PART VII – The Geeky Reaction
So there I was again, on the train to Hungary. This time however, instead of getting off in Békéscsaba and changing trains I would ride the same train all the way to Budapest. A train ride that takes longer than flying from Japan to Romania.
The trip was relatively uneventful. I arrived in the next morning at Budapest Keleti Station and in spite of the cold, I decided to go walking to the Romanian Consulate because I didn't want to have to struggle with the language barrier trying to take a cab and also because the consulate wasn't open yet at that hour.
From what I had figured from the map, it wouldn't be a much long walk.
However, what you can't see in the map is how seedy that area of the city is. But that wasn't much of a surprise for I believe in most big cities the area around the main train stations are always seedy.
I was on my way to the consulate when I noticed a girl coming from the opposite direction. She was pretty. Very pretty, actually. And most strangely: She was staring at me. Well, I was getting used to people staring at me in Romania, though not pretty girls like that. And in most of the cases people who stared at me in Romania ended up mocking or harassing me because they assume that I am Chinese. But this girl was too pretty and too well dressed and too well-educated looking to, all of a suddenly start yelling: "chun kyun wah hua" in a mocking Chinese or jump into mock kung-fu poses hooting like Bruce Lee. So I wasn't expecting her to do that. However, she was barely blinking while staring at me. We were about to pass each other and she stopped walking while her head rotated and her eyes followed me. I turned around and she was still there looking at me like I was some sort of unnatural phenomena. I also stopped and we were there staring at each other. I finally asked her "What? Did you like??" and she broke into a smile and said "Yes!" nodding her head rather vehemently.
Her reaction was so unexpected to me that I was rendered motionless. I really didn't know what to do. That sort of thing never happened to me. All my life living in Brazil and looking like a Japanese and now living in Romania and looking like a Chinese etched in my brain the fact that if someone stares at me in the streets it can only result in mockery and harassment. Having a pretty girl stare at me and say that she liked me was so paradigm shifting that my brain simply didn't know how to process and make sense of it. And the only signal able to reach my speech center just made me babble: "Er... thank you..." and I slowly started to walk away while she was still staring at me and reluctantly waving goodbye.
Why she reacted like that is still a mystery to me. My theory is that I was probably the first Japanese that she ever seen in her life so she was just fascinated by the novelty of it. You know, like seeing your first Ferrari when you were a kid. Or maybe she was a particularly devoted reader of James Clavell books.
Well, if I had been smart enough to stop and strike a conversation I would probably find out but unfortunately my shy geek side always wins over the feeble Latin-ness that I was able to absorb by osmosis during my 23 years in Brazil.
By the time I got to the consulate it was snowing again.
The Romanian Consulate is in a big villa that is probably late 19th century. I open the gate and enter the front yard and when I get to the door, it was closed. But from the looks of it, it has been closed for years. While I was there trying to open the door, a girl passing in the street told me that the entrance is in the back.
It turned out that she's also there for her visa. So we go around the corner to the back of the house, which is just a long wall with a small unmarked gate in the middle. A closed gate. And several people around it, on the street, waiting for some consulate employee to arrive and open it. There were no signs on the front of the building to indicate that the access is from the back whatsoever. And there were no signs at the gate to indicate that that was the entrance to the consulate either. But hey, this is the Romanian Consulate after all, so I wasn't surprised at all.
So finally someone arrives and opens the gate. He gets in and as he is closing the gate we ask him if we can enter and he says no. We are supposed to wait in queue right there. On the street. In the snow, in sub-zero temperature.
Oh yes. And Romanians are soooo proud of their hospitality...
So I wait there for a few hours, trying to pace and move my legs to prevent them from freezing solid while we were being called to enter one by one.
It's finally my turn. The guard opens the gate and lets me in. He escorts me through the backyard of the house to a small guard cabin where I am supposed to register myself in the visitors book and get an ID tag. Then he escorts me through the kitchen of the house to a room where I am asked to present my papers. They take them inside and a few minutes later the consul comes talk to me and we finally meet in person. He acts very civilized for a Romanian government employee. None of that typical "aici eu sunt cel mai mare si cel mai tare" bullshittical behaviour. He even jokes about me going to Szeged and being denied visa by the sheriff consul. He then examined my papers and say that everything is in order and I was expecting him to stamp my passport with the residence visa and off I would go.
But it can't be that simple can it?
So he stamps it with a tourist visa and says "come back in one month and you will probably get your visa."
Wait, wait, wait... Wot??
Yep. Today I came here just to present my papers. The papers will them be sent to Bucharest to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to be processed, which takes one month. And then they are sent back to Budapest, where I am supposed to go collect them. And only then I will know whether my visa was approved or not. If it was then that's it. I go home and in the next year I can get a renewal in Ploiesti. If NOT, then... Well, bad luck.
So, let's recapitulate:
I've been living in Romania for a few months already. I am married in Romania with a Romanian citizen. But in order for me to live in Romania with my own wife, I have to travel 700Km to Budapest and request a residence visa for me to live in Romania, which I already am. My papers then will be sent 700Km back to Bucharest, 60Km from where I live, for one month, for the Ministry to give me the visa. Which is then sent 700Km back to Budapest, where I have to go collect it in order for me to come 700Km back home to where I live with my wife.
Doesn't it sound like a Monty Python episode?
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