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)