April 16, 2004
That sinking feeling
We went of to do something bureaucratic and resonably-straightforward this morning. Oh, we knew it was going to take months but it is in itself a reasonably straightforward process. or so we thought. Because it turns out that sometimes, but only sometimes, there is a difference between being married to a Dutchman and just living with one.
There's no difference if he wants to sponsor you to live in the Netherlands, there's no difference if you want a visa to live and work here, there's no difference if you have a baby here, there's no difference if he wants to recognise the child as his, etc etc. But now there is a difference.
So we left the stadsregister to go to the stadsdeel kantoor, where after an hour long interview we discovered we also have to go to the alien police (shudder..!!!) after which forms will fly around between all these parties (and more), losing their attachments willy-nilly on the way, requiring duplicate letters, duplicate visits, triplicate lives, untold numbers of phone-calls and endless photo-copying.
It all happenned so quickly and easily, on an innocent-looking sunny spring morning, you left the house a free-woman and before you know it you're back on that slippery downward spiral of bureacracy that we thought we'd finally escaped from a couple of years ago!
Stay tuned for Kafka-in-Holland, the sequel.
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