Bureaucracy

To visit Hungary, you do not need a visa.  If you are going to be staying for longer than ninety days, however, you do need to apply for a residence permit with the Hungarian immigration office.  How many days have we been in Hungary?  Eighty-eight.  And so today we spent most of the day in the immigration office, submitting our applications for residence permits.  (Yes, we are procrastinators.)

The details of our visit are not all that interesting.  In fact, the key emotions we experienced were boredom, confusion, and frustration.  One of the Calvin students, however, wrote a blogpost about her experience at immigration that so well sums up the feeling of being at immigration, that I will encourage you to read it:  click here to read Jen Vos's hilarious take on visiting the immigration office.

One last thought.  When Jeff and I were part of Latin America Mission's Spearhead program in Mexico City in 1993-94, we saw the immense numbers of Mexicans lined up outside the American embassy and realized just how difficult it is to immigrate or even visit the U.S. legally.  Now, from a different perspective, we see again just how difficult it can be to do things the legal way when you are dealing with a bureaucracy whose main language is not your own and whose reasons for asking what they do of you are as clear as mud.  Still, I can't be too displeased with the Hungarian government - they've let us experience all the other things we've written about in this blog, plus so much more.

Then again, there is that waiver we had to sign saying that if our application for residency permits is denied, we agree to hit the road, Jack.  But I'm sure that won't happen...will it?