The Romanian Visa Paradox - IX

PART IX – The Belarusian Capacitance

So a month later and I was going back to Budapest again.

By a strange coincidence every time I took the train to Hungary I was giving exactly the same seat in the same car. 

I boarded the train in Ploiesti and when I entered the compartment where my seat was supposed to be, there was a young man seated on it. I excused myself and pointed to him that he was on my seat and he apologized and told me that he wasn’t supposed to be in that car anyway. I asked him what happened and he explained:

He’s Austrian and is traveling from Bucharest to Vienna. He had a sleeping car ticket but when the conductor came to check his ticket he was called by the next car’s conductor and when he came back the conductor had lost his ticket so he told the young man to move to the non-sleeping car and take any seat that is not occupied.

Well, that in itself is disturbing but then I asked him why is he in the train to Budapest as there is a Bucharest – Vienna train? And he explained that when he went to buy the ticket at Bucharest station he asked for a ticket to Vienna but the ticket vendor wasn’t sure if there was a direct train to Vienna and she couldn’t check if there was one because the computer network was down at the station. So she suggested he takes the train to Budapest and then take another train to Vienna from there.

Really, now I’ve been living in Romania for 8 years and I still find it hard to believe that it is possible for these things to happen.

As the train left Ploiesti we talked about traveling and visas and he told me that when he was a student, he and a friend used to go to Cuba, buy cigars and then sell them in the US for a pretty good profit as Austrians could get Cuban visas easier than Americans. And he told me that the last time he did that, on the way to board the plane to US they were delayed at passport control and by the time they were released the boarding gate had already been closed. Airport officials were trying to find a way to get them into the plane and finally they decided to use a forklift to lift the guys into the airplane through the galley compartment of the plane. Mind you, the galley compartment access is a trapdoor in the cargo bay of the plane where the galley boxes containing the flight’s meals are loaded directly into the food shelves in the plane’s galley. So from the flight attendant’s point of view, these two guys simply popped into the plane from the food cupboard. Which caused quite a commotion in the plane and more delays. And considering that Cuba is quite a paranoiac communist country it was surprising that it didn’t cause an international incident.

When the train stopped in Brasov, another passenger came into our compartment and started talking to us. 

            He asked me where am I from and as I told him Brazil, he told me that he has been in Brazil and Peru. I asked him if he’s been there for business or pleasure and his answer was: “I was there in a… Well… Let’s say it is a sort of business” so I asked him what line of business he’s and his answer was: “I work for God”. To which I asked: “So are you some kind of priest or missionary?” And he answers: “Mmm…. Yeah… I suppose we could say that I am a kind of priest…” 

            He was obviously trying too hard to create an aura of mystery around himself so I immediately lost any interest in talking to him and just let him talk to the Austrian. I put on my earphones and started to listen to some music in my mp3 player and ended up dozing off.

            When I woke up the two of them were apparently engaged in an animated conversation. The Austrian was saying: So I met this beautiful girl online, she’s from Belarus… And I immediately thought: Uh oh… This sounds like the beginning of a very interesting story with a very bad ending. So I started paying attention.

            And he was telling about this beautiful blonde Belarusian girl and how he met her in a web site, how they started talking every day, how he started feeling that there was a connection between them, how he realized they were in love… And at every line he said, the “priest” was saying “Oh, I am sure you two are very happy now”. 

            So he continued:

            “We decided to get married and that she should move with me in Austria.”

            “Oh… I’m sure you two are very happy now!”

            “So I wanted to give her the wedding of her dreams…”

            “Oh, this is so beautiful! I’m sure you two are very happy now!”

            “And I arranged for us to get married in this beautiful chapel in the mountains with only my close friends as guests…”

            “Oh, this is so perfect! I’m sure you two are very happy now!”

            “And I bought this nice apartment in Vienna and we moved there…”

            “Oh… I’m sure you two are very happy living there!”

            “And everything was going so well…”

            “Ah see? I knew you two are very happy!”

            “And one day I got home and there was an ashtray in the living room, but she doesn’t smoke”

            The “priest” pauses.

            “I asked who has been there and she said it was a girlfriend of hers…”

            “Ah, see? It was nothing after all…”

            “And another day there was two glasses of wine in the bedroom…” 

            Silence…

            “And I asked her why there were wine glasses in the bedroom and she said her girlfriend came and they drank wine and she wanted to clean the place before I come home and started gathering the things and when I arrived she had the glasses on her hand and went to the bedroom to arrange her hair and forgot the glasses there…”

            Silence…

            “And another day I got home early and she was in bed and I asked what’s going on and she got angry and we had a fight…”

            Silence…

            “And I found out that it wasn’t any girlfriend visiting her. It was some of my friends and every time I confronted her about this we would fight and she would beat me…”

            Silence… And you could hear the “priest’s” jaw drop.

            “Then she started saying that she can’t live like this, with me controlling her all the time so she said we have to divorce and she called her father…”

            Silence…

            “Her father and brother came to fight with me and demand that we divorce. So we divorced, she took all my money, I had to sell the apartment… Now I live alone.”

            The compartment was very silent until we reached Budapest.

            It may sound anti-climatic but the rest of the trip was uneventful.

            I simply arrived at the consulate, waited for a while in the cold street, got called inside, had my passport stamped with the visa, walked around Budapest, boarded the train home and that was it.

            No pretty girls staring at Japanese geeks, no megalomaniac consulate officers, no eccentric bag ladies in train stations, no greedy train conductors.

            All’s well that ends well but this whole visa business left me an indelible bitter taste in my mouth. The impression that I am a castaway, marooned in an alternate universe where things do not make sense, where laws are created to protect criminals and punish innocents, where being wrong is the only way to be right, where no good deeds go unpunished.

            Stop this universe, I want to get off.

The Romanian Visa Paradox - VIII

PART VIII – The Harassment Instability

            After the consulate business I still had to wait until evening for the train back to Romania. I didn’t want to stray much in that seedy area of the city to I spent most of the time walking around the consulate area and the banks of the Danube.

            I boarded the train without incidents and in the same compartment was a Romanian girl. We started talking and she told me that her sister was married to a Hungarian man and had just given birth so she has spent the past three months helping her sister with the house chores. And in this period, she also went visit some friends in Amsterdam. 

            We crossed the border into Romania without incidents with the Hungarian immigration authorities.

            She was showing me her photo album with photos of her stay in Hungary and the trip to Holland when we stopped for the check by the Romanian immigration authorities.

            The officer checked my passport and my visa and stamped it without problems.

            When it was the girl’s turn however, the officer turned nasty. He checks her passport and sees that she’s been in Hungary for 3 months and start asking what was she doing there? Why did she have to come to Hungary? Why did she stay so long? Couldn’t her sister hire someone to help her? 

            He noticed the Dutch visa in her passport and started a new batch of questions: Why did she go to Holland? How long did she stay there? What were she doing there?

            Then he demands that she opens her luggage. As she does so he sees the photo album and asks her what is it. She says it’s just a photo album. He grabs it from inside her suitcase and starts flipping through the photos. I stand up and asked him if that was really necessary. He holds a hand up to me and tells me to stay out of it, with the typical Romanian “Aici eu sunt cel mai tare si mai mare” attitude.

            During her visit to Holland, the girl’s friends had taken her to visit the famous Amsterdam Sex Museum. While flipping through the album the bully sees a photo of a statue of a man with a huge erection taken at the museum and starts asking her: What is this? Is this what you went to Amsterdam for? Is this what you like?

            The SOB turned from harassment to abuse.

            Clearly the bully assumed that the girl could only be a prostitute and was trying to force her into admitting it. 

So that’s what is in his mind. If a Romanian woman goes abroad, the only possible reason is prostitution. 

And this was a Romanian border officer checking on a Romanian citizen!

I wonder if he has ever checked whether his mommy has been abroad.



 

The Romanian Visa Paradox - VII

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?

The Romanian Visa Paradox - VI

PART VI – The Romanian Money Machine Paradigm

As I had bought a two way ticket in Ploiesti, I had just the ticket to board the train but I didn’t have the ticket for a seat so in Arad I had to go to the ticket vendors and request one, which cost me around 20.000 Lei (2 Ron) at the time.

While I was at the platform waiting for the train a gypsy couple arrived at the platform carrying 2 huge bags each. The lady stayed at the platform and the man went back and forth inside the station and out and brought several more huge bags, probably full of Hungarian products to be sold at the open market in Romania. 

As the train stopped I realized they were going to board the same car as I was supposed to board. The lady run to one of the car entrances and yelled at her husband to run to the other one and the two of them proceeded to load their cargo in the car, preventing other people from boarding. The lady kept screaming in Roma language to her husband at the other extremity of the car all the time. I was trying to board the car and she kept pushing me aside with her big bags. I finally snapped at her “What the fuck, lady! Let other people board the train!” She looked at me with her wild eyes. Then she started screaming at me in Roma language and reapeating “Ei waddafack! Ei waddafack!”

            When I finally boarded there was a French girl in the compartment where I had my seat. She said she was travelling from Paris to Bucharest. 

            A few minutes after the train left Arad the conductor came in to check the tickets. He checked mine and everything was in order. He checked hers and explained to her that she had to buy the ticket for the seat as she had only the ticket to board the train. She asked him how much and he typed some numbers in his pocket calculator and showed it to her and whispered: “In Euro”.

            After he left I asked her how much did he charge her and she said 50 euro.

            That’s 108 times what I paid for exactly the same ticket. Don’t you just love the Romanian money machine?

            I finally got home and in the next day I called the Consul in Budapest. He picked the phone and asked me “why didn’t you come? I was expecting you!”

            I told him I ended up going to Szeged, to which he said sarcastically: “Ahaaaa… You went to Szeged, eh? And tell me, did you get your visa?”

            When I told him that I didn’t, he said: “I knew you wouldn’t get it because I know the consul from Szeged. He thinks that Romanian immigration laws are the same as US laws and he has to protect Romanian borders from the “Mexicans” trying to enter the country.”

            I told him about the consul’s definition of minimum salary per economy and he laughed saying “He’s crazy…”

            Anyway, he told me to go over to Budapest next week and he will give me the visa.

The Romanian Visa Paradox - V

PART V - The Bag Ladies Aberration

       To add insult to injury, the train from Szeged back to Békéscsaba got delayed and when I arrived in Békéscsaba, the train to Arad was just leaving. Which means I had to wait for the next train.  Which means a ten hours wait at the train station. Well, yes, I could go for a walk in the city but from what I could see of the area surrounding the train station, I preferred to stay put rather than risk myself in the seedy streets of an unknown city in a country in which I can't speak the language and no one speak English.

        So I decided to stay at the waiting room of the station. Which was absurdly huge and therefore very badly heated for the December winter. No kidding, I think that waiting room could hold hundreds of people. And it was practically empty. Just me and 2 or 3 other people scattered throughout the immense room.

        As I had brought a book to read I chose the bench on the farthest end of the room, close to a window and a heater. I sat down and started to read. 

        A few minutes later an old woman entered the room. A typical mid-60s homeless train station bag lady. She entered the room and started to cross it. In my direction. She was getting closer and I was thinking: damn! Just my luck. This huge salon and the lady wants to sit near me?? She was getting closer.

        It turned out that she wasn't going to sit near me. She was going to sit ON me! No kidding, she came to sit on the chair that I was seated on! I said "Hellooo! This seat is taken!" and only then she was startled to notice that there was someone already seated on that chair!

        She mumbled something apologetic in Hungarian and seated on the chair next to me. Damn. There we were. A huge empty room that holds hundreds of people and the two of us seated side by side. Well I didn't want people to think that we were sort of odd couple so I tried to see if I could spot any other possible place to move to. The only other chairs close to the windows had no heater nearby. The only other one that had both window and heater, on the other side of the room was already occupied. I guess I was stuck with the bag lady. 

        I thought I could live with that. 
        Until she started talking. 

        To me.
        In Hungarian.

        At first I just shrugged to her trying to show that I don't speak Hungarian. But she insisted and kept babbling. I finally got fed up and made a signal with my hands for her to stop and I spoke slowly in English: Look, lady. I don't want to be rude but as I don't speak Hungarian, I have no idea what you're talking about!

        Her eyes went wide open and I suppose only then she realized that I am NOT Hungarian.  Well, I haven't seen any Hungarian that look as Japanese as I do. But then again, she haven't seen me seated there and almost mistook me for a chair.

        Well, she finally gave up telling me the latest gossips and I went back to my book while she just mumbled quietly to herself.

        A few minutes later and guess what? I guarantee you won't believe this. Another bag lady enters the room and starts marching towards me. This one was probably in her early 50s but had her hair in pigtails like a schoolgirl. 

        She saw me seated there, alright. But she seated on the other chair next to me. So there I was, in a huge empty waiting room in a train station in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe with two bag ladies, one on each side. Really, I was almost looking up and yelling to Him: Is that all you got??

        And of course, the second bag lady starts talking to me. In Hungarian, of course.

        And then she starts pointing to the other lady and her tone turns sarcastic.

        The other lady eyes go wild and she starts yelling at her and pointing at me. And I really hope they were not saying things like "I saw him first, go find someone else to rob!!"

        I really wanted to get the heck out of there. But on the other hand, I didn't want to sit down on the unheated side of the room.

        At one point the second lady looks at me, points to the first lady and says: "Ai grija!" Just like that. In Romanian. Which made me even more confused. She couldn't possibly know that I understood Romanian. So what the fuck was that??

        Anyway, they finally started to tone it down and reach an agreement. I was hoping it was not "Ok, we share then. I hold him, you stab him and we share the spoils."

        After the fight subsides, the first lady reaches for one of her bags and started fumbling with things inside it. She then pulls out two breads: One long and one round. She looked at them pondering for a while and decides for the long one. She then gets a plastic bag with cheese and one with ham and a can of butter and puts them on the chair next to her. She then takes out a knife, cuts the bread in half and proceeds to spread butter on it. Then as soon as she scoops another dollop of butter from the can she accidentally drops the knife on the floor. The train station floor. The filthy train station floor where thousands of people walk with their muddy shoes, where old men spit after chewing tobacco, where kids drop their chewing gum and the crowd step on it until it becomes part of the pavement. 

        That floor. 

        The lady then looks around like a guilty child, leans down, picks the knife with the now filthy butter and... keeps spreading it on the bread like nothing had happened. She then puts the cheese, the ham and offers it to me. I politely decline and she proceeds to eat it.

        Then, the second lady, probably hungry after observing  such elaborate  sandwich making ritual, grabs her own bag and starts fumbling with it.

        First she takes out a small branch of pine from it. She smells it with her eyes closed, like savoring some sweet memory. She kisses the branch and puts it on the chair next to her. She then takes out a train ticket, looks at it lovingly, like a child looking at her favorite doll. She kisses it too and puts it next to the pine branch. Then she puts her hand up to her mouth and spits her chewing gum on it. She rolls it in a small ball and put it on the chair, next to the other objects. Then she finally starts taking out her sandwich ingredients. A loaf of bread, butter, cheese, ham and a tomato. And she takes the tomato out of the bag in a very elaborate gesture, like a magician, to make sure the other lady sees it. Like a poker game: I see your ham and raise my tomato.

        She diligently assembles her sandwich, again slicing the tomatoes with very elaborate gestures, making sure the other lady sees it. When it's finally assembled she offers it to me, which, again I politely decline, and then proceeds to eat with gusto.

        When she finally finishes eating, she proceeds to put all the things back in the bag, except for the chewing gum, which was fairly stuck to the chair seat and stretches as she tries to detach it, which she, of course, put back in her mouth and proceeds on chewing as if it was freshly unwrapped from its package. 

        After the meal the two ladies finally settled down and even took a nap and I had the peace that I wanted to continue reading my book. Later in the afternoon the two of them left and the waiting room continued peaceful until evening.

        I finally boarded the train to Arad, where I had to get off and wait to board the train to Ploiesti.

The Romanian Visa Paradox - IV

PART IV - The Romanian Salary Indeterminacy

        So we got the list of documents necessary for the damn visa and it included a warrant from her company that she has a salary equivalent of 2 minimum salaries per economy according to the Romanian law. As her salary was way above that, it wasn't going to be a problem at all. Right? Yeah, right.

        I took the train to Hungary. 12 gruesome  hours until Arad. Then I had to wait for the train to Curtici, at the border and a couple more hours until Békéscsaba, change trains again and then a few more until Szeged.

        After all these months in Ploiesti, I was already getting used to people assuming that I am Chinese. So I almost choked laughing when at the border, the Hungarian immigration officer asked me if I am Mongol :-)

        I told him I'm Brazilian and gave him my passport. He said: "Ah! Brazil! Ronaldo! Football!" and started to check my passport. He then asks me where is the Hungarian visa.  Ooooo... that's what I was afraid of. The Brazil-Hungary agreement was so recent (only a couple of weeks ago) that the immigration officers didn't even know about it.

        I explained to him about it and he had to call his superior. Which didn't also know about it and had to call someone else in the office, who had to make a phone call to someone else.

        After an agonizing half-hour he came back with my passport and stamped the visa on it. Whew!

        I left Ploiesti at 19:00 and arrived in Szeged by 10:00 in the next morning. No Hungarian in the train station, shops, currency exchange offices, taxis or shops speak English so I had to keep my Hungarian Phrase Book handy (I will not buy this record, it is scratched! - For those who know Monty Python :-) And as no one besides Hungarians can pronounce Hungarian, I had to show it to them, not read from it.

        Anyway, despite all the problems, I finally arrived at the Romanian Consulate in Szeged and met the consul himself. I introduced myself and told him I expect that Cristina has already talked to him and he probably knows what it is about. He said yes and asked me to give him the papers. He checked them and when he got to that salary warrant, he told me that this paper was irregular. I asked him what does he mean and he said that according to the law, my wife's salary is not enough to support me.  I told him that as I understand, the law says 2 minimum salaries per economy. He then argues that what the law really means is 2 minimum salaries per economy PER PERSON. 

        As my wife's salary was still way above 4 minimum salaries per economy I pointed it to him that it was still within the limits. And then he says: No, because I am calculating 4 minimum ROMANIAN salaries. As I am requesting the visa in Hungary, I have to prove that my wife has 4 minimum HUNGARIAN salaries, which btw, was 1200 American dollars. In that period not many people had this kind of salary in Romania and I am not convinced that there were many people with this kind of salary in Hungary either.

        I told him that it is absurd because I am requesting a residence visa for ROMANIA, not for HUNGARY. And that my wife should be able to support me in ROMANIA, not in HUNGARY, and that the immigration law we are talking about is ROMANIAN not HUNGARIAN, therefore the salaries should be obviously ROMANIAN.

        He used the traditional Romanian catchphrase: "Hey, YOU need ME, I don't need YOU. YOU do what I tell you." and literally threw all the documents on my face.  I picked all the papers from the floor and put them back in my briefcase and picked my phone, to which the consul says: "What now? Are you going to call Cristina? Go ahead, go cry to Cristina! You can call Cristina all you want, it won't change anything!"

        Well, well, it looks like this Cristina was wearing armored panties when Mr. consul tried to tap her.

       

        But no, I wasn't going to call any armored panties Cristina. I was just going to call my wife to inform her that she will never, ever be forgiven for this. For as I see it, I had the visa in my hands and she yanked it from me because some armored panties bimbo thought she's so hot that the consul would do anything for her.

            And in the end, to demonstrate his infinite generosity,  the consul gave me a one month (instead of three months) tourist visa for me to go back to Romania.