Carl Theodor Wagner Building

He was a watchmaker in Wiesbaden and this was his factory and also flats.  I'm a sucker for a nice font and I do like this one.

And now I have to introduce you to a new German verb. 

Those of you hoping for something slightly funny and light-hearted are going to be disappointed.

This is a tale of dealing with Bürokratie again (see yesterday's Blip for part one).

The sentence that sums up today is "Sie haben mich wirklich verarscht" and the verb for today is "verarschen".  We'll be kind and euphemistically translate the verb as "to mess someone around rather badly".  And the sentence can be translated as "They certainly seem to have had some fun at my expense".

So yesterday I started the process of becoming a German citizen.  I needed to get the forms and advice on what I had to do.

You'd think this would be an a process that has been thought through, tested and refined until it was as straightforward as A-B-C.  A one-stop-we-can-sort-everything sort of deal.

It isn't.

You have your interview with the nice lady in the Naturalisation Office.  This is open Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays.  You need then to visit the Volkshochschule office to book your place for a test.  And of course the Volkshochschule office isn't open at the same time as the Naturalisation Office.  That would be too easy.  And you can't apply via the internet because that would, again, be way too easy.

So I went today (open between 2 and 6 they said).

I got there at 3 and there was no-one there waiting.  "This will be easy" thought stupid-me.

A woman stopped me and said "Frau Dingsbums isn't here, she'll be back around 4."  "Perhaps you can help me?" I asked.  "No.  Frau Dingsbums does that side of things"

But Frau Dingsbums wasn't there and the whole process would have taken up 5 minutes of Frau Zicke's time and we can't be having that.

So I went away and did some shopping and came back an hour later.

Oh would you look at that, there are now 20 people waiting to see Frau Dingsbums (who was not there at 4).

Frau Zicke & Frau Zuwichtig are still in their office but they don't deal with this process, only Frau Dingsbums does that.  So they'll just sit there and do nothing.  As 21 of us sit in an unventilated, un-air-conditioned corridor (it was 26°C outside and hotter inside) waiting for Dingsbums.

She appears.  She looks at us and rolls her eyes and sighs theatrically.  She "needs a minute".

And so we wait.

She invites the first bloke in.  And don't forget I'm number 21 in this queue.

After he's been in there for 15 minutes with lots of "Um Gottes willen" and Sigggghhhhhhhhs.  I realise that this is just another game.  And one I'm not going to play.

I can only believe that things are done this badly deliberately.  There's a German word that fits here "menschenverachtend"*

I can't believe that no-one has ever said "I know how we can make this easier". 

I could.

Maybe that's how I could make my millions by offering a central place where you get the forms, registered for the courses that you need and you are given helpful advice in simple German. There would be a market for that. 

Oh and I would have air-conditioning in my waiting room.

A pox on the VHS.


*it means to have no regard for others. And is quite a bleak thing to say.