wherever we go, implacable, gleefully blocking each of our attempts to cooperate with it. Fast-forward to the end of the week, and we have nothing at all to show for our efforts.
So, what about those glimmers of joy, you ask? Well, we’ve been busily preparing what we can, outfitting Siegfried with all sorts of bits and pieces. We took a day-trip to Ikea and stocked up on plates and sheets and pots and pans, and all the other paraphernalia of life on the road. We experienced snow for the first time since touching down - a curtain of white flurries drifting down late one evening, adding a little childlike excitement to the end of an otherwise long and disappointing day. We went to our first Christmas market, shimmering with lights that bedecked stalls selling leatherbound journals and mammoth-tooth jewellery, or those offering mulled wine and candied almonds and fried potato and bratwurst. It was magical, even in the light rain and the frostiness of the evening. We sifted through boxes of Alessandra’s childhood things, too - old photo albums and necklaces; stuffed animals and decorations - and Alessandra tried to hide the most embarrassing pictures from view.
Mateo got to ride the ferris wheel!
That pretty much sums up this week on our Road 2 Grow. Unfortunately, I’ve been laid up for the last few days, after pulling my back out while setting up Siegfried. Some awkward bend or sudden rise tipped it over the edge, activating the built in autolock don’t-you-even-try-to-fucking-move™ safety feature. I barely managed to hobble home, and there was naught to do but lay like a plank on the bed, hot water bottle under my lower back, trying to distract myself with whatever was at hand. As I settle into my indent on the couch, now seems a good time to go through the learning to be pulled from this hot mess of a week:
Hell is wading through a system that was not designed to help people like you.
Petty middle-managers with no real power are those most likely to misuse the little they have.
When the majority of the people you encounter seem to be seeking ways to shirk effort and pass on responsibility, those who actually care and want to help shine like beacons.
When times are tough, the little things become more important than ever.
The body has safety features to stop you from messing it up too badly: fuck around with it at your peril.
