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.
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