Bureaucracy Part I and II

Let me start by saying that the Hungarian people are extremely rule bound and bureaucratic.

I have been here on a temporary visa which I got when I was still in the U.S. So one day last week a native teacher who speaks English told me that we had to go to the immigration office the next day and that someone would be covering my classes. Since we are 40 minutes outside of the city center, we would have to leave by 7AM.

The next day she came to pick me up and when I made a comment about the bureaucracy she said, "I know, if I could live somewhere else, I would." So we proceeded to take the streetcar, then subway and finally a bus to get to this office. It was a few minutes before opening time and there was already a line. As it turned out, this was the line just to get a number to get into another line! The line we needed happened to be in a different building. So a receptionist/guard met us and my collegue spoke to him. When he responded, we were directed to a table where we sat waiting for our number to be called. The interesting thing was that the numbers were out of order. So we had 39, but they were also displaying a series starting in the two hundreds and there didn't seem to be any chronological sense to it. Finally, our number came up and we approached a desk . Every government office you go into has rows of desks with plexiglass in between you and the official where the conversation cutouts are never positioned correctly. So I sat there like a total idiot while the Hungarians conversed only becoming conscious when requested to show some paper or my passport. Then, my collegue said "She wants to know why you didn't come in sooner to extend your passport, this one has expired." "Oh shit " I thought, they are going to kick me out!! It ended up that I had to dictate my reason to the other teacher and she hand wrote it out. Then, you guessed it, we had to go sit and wait while the government worker showed my letter to her superior. Finally, we were summanded back to the plexiglass place and there was more conversation . When the government worker got out her stamp and started punching it onto papers multiple times, I was feeling more confident. And after only 3 hours, I left with my visa which is valid until Aug. 2010!!

Now, this week, I was again informed that someone would be escorting me back to the government offices to get my medical card (they have socialized medicine here) and my tax ID number. This again involved an early morning start, lines, numbers, frowning, conversation and after about 30 min. my collegue informed me that the computerized system was not cooperating and that this worker says she is fed up and will not try any longer to get me a tax number! My collegue appealed to her that we have both taken the day away from children to take care of this business and I will not receive any pay until I get it taken care of. She resists. So my collegue appeals to the worker at the next desk who agrees to make another attempt at getting into the computerized system. An hour later and of course after many official stamps, I leave with a tax ID number.

They tell me that now I will have to return to the immigration office with proof that I now have a medical card. I can hardly wait!