-itch

Another piece of bureaucracy hurdled today.

Appointment at the Rathouse to get whatever the Germans call a provisional driving licence and boy was the woman (using the term in its loosest possible sense) ...unpleasant.

She started out nice, laughingly appologizing for having to finish up the paperwork from the previous victim sucker resident and then asked what we were there for, we explained, I handed over all the bits of paper I had thought to bring with me (both passports (just in case) both residency permits (just in case) the first aid course certificate, sight test, photos and all the stuff from the driving school) she flung most of it back at me saying she didn't need it, then made herself look stupid when I had to hand one of them back to her. At the end of it all I asked (because she didn't offer the information*) whether the driving licence got sent out to us in the post (as she clearly wasn't about to hand us one across the desk) to which I got the rather scornful response that we'd get a letter within two weeks from TÜV (another government department of course) and that our driving school would know more.

Even the teen thought she was possibly schizophrenic, either that or just an ausländer hater, we spent the journey home plotting how to avoid her when in a years time we have to go to upgrade his licence from accompanied driver to non accompanied, because she will still be there, at the very same desk, with the same sad and pitiful collection of cuddly toys on her part of the window ledge.


* I was clearly supposed to have absorbed the information via osmosis from her.