The Wonders of Post-Communist Bureaucracy

This has been a slow, relatively dull week. I guess this is the quiet post-holiday hangover time for Belgrade. The weather this week has been uniformly gray and dull, the mood seems flat and tired, and pretty much everyone and their mother is sick with something. Everyone is busy preparing for welcome-back-to-school exams, returning to work after holiday vacations, or just resting from the new year and Xmas revelry (both rounds of it).

This week started off on the wrong foot for me, as I got to, once again, experience the joys and wonders of Serbian bureaucracy. All foreigners staying in the country for substantial amounts of time are supposed to register at the nearest police station within 3 days of arrival, according to the law. That’s all fine and dandy, I have no problem with that. If you check into a hotel or are here for work, usually these things are taken care of by the host institution. If you’re living here, your landlord needs to accompany you and vouch for you at the station, which is where my situation becomes complicated. My landlord, being located in Denmark, had to jump through some hoops and fill out paperwork at the Serbian embassy in Denmark, then have it sent here. Naturally, this was done with all due haste; I mean, three and a half months is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for these things.

Now with the paperwork in said landlord’s local cousin’s possession, you’d think things would be ok. After about our third fruitless visit to the police station it was revealed to us (my roommate and I) that it would probably just be simpler to make some sort of border run to get a new entrance visa and come back to register “within the rules” of the 3 day time limit. Since both of us were on the eve of holiday travels, we both thought this was reasonable, and my roommate was actually able to get registered with no hassles upon his return.

When I returned from Prague, however, I was informed that the monolingual local landlord 's cousin (say that three times real fast) could not meet with me and go to the station within 3 days of my arrival; I’d have to wait until Monday, 5 days after my arrival, but I was assured that this would be “no problem”, which I thought was reasonable. I have talked to about a dozen other foreigners here, the majority of which were able to register with no fuss after 3 days, so it would appear that the 3 day rule is not extremely rigid.

I guess that makes me unlucky or something, because I wasted yet ANOTHER goddamn* morning at the stupid ass police station being yelled at in Serbian by surly hung-over cops and being moved around from desk to desk to yet another desk, to another wing of the station, another desk, another office, another desk, downstairs to another office, another desk, another desk, another desk, back upstairs, another official, another desk, all ending up BACK AT THE SAME FUCKING DESK I STARTED AT. All this, just to be told to basically fuck off, I was too late.

Now I’m not sure exactly what they expect me to do. Besides being pissed at my landlord for putting me in this situation by his utter laziness (this is just one gripe among many others I have with him), I do have to express some considerable admiration for the sheer dedication to utter fucking incompetence the Serbian police apparently show in this matter. At the risk of offending any Serbian readers of this blog, I’m gonna make a big statement here. All I need is a simple piece of paper; it simply has my name, address, date of arrival, any police officer’s signature and a stamp. That’s IT. There is NO GODDAMN EXCUSE why this should be so complicated to get, 3 days or not. To my great consternation, I realized as I was leaving the station for the 4^th futile time that SHITTY LITTLE AFRICAN COUNTRIES CAN DO THIS BULLSHIT BETTER THAN SERBIANS. There, I said it. There is just no excuse for people as smart and sophisticated as Serbs to be so goddamn stupid about such a simple ass matter.

Anyways, that’s pretty much the end of the rant. At this point I guess I have no recourse left but to call the US Embassy and see if they can help me where my worthless landlord cannot. In the meantime now, I apparently can’t leave from the main Belgrade airport now; if I want to fly anywhere, I have to book a ticket now from fucking Budapest or something. Not only that but I’m fairly sure this puts me in a somewhat precarious situation legally speaking in Serbia. I’ve made it for three months without being registered ok, but now it’s going to start interfering with my work and stuff. I’ve been commissioned to write a story about the Chinese people in Belgrade, and I want to interview some Serbian immigration or whatever officials. In this part of the world though, people pretty much automatically assume that any foreigner walking around asking questions is a spy. Guess what the first thing they will ask me for is, if I ever schedule an interview with any Serbian govt. official? Yep, police registration. I'm sure it'll be fiiiiiiiiine to walk into Serbian government buildings as a completely illegal foreigner asking questions, that's not suspicious at all or anything.

With such stunningly efficient bureaucracy I’m actually quite shocked that Serbs aren’t the ones who coined the term “going postal”.

*(sorry for the swearing, Grandma)

Amsterdam Impressions

This is what I wrote within hours of my extraction from Amsterdam:

After approximately 42 hours stuck on a crowded bus driving across Europe with a bunch of Serbs, I finally arrived into Amsterdam with the crowd and we checked into the hostel.

Eight days later now I have finally managed to crawl out of the cesspit of Amsterdam, in a style completely appropriate for that length of stay in that city. I’m sitting hungover, sleepless, broke, unshowered and wearing the same clothes for the third day in a row, unshaved, and sick as a dog in the airport in Milan slowly getting re-acquainted with my sanity.

Amsterdam was overwhelming, incredible, utterly bizarre, decadent and depraved, stylish, neat, rich, endlessly fascinating in some ways and utterly dull in others, rational and yet illogical at the same time. I guess the simplest way to describe is as the sum of its parts. To me, it seemed like an extremely nice, lovely and old European city that was rented out for a huge sleazy frat party, 27/7, 365. That was basically it. It was all quite confusing, really; I’ve never seen so many different people from literally around the world in one place, and with everyone getting along so harmoniously and in such an environment. Yet everything in Amsterdam is so seemingly problem free, and the international-ism and tolerance stuff taken so far and so seriously, that in the end it all feels only skin deep and rather shallow. Basically Amsterdam is nothing more than a neat old European city with great architecture where people from around the world go to get completely, utterly and totally fucked up. It’s Disneyworld for adults, or perhaps the international version of Las Vegas. Amazing and yet also quite overrated at the same contradictory time.

Now I’m on my way to Prague, finally, and fittingly leaving Amsterdam like a cat who spent a few too many rough nights in the gutter.

Apres l'aventure Europeene

Once again my procrastinating has left this blog neglected for too long. With great apologies to my many fans :P I’m happy to report that I’m back from almost a month of traveling adventures (or misadventures, depending on your perspective I suppose) through Europe, which makes for a whole lot of updating that I will do in a few parts.

So in more or less chronological order, here’s the summarized update since my last post...

After a short but enjoyable Christmas visit from my dad to Belgrade, I packed my bags and hopped onto a bus to Amsterdam to spend New Year’s there. The trip was organized by a hip young (as in, run by a bunch of young peeps) Serbian travel company, and accordingly the whole trip was fun, chaotic, messy, crazy, enthusiastic, and just generally one heck of an experience. Traveling with Serbs in general was an interesting endeavor that I will write more about later.

The bus ride up was great fun, albeit excruciatingly long, about 42 hours total. We left Belgrade with two double-decker buses on the afternoon of the 28^th of January, and drove through the night. Crossing the border into Hungary ate up a good 5 or 6 hours, and there was some sort of chaotic stop in the middle of the night because of some mess involving lost passports... The original plan called for an 8 hour stop in Munich so the bus drivers could rest, but once in Austria the second bus broke down (didn’t see THAT one coming, didja!), so we ended up in nearby Salzburg, Austria instead. Despite the complications and the change of destination the stop in Salzburg was a terrific little break, providing a chance for a very nice scenic afternoon walk around the city, a great dinner with fantastic German beer, some drunken ice skating and in general just a nice release from the stifling confines of the bus.

The second leg of the trip, from Salzburg to Amsterdam, was considerably rougher. We drove through the night again and this time I just couldn’t get comfortable, my ipod was out of batteries, people were smelly, cranky and tired and arguing, and the hours just dragged on interminably. By the time we finally arrived in Amsterdam the next day, early in the afternoon, it felt like being on some African refugee bus or something.

Nevertheless the trip was quickly forgotten upon arrival in the Dam. I wrote up another blog of my impressions there shortly after I left the place, so I will upload that later and leave this short in the interest of space. After 7 completely crazy fear and loathing-themed days in Amsterdam, I left the place barely intact and hopped onto a plane to Prague, to take a 10 day journalism course there.

I have never arrived in any city in the world so utterly unprepared or uninformed as I did in Prague, but I just didn’t have time to brush up on the place while I was in Amsterdam. I arrived without a clue about what even the currency was, didn’t know a single thing about the place, what to do out of the airport, where to go, nothing. To my great pleasure I was able to just wing it like a pro upon arrival, and was able to get my baggage, find my way downtown on the public transportation and check into my well-hidden hotel without a hitch, which was a nice little confidence builder.

The journalism course and the next 10 days in Prague were utterly fantastic. The course was excellent, with outstanding experienced instructors giving us great advice, the networking was great and tons of great contacts were made, the whole group of students taking the course was terrific, we all got along great and had an utter blast exploring Prague, yadda yadda yadda. Basically 10 totally splendid days, and I was very sorry to reach the conclusion of the course. It was a great way to kickstart 2007.Nonetheless, it was time to head back home to BG...

That was 3 days ago. Now I’m back in good ol’ Serbia, right on the eve of the elections here, and the mood is electric. It is very good to be back, despite having had a great trip.

That’s the short update... I will write more about my impressions of Amsterdam, the journalism course/Prague, and my dad’s visit as soon as I have time, so all my faithful readers will have their patience rewarded soon :)