My Rant

Alright, brace yourself, I'm warning you now...this whole post is gonna be one big rant. But trust me when I say that I've got good reason to bitch about something. Now those of you who know me, know that generally I'm a very positive, happy-go-lucky guy who doesn't normally let shitty stuff get to him, but here's an exception.

It's called Czech Bureaucracy, and it's me hard, like a bullet to the brain.

It's all cause of my attempt to become legal here in the Czech, as technically I've been working illegally since I arrived. The Czech visa process is long and arduous, involving a million steps and even more paperwork, with more bureaucratic government hoops to jump through than you can imagine. Let my try and give you a brief summary (if that's even possible) of how one becomes legal here in the Czech.

Firstly, the government expects you to already have a work visa before you arrive as they cannot be done within the country. Now in order to begin The Process you need to have an employer to vouch for you and provide them with your employment stats, but of course, obviously, it's pretty darn hard to get a job without actually being here for interviews and such. It also takes (on average) three months to get a visa, so what employer is gonna hire you from across the ocean and then be willing to wait through three months of paperwork before you start is beyond me.

Anyway, after shuffling documents and paperwork back and forth between my school and Baker Tilly (the agency responsible for acting as visa middlemen), getting photos done, going for a Czech physical to 'prove that I'm healthy enough to work here', signing documents so that Baker Tilly can do a criminal check on me, getting lease papers from my landlord to prove that I do live where I say I do...blah blah blah...after getting all of this crap done, I then have to actually leave the country to begin the formal application.

Yes, you read right. I have to leave the Czech Republic in order to continue the process. WTF? Actually it's not too much of a shock to me, as I had to fly to Japan for the day to get my Korean work visa back in the day...but still...surely there must be an easier way?

So one day back in January my school drove me and a couple other teachers (along with our Baker Tilly agent) to the nearest Czech Embassy, which is located in Dresden, Germany. I had to take a day off of work - unpaid - and it was about two and a half hours each way to Dresden and back. I think we spent a total of about one hour in the Embassy, of which the only thing that I had to actually do was be there just so that they could see that my real life appearance matches the photo in my passport. Wow. A whole unpaid day off of work for something that took me ten seconds. Not exactly efficient, is it?

What happens after this is that the Embassy decides to accept or reject your application, and if it's accepted (it always is at this stage) they mail it back to Prague, to the Foreign Police office, as they are the ones who actually process your visa. Ummm...why couldn't we have just taken the application papers directly to the Foreign Police ourselves?

So a month goes by, the FP approve our visas, and what's the next step after this you ask? They then mail all the documents back to the Embassy in Dresden and then...yes, you guessed it...we have to drive back to pick them up! So yes that means another day off of work, and another journey to Germany and back. This time we spent even less time in the Embassy - I think we spent a grand total of maybe 60 minutes in Germany altogether?

At this point in the story you may think that this couldn't get any more bureaucratic, with all this hopskotching back and forth between Ceska Republika and Deutschland. Oh no. There's more! Ooooh the fun!

Now I've been quite easy-going up until this point, and have to even confess that I rather enjoyed the little free road trips to Germany (hello extra stamps in my passport!) but the next step is the one that pissed me off...

So now that we have our passports with our lovely pretty full-page work visas inside, we have to take our passports back to the Foreign Police office to register them. Ummm...HELLO? You guys *just* gave me the visa, and now you want me to bring the very same visa back to you to show you what you just printed off a few days before? HONESTLY!!!???

Now this is the last and final step in the whole process (finally!) but....

BUT

....this is by far the worst step in the whole process. Welcome to the Foreign Police Office, Welcome To Hell. The FPO is the ultimate in bureaucratic nightmares. Picture absolute government chaos, multiple this image by a thousand, and you might just begin to start describing the scene that can be found there.

After returning from Dresden in the early afternoon, a few of us decided that it would be most convenient to go straight to the FPO to get this over and done with. Oh what naive young little foreigners we were! Mwahahahaha! (insert evil laugh here.)

We were greeted with what has to be the Ninth Level of Hell. A million people all over the place, all angry and frustrated and as confused as you are. Dozens of lines, with no indication which one you're supposed to be in. A swarm of people circling the ticket box. And an info desk, which at first seemed like a ray of hope in a sea of darkness and despair.

We thought that the Info Desk would be a good place to get information on where to go and what to do. Oh how very, very wrong we were. There's yet another swarm of pissed off foreigners buzzing around this desk, and when you finally fight your way to the front of the line (actually here there is no line, it's just whoever can push to the front the hardest that gets served) you discover that the only language they speak at the Info Desk is Czech. Now remember, this is the Foreign Police, ie: no Czech speakers ever have to come here. It's only for foreigners. Foreigners who are new to the country. Foreigners who don't fucking speak Czech. The languages you hear in this hellhole of a waiting room echo like the United Nations - English, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish, French, German, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, various African languages...but none of us speak Czech. SO WOULDN'T IT MAKE SENSE TO HAVE SOMEONE AT THE INFO DESK WHO SPEAKS A LANGUAGE OTHER THAN CZECH!!??? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????????/

*breath in Scotty, breath out...*

We attempted to ask the lady for help in both English and Russian, but all we got was an angry "NO ENGLISH!" and a wave in our face to shoo us away. Wow, great service here. We then, after wandering lost in the main waiting room for half an hour, figured out that the swarm around the ticket box is because only so many tickets are printed per day, and most of them go in the morning, so until the box prints out more tickets, you can't ever expect to get served. We met two guys from Botswana who had been waiting three hours already for a ticket, and still no luck. Holy fuck this place blows! It was then time to the "Abort!" button and give up for this day.

We heard through the grapevine that if you actually want to have a hope in hell of getting served, you have to visit the office early to get a ticket. And not just early, but Really Fucking Early. Like before the offices even open at 7:30am!. So that you can line-up and hope and pray that you will get a ticket. Oh boy this is gonna be fun...

I had early classes for the next few days so it wasn't until the following Tuesday that I was able to make it down to the offices in the early hours. I woke up at 6am and trudged on down to FPO, arriving about 40 minutes before the office was to open. I was greeted with a queue of what must've been at least 200 hundred people! Apparently some of them had been there since 5am, just to get a spot in line!! Once again, let me throw out a "WTF"!!!???

Trying to remain positive that I wasn't too late, I waited patiently until the doors opened at 7:30. At this point the entire line disintegrated into a angry, selfish, shoving, pushing mob of people trying to squeeze through the narrow doors. It was a 'Dog Eat Dog' moment, and was truly chaotic. After shoving your way through the doors you then have to funnel up the narrow stairwell to the second floor, where you're pretty much moving at a snail's pace and people keep budding around and over you, desperate to get ahead. It was disgusting and made me hate all of humanity for about 20 minutes.

When I finally got into the waiting room, and got to the front of the line at The Ticket Box, I was greeted by a surly round farmhouse woman, and a tall handsome police office (why was he there? to maintain order? well you're not so successful at this, are you buddy?) I showed her a piece of paper where, written in Czech, was the reason why I was there (so she'd know what kind of ticket to give me.) She looked at the paper and then responded with "Tomorrow."

And that was it.

Actually it was the word 'tomorrow' in about four or five languages. And then I was pushed out of line. Spat out like yesterday's trash, left standing in a state of rage and shock and pure disbelief. I had woken up at the crack of dawn on my morning off, ventured all the way down here, stood in line in the cold, fought tooth and nail (actually I was pretty passive while in line, maybe therein lies my fault...) and finally got to the front, only to get cast off and told to come back tomorrow. And I couldn't even ask her why as "tomorrow" is the only word she knows in English.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At this point, for a brief moment, I just about went postal and wanted to kill everyone in the room. But, it was so frustrating and aggravating it was almost hilarious. Kafka couldn't have even dreamed up such a modern day bureaucratic nightmare in his dark and depressing novels as this.

I stood there, looking around at the chaos surrounding me, watching the hundreds of other foreigners drowning in the deafenings sounds of despair and confusion (I wasn't the only one who was so brutally rejected), and decided that I really did have just about enough of this bullshit. And so I left.

That was a week and a half ago, and I haven't been back since. The silent rage boiled inside of me for quite a while, but the real reason I haven't gone back yet, besides the fact that I'm actually not a sado-masochist, is that I've been working early morning classes every single day. And I'm sorry, but at this point I'm just not willing to take another unpaid morning off of work to go stand in a line that may or may not result in my visa getting registered. No sirree.

Oh I'll get back down there eventually, likely next week actually, but I certainly can't say I'm looking forward to it. Frankly an afternoon of root canals would be more pleasant than having having to go back there again, but I guess I don't have a choice.

Stay tuned for an update after I venture back down there... I'm sure I'll have a whole new bag of horror stories to share with you after this!