Foreigner Police Horror Story

The following is completely true. I am stuck in the UK until May, and I have lost the 3.5 years of residence toward the 5 years I need to apply for permanent residence. And why? Read on...

In Prague, I wake up every morning to my cat's purring. I feed him, then look out the window at the beautiful park as I get ready for work. When I arrive at the school, I'm greeted with smiles and cheers. The children grin and shout “Hello, Miss Megan!” Some of them run up and hug me and tell me they're ready for English. I've got first and second graders this year, but the third, fourth, and fifth graders I taught last year always give me a happy hello when they see me in the hall.

I think of this every morning now as I wake up on the sofa provided to me by the only friend I could find outside of the Shengen zone, here in Edinburgh, Scotland. I look out the window at the gray sky and the wet, cracked bricks and concrete splattered with garbage. We do not live in a nice part of town. We don't have the money. I take a deep breath and inhale the terrible smell of a rodent that has died somewhere in the air vents of the building. The landlord promised he'd get it taken care of soon, but it's been three weeks already and it's only getting worse. I wish I was exaggerating or, better yet, making this up completely. But this is my reality. I'm terribly homesick, but I can't go home.

The first thing I do is check my email and phone for any news from the Czech Ministry of the Interior, the bureaucratic institution that has rendered me homeless. Most days there is nothing. Occasionally I get a message informing me that the committee decided not to meet again this week. They'll get back to me within 30 days, they say. They will send the decision by registered mail to my official address in Prague – where I am legally not permitted to go to pick it up. I've asked them if they would send it to me here in Scotland, or if I could sign a power of attorney for someone else to get it for me. So far, the only answers have been “I don't know” and “we'll get back to you on that.”

The committee is legally forbidden from communicating with people who have submitted appeals in any manner other than writing. No email, no phone. The only contact I have is a clerk with a stutter who always looks terrified because, as he told me at our fist meeting, this is his first case and he really has no idea how any of this works.

I'm a teacher at a Czech state základní škola. Not a language school or a private school, but a normal public one for the local children. We've got a great English program which takes place in the afternoon, after normal classes, but is still integrated with the school as a whole. All of the children in our program learn from native speakers in small groups. It's a spectacular program, and each of the teachers requires a great deal of experience and training before they begin work here. To be sure, it's not easy to replace a teacher that suddenly gets deported.

At the end of last June, I submitted my request to extend my long-term residency. I've done this twice before and I was terrified. They always manage to find some kind of problem, even if you've done everything exactly the same as last time. I handed the woman at the desk my application and all my documents. Proof of accommodation: newly signed lease for my apartment. Proof of reason to stay: letter from the živnostenský úřad extending my trade license. Proof of no debt: bezdlužnosti from the social and finance offices. Proof of finances: official, stamped bank statement showing regular deposits into my account for the past year, averaging several times more than the minimum required income.

The woman frowned at the bank statement. She wasn't sure if it was acceptable. Normally, she said, they want a document from the tax office. However, this was an official statement for a full year. She consulted her supervisor. Yes, they decided, this would be sufficient. I clearly make enough money to live here. I breathed a sigh of relief and went about my business, knowing it would probably take at least 9 months for them to process and approve my application.

It was nearly 4 years ago that I got my first visa to live in Prague. I had left behind my abusive family in America, vowing never to return to the country where everyone had guns but no one had health care. I'd had a miserable life there, had been depressed to the point of being near-suicidal for many years. There was nothing for me there. No friends. No home. Since coming to Prague, I had made a new life for myself. I had a beautiful apartment in a nice part of town and tons of friends, many of whom were like family. I paid my social security every month, filed my taxes every year. I had a happy, honest life, and most importantly, I wasn't living only for me. I wasn't working for a paycheck: I was teaching children. I was changing lives. Every day I saw those smiling faces and I knew how valuable I really was to the world.

I don't work at the school every day. Some days, I work for Bridge Publishing House. I'm a writer and editor for Bridge and Gate magazines, educational publications for Czech students learning English. While I'm teaching, I'm also brainstorming. I'm coming up with ideas for exercises and articles for the magazine. I'm making lists of grammar and vocabulary topics that should be covered and fun ways we can help the readers learn and understand them. Teachers are our main subscribers, so I keep notes on what would be helpful to have in my own classes. I love writing for the magazines. I can take all the ideas I use for my lessons and pass them on to other teachers. Indirectly, I'm teaching all of their kids, too, from primary school all the way through gymnazium and beyond.

A few months after submitting my application, I got a letter in the mail saying I had failed to prove my income. I had ten days to fix this error in my application, or else it would be rejected. I went to the finance office and obtained an official copy of my dáňové příznány, my tax form from the previous year, and brought that to them in person. The woman at the desk shook her head and told me she wouldn't accept that. I had to give them a platební výměr, a summary from the finance office of the taxes I'd paid last year. I quickly called the finance office and asked them for the document. Normally it takes them a week to process a request like this, but fortunately they were understanding when I told them it was for the foreigner police. They managed it in a few days, and I submitted it via registered mail. Back to waiting again.

I also have a private student whom I've taught for years. She's a teenager now, a student in gymnazium, and so tall I can hardly believe it. I always test out my ideas for the magazine on her, and we have a great time coming up with new ones. Her grammar and spelling have improved so much, it makes me so proud. I have taught her younger brothers as well, and even babysat a few times. They're a great family and always make me feel at home. They always invite me to stay for dinner and ask how my visa application is going. There's almost always an application in processing because it takes them so long to process them. By the time you get your residence card, you have about six months before it expires, and you have to get your next application in by then.

After another month, I got word that I still had not proven my income to their satisfaction. I had only a few days to fix the mistake. This time I went in person with a stack of signed, stamped invoices and a new, updated official bank statement. I figured it will be easier to sort this out in person, face to face with a living, thinking human being. I showed the woman the documents, explaining that this was the only proof of my current income that I had, but she pushed them away. She wouldn't accept them, she said, because they were not suitable proof of anything. These documents could be faked. The only document that mattered was the one from the tax office, and according to that, I didn't earn enough money.

How could that be possible? My average income is several times what I need to get by. In fact, I earn more per month than the average Prague resident. She showed me the tax document and, after making a few rude remarks to me (you learn to ignore those, as they're standard procedure), she said they only look at my tax-free income. I don't really understand the details of taxes, but my accountant submitted mine with a 60% deduction, as a business owner. The clerk did some math and calculated that I earned 400 kc less per month (after taxes) than I required. 400 kc. That's it. If I could somehow prove that I earned 400 kc more per month, I would be all set.

Well that's easy, I told her. I earn way more money now than I did then. These are last year's taxes, and it's already October. But I can't file my taxes for this year until January, so what do I have to do? Should I re-file my taxes for last year, without the 60% deduction? Because I'm happy to do that, if that's what is necessary.

The woman's eyes went wide. No. She said I absolutely must not re-file my taxes. She pointed again at the 60% deduction: that's the maximum I can take. According to her, if I took any less than that, it would actually reduce my income in the eyes of the foreigner police.

But, I told her, that doesn't make any sense. If 40% of my income is taxable, that doesn't mean I'm paying all of that in taxes. I obviously earn plenty more than this. By this logic, you'd have to earn 30,000 kc per month in order to survive in a cheap apartment.

The woman shrugged her shoulders. Sorry. I know it doesn't make sense, but it's out of my hands. This is the way it works. She sifted through my documents and pulled out my lease. This is the problem, she said. Your rent is too high. Your landlord doesn't specify how much you pay for heat and electricity, so the state automatically adds 1000 kc to cover that.

I nearly laughed. In fact, my heat and electricity were included in my rent, we just hadn't written it into the lease. The woman nearly smiled then and said well that's it, you're all set. Just re-submit the lease with a line saying the utilities are included in the cost of the rent, send it by registered mail with a letter explaining you are correcting a mistake, and your application will be approved.

What a relief. I went home, made the change immediately, and sent the new lease by registered mail with a letter the very next day. A week later I got a letter saying my document had been accepted and my application was in process once again.

I hesitate to keep typing now, because I want the story to end there. I did exactly what the woman told me. That should have been the end of it.

A few weeks later, I got another letter. I opened it excitedly, certain that my application had been approved.

Czech legalese is nearly impenetrable to me despite having studied the language for years, so I passed it off to my Czech-speaking co-teacher. Her face was serious. It was not good news.

My application had been rejected due to a failure to prove sufficient income and failure to respond to a letter that I had never received, which had allegedly said, once again, that I hadn't proven my finances. According to them, I had ignored this letter, although I most certainly never received it.

The rejection letter was many pages long and went into details about the numbers. The information the woman had given me was completely wrong: it wasn't the 60% they were using to calculate my income, but the 40% I claimed for taxes. And I hadn't been 400 kc per month short, but more than 2000 kc. What's more, despite the previous letter I had received, they now wrote that they hadn't accepted my corrected lease, because there was a small typo on one of the pages. The landlord, a 75-year-old man, had changed the numbers on the lease, but had forgotten to change one of the words, leading to a contradiction. It was an obvious typo, but the ministry of the interior really didn't care.

The silver lining? I had the right to appeal if I disagreed with the decision. I had my boss call the police and ask exactly what I needed to do to successfully appeal. The woman on the phone said I should send them invoices, bank statements, any and all proof I had of my income – essentially, all the documents I had tried to submit before, the ones the clerk had refused to accept. Then the appeal would probably be rejected again, but then it would be passed on to the next level, and I would still be able to stay in the country until they made a new decision.

But I'd been misinformed before. I once had a clerk tell me I had the right to stay in the country, and then later found out I didn't. I nearly got deported that time, and only sheer luck allowed me to discover the problem in time to fix it. I wasn't about to take that risk again. What could I do that would guarantee approval the first time around?

The answer was the same as before: a platební výměr from the finance office showing that I earned enough money last year to pay all my expenses this year. Could I simply re-file my taxes? Why, yes, of course I could, according to the woman on the phone. In fact, that's what I should have done in the first place.

I resisted the urge to punch the wall in frustration. The woman at the office had insisted that re-filing my taxes was not an option. Either she had lied, or she didn't know what she was talking about... But there is no other source of information than those clerks. I had no choice but to trust her.

We had one more question: this fifteen days, was it calendar days or business days? She said it would surely be business days. These things are always calculated in terms of business days. But what if I couldn't get the document from the tax office in time? No problem, she said. If you're waiting on another office for your paperwork, all you have to do is send us a letter requesting more time to submit it, for the reason that I'm waiting on a government office. They'll extend the time and everything will be fine.

The company hired an accountant for me, who got to work re-calculating my income with a smaller deduction, and the boss wrote a letter for the police requesting more time to submit the document. I took my new tax forms to the finance office in person and sent a stamped copy of the tax form (with my newly calculated income) along with the letter requesting more time by registered mail. This was 9 business days after receiving the rejection letter.

It took the finance office a few days to process, but at last I got my new platební výměr and sent it in along with an official appeal letter. This was 12 business days after receiving the appeal letter. At last, I wasn't worried. I had done exactly what they told me to do. One might think I would have learned by then, but I was foolish enough to think that everything would be okay.

Two days later I got a letter saying my request for more time was rejected for the reason that I had no right to request more time. How was this possible? Because we had made a tiny mistake in the letter. Instead of saying it was an appeal (odvolání), my boss had written the word for appending documents to the application (dodatky). I had no right to append anything because I had already been rejected, and therefore I wasn't given any more time.

But I should still be fine, said my boss, because I had still submitted the appeal letter 12 business days after receiving the rejection letter. But my stomach fell through my feet into the floor below, because somehow I had a feeling that wasn't going to work out.

The foreigner police refused to give any more information over the phone, so my boss went with me in person to the office to sort out what had happened. We explained the situation to the woman at the desk, who was looking at my file on the computer screen. We never received any appeal, she said. Your case is already closed.

That's not true! It was all I could do not to shout. I showed her my copy of the appeal letter, and the sentence in the rejection letter saying I had 15 days to submit it. That's business days, right? I asked her. She nodded her head, yes, of course that's business days, it's always business days. She smiled. Well in this case, you should be all set. This is exactly what we needed from you. Let me just get my supervisor.

The supervisor was not smiling. She pointed at the sentence in the rejection letter: 15 days. If it were business days, she said, it would have said business days. You submitted your letter 16 calendar days after receiving this. Your case is closed. You have to leave.

It was at this point that I broke down sobbing, and my whole life in Prague started flashing through my head. I'd been living there nearly four years, paying social security and taxes, teaching children, doing educational work. My boss continued trying to negotiate with the clerks, pointing out that it was a question of a single day and that I had been misinformed, but they kept robotically repeating the same sentences over and over again: She did not appeal within the assigned period. Her case is closed.

She did not appeal within the assigned period. Her case is closed.

She did not appeal within the assigned period. Her case is closed.

There is nothing we can do, they said. She can submit an application for a new visa, but she can't be in the country until it's approved.

At last, my boss got them to admit that yes, I could try to appeal. But unless I could prove that they'd made a mistake, it would almost certainly be rejected.

I almost shouted again, trying to speak through the tears and the sobs. You DID make a mistake, I said. The woman told me I couldn't use bank statements and invoices as proof. She told me I couldn't re-file my taxes. She said if I changed my lease, it would all be fine. I did everything she said. She gave me the wrong information. And then two other people told me I had 15 business days to submit my appeal. The woman on the phone said we could get more time to submit my documents. I've done everything I was told to do. You made the mistakes, not me.

Again, the woman shrugged. Do you have any proof of this?

…

Proof?

I've tried in the past to get proof. I've asked clerks to write things down for me, and they've always refused, saying they're not allowed. I've asked them to speak to friends over the phone so I had a witness to what they said, and they said no, they're not permitted to speak to anyone on the phone. I thought once that I would tape our conversations, but then I found out that's illegal, too.

My boss hired a lawyer and they wrote me an appeal anyway. They went through my whole file, page by page, looking for discrepancies. They wrote about the misinformation I was given face-to-face, even though I didn't have any proof. They attached photos of me with the kids I teach, photos with my friends and co-workers, letters from my bosses at the school and the magazine emphasizing that I could not simply be replaced if I had to leave, begging them to let me stay. They also attached all my financial documents, showing that I clearly earned more than enough money and met all the requirements to stay in the country. The only issue was a single day, a tiny mistake based on misinformation and misunderstandings. I added a letter I wrote myself in Czech explaining my abusive family in America, the fact that I had no other home, the fact that I had done everything I could and would do anything to make this right.

We submitted my appeal on 18 December. I was given 60 days to remain in the country while it was processed. It was just before the holidays, so we'd lose 2 weeks, but of course I wouldn't be given any extra time to make up for it. The woman shrugged. They'll give you an answer sometime in January, she said. Legally, they have 30 days to send you an answer. Meanwhile, I would be permitted to stay in the country until 8 February. If I overstayed that period, I'd be expelled, not only from the Czech Republic, but from the entire Shengen zone, for 2 years.

I decided to submit an application for a completely new visa right away, in case my appeal was rejected. Better to do that sooner rather than later. Applications for new visas can't be submitted within the Czech Republic, however, so I'd have to go to Vienna to do it. Fine, I thought, no problem. I'll do it immediately.

But the clerk corrected me pretty quickly. You can't do that, she said. You have an exit order in your passport. The moment you leave the Czech Republic – not Shengen, just the country – you legally cannot return for 90 days. If you try to submit an application for a new visa, they will inspect your passport carefully, and when they see that exit order, they'll make sure the police prevent you from returning home.

No new application. No possibilities. Just waiting, waiting, waiting.

I kept working. The kids needed their teacher. I had to hide my stress, fear, anxiety, and give them a smile every day. The magazine needed to be written, no matter how I was falling apart inside. I spent Christmas all alone. I stopped sleeping normally. I was shaking and foggy-headed all the time. I didn't know where I'd be living in two months.

My friends, coworkers, and students' parents were all incredibly supportive. They'd do anything they could to help me, they said. They'd write letters. They'd call the police for me. But there was nothing they could do.

My boss at the school started to worry. There was no replacement for me, should I be forced to leave. It was the middle of the school year. We were planning the next few months, trying to carry on as though nothing had happened. Every day, my coworkers asked me if there was any news. Every day I just had to shrug and shake my head. It took all I had to keep myself from breaking down at work.

28 days after I submitted my appeal, I got a letter from the ministry of the interior. It said that they had received my appeal and were beginning to process it. (It turns out the “answer” they were obligated to give me within 30 days of me submitting my appeal was nothing more than an acknowledgment that they had actually opened it.) It told me the name and the contact info for the man responsible for my file. He was to be my only contact from there on in. The letter said I had 5 days to add anything new to my file before it was judged.

I went with my boss again and we met this man in person. He was nervous, stuttering, hard to understand. He'd never done this before. He said they would try to judge my file the next week, but they already had a lot of cases and they probably wouldn't get to mine yet. The committee only meets on Wednesdays, so it'd probably be two weeks before they looked at my case.

I did some quick math in my head. If I had to leave, it would be that same week. They'd judge my case on Wednesday and I'd have to leave by Sunday – not enough time for me to get their answer, since they only send information by certified mail, which wouldn't be sent until Thursday and always takes 3-4 business days to get through. What was I supposed to do?

The stuttering man didn't know. He said he'd try to find out. He'd try to prioritize my case so I'd have my answer in time, but he wasn't sure if that was possible. One thing he was sure of: I did not have the right to extend my permission to stay in the event they didn't judge my case in time, because my appeal had been submitted one day late. He shrugged and said he hoped my appeal was successful.

The following Wednesday I had a serious panic attack. I ended up in the hospital that night with stomach pain so severe I thought I was dying. The doctor said it was just stress and ordered me to rest and relax for a while. I got hysterical then at the mere suggestion that I should relax. He gave me some diazepam and said I should take it for a few days. I didn't know where I'd be living in two weeks.

The committee didn't get to my case that week. It would be another 7 days before I'd have any kind of information. I had 11 days left on my exit order.

The next week, my boss and coworkers called the stuttering clerk about six times in one day demanding information. He kept saying he didn't know, he'd call us when he knew. I tried to work, but I couldn't focus. I didn't know where I'd be living in 2 days.

Finally, we got word that the committee had decided not to meet that week. They'd meet the following Wednesday. 3 days after I had to be out of the country.

So that was it. They'd had my appeal for nearly 2 months and hadn't done anything with it. When we demanded that they give me some kind of permission to stay, that it was inhumane to deport me when I had no other home and they still hadn't judged my appeal, they said sorry, she submitted her appeal one day late. She has no right to stay.

I had to leave.

I got in touch with my only non-Shengen friend in the world, here in Edinburgh. He said I could sleep on his sofa for as long as I needed. Plane tickets for the weekend were double the weekday price, and I would have no right to work in Scotland, so I had to save money where I could. I bought a ticket leaving Friday. I had 24 hours to get my things together and leave Europe.

I ran around like a crazy woman, making duplicate keys so a friend could check on my apartment, dropping my cat off at a coworker's place and saying goodbye to him for I didn't know how long, wishing my best friend a happy birthday and apologizing for having to miss his party, arranging my bank account, trying to clean perishables out of my apartment, trying and failing to apply for a new trade license so I could apply for a new visa in England (in one final twist of tragic irony, they said this was impossible, and I'd have to wait until I got back to Shengen to apply for a new visa), and meeting my friends for one final goodbye drink.

No one could believe it was really happening. My boss was frantically searching for someone to take over my class until I could come back. My friends hugged me and cried with me and promised they'd do anything they could to help. One person at a neighboring table overheard our conversation and insisted that it was my own fault that this had happened. I should have made sure I had the right information. If I hadn't followed correct procedures, then the government had every right to kick me out.

My friends saved me from that argument and sent the guy packing. The next morning at 4:30, numb from shock and lack of sleep, I left my apartment, took the bus to the airport, and said goodbye to my home. If the ministry of the interior didn't somehow approve my appeal and give me a way to go back home, I'd have to be gone for 90 days. 3 months homeless, jobless, far away from my friends, my family, my life. 3 months without the smiles of the children, the songs and the laughter, the view of the park, the cuddles of my cat. 3 months in gray, cold, wet Einburgh with no job and no life.

And so, every morning I get up and I check my email and my phone for any news, any information. I try to convince myself that I'm on vacation, that it's just free time off, but I can't make myself believe it. I look back over this long story and I try to find the point where I did something wrong, where I made a mistake beyond doing as I was instructed by the only sources of information I had, and come up empty. I try to keep in touch with my friends in Prague. I wish I could just drink the waiting time away, but I don't have enough money to buy alcohol in this country. My savings is already starting to dwindle.

It's not permanent. I know they probably won't approve my appeal, won't let me go home until my 90 days is up. But I have a return ticket for the 9^th of May, and I cross the days off on the calendar and pray for the time to go faster. I try to think about how it will feel when I see the children again. When they all chorus, “Hello, Miss Megan!” and tackle me with hugs. My boss at the school is trying to manage my lessons without me there. The parents have sent supportive emails wishing I can come home soon.

It's finally sunk in, these past few days, that I can't go home. I can't go home.

And it's not just me. This happens all the time. Every single native English speaking friend I have in Prague has a story like this. I do not know a single person who has ever applied for a visa, or for an extension, and had everything go smoothly. Not once, not ever.

Depending on who you talk to, you always get different information. According to the EU, all visa information is supposed to be freely available to anyone who wants it, but it doesn't work that way in the Czech Republic. Sure, they have a web site. They even have information in English. But it's all very vague. It says, for example, that your application requires proof of income and lists the minimum each person requires for their expenses, but it does not say what's acceptable proof. That information can only be gotten from the clerks at the foreigner police. And they can tell you whatever they want. They can make mistakes, or even give you false information on purpose, and there's not a thing you can do about it. They refuse to ever provide you with any proof of the information they give you, so that you can never claim the mistake is theirs, and it's not permitted to ever contact directly the people who actually make the decision on each case.

Some people ask me why I even want to go back, after all the hell they've put me through. The answer is as simple as this: it's my home. That is where I live. That is where my life is. I have no other home in the world.

I have only one problem in Prague, and that is the ministry of the interior, the foreigner police, who do nothing but repeat the only thing that matters to them:

She did not appeal within the assigned period. Her case is closed.

This post is brought to you by the letter Ř

The Czech language contains several letters not found in the English alphabet, but most of them simply represent sounds we don’t have a single symbol for. For example, ě sounds like “yeh,” š like “sh,” č like “ch,” and ž like “zh” (think second g in “garage”). But there is one very special letter, the sound of which does not even exist in any other language that I’m aware of. That letter is ř.

To form the ř, one must produce the sounds of the Czech “r” (a “trill” r made in the front of the mouth) and ž at the same time. Naturally, this is very difficult for foreigners to pick up, as we have simply never trained our tongues to move in that way. But being unable to pronounce this letter does not automatically label you a foreigner. In fact, just about every Czech has to visit a speech therapist during the early years of school in order to learn to form this letter, and some of them never succeed.

The speech therapist who visits the preschool where I work expressed her admiration for my ability with this letter; years of practice seem finally to have paid off. And actually, once you are able to form the sound, you begin to understand why Czechs are so proud of it. It’s quite fun to say! But what does it actually sound like? I’ve spent some time thinking about it, and I believe it can be described in this way:

Ř is the sound of a G that got stuck and started vibrating. It’s the precise sound produced when a beetle trapped inside a plastic bag flaps its wings desperately hoping to escape.

As an example, here is the pronunciation of the Czech word řeka (river): http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Cs-%C5%99eka.ogg

And here is a famous Czech tongue twister (Třistatřiatřicet stříbrných křepelek přeletělo přes třistatřiatřicet stříbrných střech. - Three hundred and thirty three silver quails flew over three hundred and thirty three silver roofs.): http://www.omniglot.com/soundfiles/czech/tonguetwisters/tt3_cz.mp3

Enjoy, and happy tongue twisting to all!

Important Paperwork

If you're ever unfortunate enough to find yourself at the bus station of Rakovnik, be sure to visit the station toilet. Yes, you have to pay for it, but it's pretty clean, and for the low low price of 4 kč you get not only six single-ply sheets of toilet paper, but also this fancy receipt!

Unfortunately the attendant failed to fill in the date on mine, so I guess I can't count on it for a tax write-off. I should really go back and file a complaint.

Czech Bureaucracy: Receiving a Package

If you’re a foreigner living in the Czech Republic, it’s a good bet that you have family and friends living elsewhere in the world. Mine happen to live in the United States, and now and then one of them wants to send me a care package. In the past I’ve always asked them not to, after hearing horror stories from others who’ve had to pick up packages from the post office, but since moving to my own apartment with my very own address, I decided to lift the ban and gave my address out to my relatives.

Forgetting this, I was confused to find a slip in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago saying I had missed a delivery. The only other time I had gotten one of these was when O2 had delivered my wifi router (another long story of bureaucratic nightmare), but the only name on the slip other than mine was a Czech woman’s name I had never heard before. Who was she, and what was she sending me? I decided not to worry about it for now – I’d have time to collect whatever it was a few days later.

That evening a friend came to visit me and I showed him the slip. His forehead wrinkled with concern and he told me these were the sorts of slips they used to indicate delivery of government documents. The name, he said, was either the name of a government worker or, possibly, just the name of my postal delivery woman. I’d better head to the post office as soon as possible, he said, because it might be something relating to my visa.

The words of another friend immediately ran through my mind: if they’re going to reject your application, they’ll do it within the first few months. You’ll get a departure order in the mail and have to leave the country within a certain time period, and you’ll have to wait 3 months to come back and start your visa application over from scratch.

There was no time to go that evening, and that night I hardly slept, wondering what on earth I’d do if I got deported. What about my job? What about my apartment? What about my friends? What about my cat?

The next day, immediately after work, I raced to my local post office. I had never been to this one before and had no idea where to go, but my Czech was good enough to politely ask someone standing in line where I should go, and he directed me upstairs. At the top of the stairs were a few windows with small barriers in front of them with gaps in between. All of the barriers had writing on them indicating clearly that there was ONE entrance to this area and arrows pointing to a gap on one side of the room where a young woman was waiting. There were several empty windows, however, so I stood around uncertain for a moment. Finally one of the unoccupied workers looked at me in annoyance and beckoned me over, the look on her face seeming to indicate that she was awfully tired of having to tell people to come to her window when it was free.

I handed her my deliver slip and my passport and after signing a form, she handed me a thick envelope with stamps and writing all over it.

I opened it on the way home to find five pieces of paper. Two of them were covered in Czech small-print legalese which I would have to interpret later. Two were empty forms which I assumed I would need to fill out for some reason or another. But looking through these four pages, I didn’t see anything I recognized. Nothing about an application, a business license, or a visa. At the bottom of one page was an address and a list of opening hours – I finally realized it was another post office. And the fifth piece of paper, when I finally got to it, turned out to be covered in familiar handwriting. Whose was it?

Oh. Right. It was my mom’s handwriting.

(I know that handwriting very well. It is a firm belief of mine that everyone, no matter their age, is still able to forge their mother’s signature even many years after they have graduated high school.)

(Not… Not that I ever forged your signature, mom.)

Finally I remembered that she had sent me a birthday box with goodies in it from the states. I breathed a massive sigh of relief when I realized this had nothing at all to do with my visa. My package had simply been moved to another building and I’d have to go there to pick it up. A Czech friend gave me further relief by telling me the empty forms weren’t necessary for me and I wouldn’t need to worry about them. (Apparently they were just forms giving someone else permission to pick up the package in my place.)

Naturally, it would not be simple. Most post offices in Prague are open weekdays and Saturdays until 20:00 (8 pm), but this one, the one where the customs department was for imported packages, located in a completely different part of Prague from where I live and work, was open Mon-Wed-Fri until 17:00 (5 pm) and Tu-Thu until 15:30 (3:30 pm). Oh, right, and I work until after those hours every day. I’d have to leave work early. And my package would only be held for a week, according to what I could decipher from the documents.

Fortunately some of my students are very understanding and allowed me to end a business English lesson 30 minutes early so I could race off and collect my package. Stack of documents in hand, I went to the appropriate building – a giant warehouse of a post office with many floors, all laid out with traditional communist architecture. I found the name of the office I needed on the documents, matched it with something on the directory on the wall, took the ancient elevator to the third floor, and followed the signs to the office.

As I walked in, a large, exhausted-looking woman beckoned me over and reached out to take my papers from my hand. She sighed the sigh of a woman who hates dealing with people and rattled off something very fast in Czech. I apologized in the most polite Czech I could muster and told her my Czech wasn’t very good – could she speak a bit slower? She sighed again, then pointed out the door and said “nalevo, a nalevo.” (To the left, and to the left.) I nodded, forced a smile, took my papers back, and turned left out the door, left down another hall, and went through the door at the end.

In this room there were two windows. At one, a young woman was sitting at a desk looking bored. She didn’t so much as look up when I walked in. At the other, an older woman was busy working at a computer with a line of people waiting. I got in line and waited my turn. When I got to the window and handed her my papers, she informed me that I had to go to the other woman. The younger one at the other window. The window with no line.

Right. To the other window I went, and handed over the papers for a third time. The girl nodded, flipped through a filing cabinet, and gave me the original customs slip for my package (I only had a copy in my stack of paperwork). Then she told me with a hint of amusement in her voice that I would now have to go to the right, to the right – back to the first office I went to.

So back I went, original customs form in hand, and into the first office again. This time two men in customs officer uniforms were sitting at the desk and they called me over immediately. The first man took my original customs slip and then, performing what appeared to be the entirety of his duties in this office, he handed it to the other officer. The second man asked me if I was a student, to which I responded no, I was not. He sighed (a popular habit in public offices – they should consider doing it competitively), stamped the paper twice, and told me I now had to go back to the room I just came from and wait in line.

Being in a good mood, I very nearly started laughing at this point. But I made my way back to the other office, stood in line, and this time the woman took my stamped customs form and nodded approval. She asked me for 96 kč, which I paid, and handed the form back with a new stamp on it. Then she pointed behind me to a conveyer belt with a man standing by it and told me to go get my package.

This was the part I was really afraid of. I’d heard stories of people who were ordered to open their package on the spot, and if the items inside were declared “valuable” they had to pay thousands of crowns in import tax on them. One friend had advised me that when they asked me what was in the package, I must say that it was a gift, and personal items, that way it should be exempt from tax. But it turned out that this worry was for nothing. Perhaps because it was near to closing time, the worker simply handed me the box and said goodbye without so much as making eye contact.

Not everything has to be complicated, I guess.

In any case, the entire process took nearly 30 minutes and no less than 6 postal workers to complete. In fact, it seemed to be designed to employ as many people as possible – likely a holdover from the days of communism. Ah, well. At least I got my box of goodies in the end.

Czech Bureaucracy: Obtaining a Long-Stay Residence Permit (Part 4)

When we last left our hero, she was shuffling away from the foreigner police office in Rakovnik, her tears of despair mixing with the cold rain that was pelting her and her friend. That was me, about three months ago. For those of you haven’t been following the story so far, I’d just been told that despite having called weeks in advance to ask what paperwork was needed for the application, my information was wrong, my paperwork was incomplete, and it was unlikely I’d be able to get everything together in time for the deadline.

Apologies for leaving it at such a cliffhanger. Life catches up with you sometimes and you forget that you have a blog. It’s time to finally summarize what happened after that.

The following Monday, the gracious, generous, kind-hearted friend accompanied me back to Kladno to obtain the necessary papers from the social and trade offices. As usual, the process at the social office was so easy I thought I might have dreamed it. The trade office (živnostenský úřad), however, was not so simple.

After you’ve visited the trade office once, the same person must handle your paperwork every time you return. In the case of a foreigner, this is relatively frequent, since visas expire and several papers must be filed each time. In my case, I had the office worker from hell in charge of my case.

The first time I visited this office, I took a Czech-speaking friend with me. The woman was kind, friendly, polite, and helpful. The second time, the friend was unavailable, so I brought a piece of paper with what I needed written on it in Czech and a phone to call a friend to translate if necessary. I might as well have showed up and demanded that the woman deal with me in Chinese, because she was extremely pissed off at my inability to immediately understand every word she spat out rapid-fire when she refused to speak slowly or simply. Eventually I got my friend on the phone and he told me that she basically just wanted to yell at me for not having a translator, and actually she didn’t need anything from me at all. Ever since then, I’ve always brought a translator, but she never forgave me for being foreign, and now every time I visit she tries to find a mistake in my paperwork that would give her the right to reject my application.

It was a different friend with me this time, and one who had never experienced the hate of this state worker before. After drilling me on the details of where I lived and what my job was and not managing to find any inconsistencies, she begrudgingly gave me the letter I needed for the foreigner police. She then pointed out that if I didn’t return in 3 weeks to claim the extension to my business license, she would throw out my file and I’d have to start over from scratch.

On the way out, I had to dissuade my friend from pissing on the building – only because a security guard was watching us.

The insurance receipt was easy enough, still tucked away in my insurance folder (you learn not to throw away anything with a stamp on it in this country, especially official receipts). As for the bank statement, it was easy to get, but they charged me 300 kc for the privilege of putting a stamp on it (see my earlier post on Stamps). Finally, without time to return to Rakovnik to submit my paperwork in person, I made color copies of all 4 items for myself and sent the originals, along with a letter from my boss explaining that I had only been working there for two months but they were very happy with me and expected me to continue working there for several years at my current rate of pay or higher (stamped with an official school stamp of course), to the foreigner police by registered mail.

Just before Christmas I asked my boss to call the office to make sure they had received the paperwork and that everything was in order. They had, they said, and everything looked okay, except (EXCEPT!!???) where was my insurance contract?

My boss and I both took deep breaths and calmly asked what in the hell they were talking about. No one had ever mentioned an insurance contract. They said the insurance card and the receipt were enough. They were very specific about that. The woman on the phone, exasperated, inquired how they were expected to make sure the insurance was sufficient if they didn’t have the contract to read through? The good news was that I could bring the contract when I came to pick up my temporary visa, no more than 1 week before the expiration of my current one (January 14), and everything else looked fine.

Finally, on Wednesday, 11 January, the kind friend accompanied me on one last trip to Rakovnik to get the temporary visa. The line was short and the process didn’t take long. After copying my insurance contract, the woman actually smiled a smile that wasn’t dipped in venom and said everything looks fine. She even returned the original insurance receipt I had mailed her. She put the glorious green stamp in my passport giving me 3 more months to live here legally and left me with the final step of going back to Kladno to pick up my extended business license.

The bus trip between these two cities is horrendously long, and we were grateful for the walk to the trade office to stretch our legs. Sitting in the hallway outside the office waiting our turn, both of us were on edge. I kept fidgeting and asking stupid questions, and he kept snapping at me to stop talking because I was making him even more tense. Finally we were called in. The mean lady at the desk was disappointed to see that I had successfully obtained the visa, but at this point there was nothing she could do. She handed me the new business license, stamped twice and signed by her, and said “that’s it” in a somewhat less than friendly way.

As we stood up, almost as an afterthought, she added, “you know, you don’t have to come to this office every time you need something done on your license. You can go to any trade office in the country. So if you work in Prague, you can just go to the office there.”

Both my friend and I stopped breathing for a moment and the air became slightly thicker as a fine mist of hate was expelled from our pores. She couldn’t have mentioned this sooner, say, on any of the seven or eight trips I had made here in the past couple years? Forcing robotic smiles, we thanked her for the information and practically ran out of the building.

On the way home, my friend was very angry with me for dragging him to Kladno unnecessarily. We argued for a bit as he insisted I should have done more research to find out I could go to any business office, while I assured him that I had done plenty of research and everyone had always told me I had to go to the office in my place of residence. It must have been a recent change. (Future research confirmed this – the change took place quite recently and in the past it was always necessary to go to your local office.) Finally he accepted my explanation, but despite our success, it was hard to be in a good mood after a day spent dealing with Czech state workers.

So that was almost exactly 3 months ago, and now is the time to renew my temporary visa since, surprise surprise, my long-term application has not yet been approved (and in fact I suspect no one has looked at it at all yet). What fresh hell awaits me this time around? Stay tuned for more updates soon!

Czech Medicine

Czech home remedies tend to center around two things: alcohol and sweat. The first time I got a cold and asked my students if they had any suggestions as to what medication I should try (Nyquil being sadly unavailable in Czech pharmacies), I was quite taken aback to hear a universal recommendation of "slivovice."

If you're not familiar with slivovice, it's a type of liqueur made from plums. It is often homemade by families in the countryside and its alcohol content ranges from 40% all the way up to about 80%, depending on who's making it. You can buy it in supermarkets (the brand Jelinek is generally considered the best), but to really do it right, you need to find a home-brewed batch (and hope you don't go blind).

At first, I thought the locals were simply messing around with the foreigner, but as I continued to ask around, I discovered that this truly is the most common advice. Also on the list of "effective treatments" were Becherovka, another type of strong alcohol produced in Karlovy Vary which can best be described as tasting like Christmas, and Fernet, a similar Czech spirit which tastes more directly of pine needles and bark.

So what is the justification for the consumption of strong alcohol when you're sick? Firstly, the high alcohol content is presumed to kill bacteria. For this reason, slivovice is taken along on trips to countries where water quality is poor, or on long hikes where treated water may be unavailable. Czechs will have a shot of the liqueur each day and any water-borne pathogens are poisoned before they can cause any trouble. For the same reason, it also acts as a surprisingly effective treatment for food poisoning. While the thought of doing shots when you can't stop expelling everything you've consumed for the past month might be unappealing, I can personally vouch for the fact that one shot is actually enough to stop the illness in its tracks - and if you've ever suffered from food poisoning, you'll know what a miracle that is.

Slivovice is also used to treat cough and sore throat. Essentially, the alcohol numbs the throat and stops the pain instantly. (If you've ever had one too many drinks and woken up the next day with a mysterious bruise or two that you don't remember obtaining, you'll know how true this can be.) There is a downside to this particular treatment, however: the effect only lasts for a few minutes before your body recovers and starts to be able to feel pain again. It is not recommended that you do what I did the first time I tried slivovice as medicine and take a tiny sip each time the effect wears off, or the next time you get out of bed to use the toilet you'll likely be reminded just how high the alcohol content is. It is a mistake to be made only once!

The final justification for doing shots when you're ill is that it combats fever by making you sweat. This particular claim warrants closer inspection, as it is founded on the general local belief that sweat is the best cure for fever and flu, and to that end, any and all measures should be taken to force yourself to sweat when you are running a high temperature. This includes wrapping yourself in blankets (especially while you sleep), drinking huge amounts of tea just below the boiling point, and using hot water bottles and heating pads whenever possible.

Now, I'm no doctor, but I think it should be pointed out here that this belief is not directly based in modern medical science. First of all, a fever is not an illness, but a symptom, and part of your body's natural defense system to combat illnesses. Curing a fever will in no way cure the illness that caused it, and it might even cause the illness to persist for longer, since you're partially stopping your body from fighting it. If you do want to cure a fever, you have to lower your body's temperature. You can do so by taking a cold bath or shower, putting a cool damp cloth on your head, or taking an anti-fever medication such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen, or if you wait long enough, your body will often do it naturally by sweating.

Sweating, in general, is your body's way of cooling itself down. So it's true that sweating will reduce a fever. On the other hand, if you really want to bring your body's temperature down, wrapping yourself in electric blankets and hot water bottles hardly seems like the most effective method.

Finally, one cannot address the topic of Czech health without mentioning tissues. As any foreigner who has been in the country more than five minutes will have noticed, Czechs love to blow their noses. In fact, it is apparently considered somewhat rude to sniffle, while interrupting a conversation (or lesson) by loudly blowing a gallon of mess into a ragged, slightly dirty old piece of fabric and then shoving it back into your pocket to be used again a few minutes later is perfectly polite.

I've asked a few people about the justification for this little cultural tidbit, and the general local theory seems to be that your body is trying to expel germs (especially if you're sick) by gathering them from all through your body, all your blood vessels and organs and everything, wrapping them in mucus, and transferring them all to your nose, at which point you must quickly blow them out, otherwise you will either get sick immediately or make your illness much worse if you're sick already.

I'm still just a bit skeptical on that front.

If anyone has any further information or opinions on these matters, feel free to start a discussion! The comments button is right down there and I'm perfectly open to being wrong, as long a you can prove it.

Czech Bureaucracy: Obtaining a Long-Stay Residence Permit (Part 3)

You and your friend both get up early and catch the 8:30 bus to Kladno. On the way, you show him all of your paperwork and the list of information the foreigner police had given over the phone, explaining everything so that he can answer any questions necessary later on. Then you try to chat about other things, but it’s hard to keep your mind off the situation. If things don’t go well today, there’s hardly any time left to fix it.

The first stop in Kladno is the social office. You walk into the office, your friend says who you are and what you need, and the woman grabs a document from a bin, asks you to sign it, and hands you your bezdlužnost. Step one: complete. God bless the women at the social office in Kladno.

In fact, let’s all just bow our heads and take a moment to appreciate these amazing ladies. If everyone in the Czech public service was like them, there would never be a problem with paperwork.

Thank you.

The second stop is the finance office. Your form is ready (oh thank god) and you need only sign for it. The woman at the desk is less than friendly and happy, but she doesn’t give you any trouble. You thank her very politely and are on your way.

So far it’s only taken about 30 minutes to get everything done. Unfortunately, you’ve just missed the 9:25 bus to Rakovnik and have a few hours to kill before the next one. Time to get some food and celebrate how smoothly everything has gone so far. Your stress levels have dropped considerably and you have a feeling today is going to go very well. Soon you’ll have your two-year residence card and everything will be okay.

After a nice early lunch and a leisurely stroll through the only nice part of Kladno, you make your way to the bus station and pass the long trip to Rakovnik with conversation completely unrelated to paperwork. It’s a nice day, you’ve got a good feeling, and this will all be over soon.

The police station is in the center of Rakovnik, just a few minutes’ walk from the bus station, but the foreigner police are located somewhat less conveniently. In fact, it’s about a 25-minute walk down a long road with no bus stops, located in a rusted metal building in an industrial park. The police officer at the front window tells you to go on in, and you enter the room where you will spend the rest of the day.

There are a lot more people in here than you expected. All of them appear to be either Vietnamese or Ukrainian. There are two open windows, and a cardboard box with numbers on slips of paper. You get number 32, and they’re already on 29. This should be relatively quick and painless.

An hour goes by. There are no toilets. Only one person is called. It’s not that they seem overwhelmingly busy. Everyone is just sitting around waiting. What are the people behind the window doing? One large woman is staring at a computer screen with a confused look on her face. Two others are chatting, partly about work, and partly about some social event they had both attended. A man walks into their office smiling and starts a friendly chat with one of the women that lasts for what feels like an eternity. Finally, they call number 31.

Your friend goes up to the window and asks if you’re waiting in the right place. Irritatedly, they say yes, now go and sit down. Simultaneously, you think you hear someone call 32, but you’re not sure. Your friend walks back to the window to ask the woman which number she had called. She’s just about ready to throw out number 32 and call 33 when he stops her and says you’re 32. Angry, she demands that you move a little quicker if you don’t want to lose your place.

It’s understandable, really. After all, you’ve only been waiting 90 minutes, and she had to stand at that window for nearly 30 seconds before you got there.

You join your friend at the window with your binder full of paperwork. There is a woman standing there with a smile on her face. It is the smile of a loan shark with a crowbar informing you you’re very late paying back your debt. The smile of a supervillain who has you and your loved ones dangling above a pit of starving wolves. This is the woman who will decide if your paperwork is acceptable or not.

The first problem is your application form. There are some fields left blank, such as “spouse” - since you don’t have one. She gruffly informs your translator that you must write “nemá” in each of these fields.

No problem, you say. Right away. So sorry for the mistake. You never stop smiling.

While you’re doing that, she rifles through the rest of the papers. “What’s this?” she says, as though she had discovered a dead rat right in the middle of the pile. She’s pointing at your work contract. Your friend explains that the work contract is part of your reason to stay in this country, along with your business license, and also proof of income, since it states your monthly salary. She stares at you for a moment as though he had just told her that YOU were the one leaving flaming bags of dog poo on her porch every Tuesday for the past six months, then sighs and shrugs. She’ll have to discuss it with her colleague. She walks away from the window into the office. You can plainly see and hear her chatting with another one of the women. They are not discussing your case. They laugh at some private joke, then she walks out of the office entirely.

Several minutes later she returns, a look of triumph on her face. No, they cannot accept your work contract as proof of income. You must also provide a bank statement demonstrating for AT LEAST the past three months that you are actually getting paid this amount.

But you only started the job two months ago.

Well, that’s not her problem, is it?

Anyway, the business license is completely unacceptable. It expires on the same day as your current visa. You tell her of course it does - they won’t extend it until you have a new visa. She looks at you again with a whole new expression of annoyance. Maybe she misheard - did you accidentally just tell her that shirt makes her look fat? You’re pretty sure you didn’t.

She takes a deep breath. It’s clear that she’s very tired of having to explain this to you. How is it that you haven’t psychically taken the information from her brain by now and saved her the trouble? But she’s a patient woman, and she manages to explain to you with almost complete calmness that you must first go to the business office in Kladno and apply to extend your license. They will give you a letter stating that you have applied for it, which you must then give to the foreigner police to prove that you’re really going to do it. Until they have that, there’s no way they can even consider your application.

But being the kind-hearted woman she is, she will look through the rest of your papers to make sure they’re all in order. The bezdlužnost from the finance office is fine. So is the one from the social office. But where is the proof you’ve paid your social insurance?

Well now you’re truly confused. Isn’t that what the bezdlužnost is? It’s a document stating that you don’t owe any money. If you don’t owe any money, then you must have paid your social insurance, right?

The woman reacts to this bit of logic as though you’d tried to prove that the Easter Bunny is real and living in a condo in southern France. She shakes it off like a blow to the head and repeats, you need a paper from the social office listing each and every payment you’ve made.

It is around this point that your friend turns to you and says, still smiling and in the calmest of tones, that this woman is not making any sense whatsoever (even in Czech), and that her attitude is making him want to punch a hole through the wall. You need to hurry up and finish as quickly as possible so he can go outside, scream, and smoke an entire pack of cigarettes.

I’m going to step back a moment now and simply summarize the rest of the encounter, because you’re getting the idea, and to continue to write it out in such detail might trigger an attack of PTSD. Of the documents you were told by phone to bring for your application, more than half of them are unacceptable and many are missing. Your lease is fine as proof of accommodation and the bezdlužnost papers are fine. Your application form is now okay. Your work contract will be considered as part of the application but you need the official bank statement. Your insurance card is good, but you also need to provide “proof of payment” for your insurance - meaning your receipt from the purchase. (The implication here is that people are going around forging insurance cards, but that it would be impossible to forge a receipt with a stamp on it.) Your business license is useless and you must go to Kladno to apply for the extension. You need to visit the social office and get a stamped paper listing all the social security payments you’ve made.

So the complete list, now, of what you still need, is:
1. letter from the business office declaring you have applied to extend your business license
2. official list of social security payments
3. receipt of payment for health insurance
4. stamped bank statement proving your income

You write this all out neatly on a piece of paper and show her, and she confirms that if you bring these four things, your application will be complete. Your friend politely asks how it’s possible that when you called weeks ago, they gave you completely different information. Her face turns angry and she insists that this is not possible - you must have called the wrong office, or misunderstood what you were told, because this office does not make mistakes.

Of course not.

Regarding the matter of temporary extension for your visa, there is another problem. Once your application is officially submitted in its entirety, they will give you a temporary visa extension for up to three months while they process you (and then you have to go to the business office to get a similar extension for your business license), but they won’t give you this until there are no more than seven days left on your visa. So you’ll have to come back again and spend another day here waiting in line just for that.

The biggest problem now is not that you will have to miss more work, but that you are rapidly running out of time. It’s only the middle of December, and you have until the last day of the month, but in a week and a half it will be Christmas and everything will be closed. You won’t have a chance to visit the business office in Kladno until Monday, and Christmas is the following weekend. If they say they require a week to process your request to extend your business license (as they typically do), or if the social office requires time to provide your list of payments, you’ll simply be out of luck. If you had known about these requirements, you would have had these documents already - but it doesn’t matter that you called them, asked what you needed, and they gave you the wrong information. It’s still on you to find a way to make this work. And let’s not even think about how you’re going to deal with this proof of income. It’s too much to process right now.

Appropriately enough, when you finally leave the office, the weather has changed from sunny and warm to pouring rain, strong winds, and near-freezing temperatures. Couldn’t make this stuff up.

This mess is so far from over.