Thursday, February 26, 2009

I'm legal.

Mind you, I was perfectly legal all along, since I'm married to the person who is required to be here.

Only thing is, somehow there's this notion that I'm supposed to get a job. Phuh.
Yesterday (Wednesday) we spent the better part of the day by first going to the municipal building in Goor to pick up Gabe's Dutch drivers licence. In spite of the information that we had received, they don't just take away your existing licence and expect you to hoof it to work for the number of weeks that it might take for the thing to arrive in the mail, they actually have a system. They simply give you a piece of paper showing a photocopy of your existing licence with their stamp on it, saying, "This is your temporary licence which you can show if need be". Besides, they probably figure nobody's going to be gullable enough to simply give up a perfectly good driver's licence and then have to be ferried to work every day, since they're just going to drive anyway.
Just the same, I wasn't all too keen to start the proceedure for myself in case there was some truth to the rumour, and then neither of us would have a driver's licence.

Not happenin'.

I have to mention that, I very nearly made it to the place without the assistance of the GPS.

So close.

Thought I could do it.
At some point though the streets start to all look the same, so even though it turns out I was within about a block and a half of the place, I had to resort to "stupid". If it only had a bleepin' map....
Next we had to go up to Zwolle, which is the provincial seat for Overijssel, to fetch my residence permit . It's a bit of a hike, and these buildings (Immigration, Police station and a few more) are in an area where there's just very little parking. It's not like they plopped it down in the centre of some 500 year old town either, they just chose not to provide any parking, except for the people who work there.
Nice.
There was a parking area, and that was fine if you didn't mind a good 15 minute walk to the front of the building. Of course, what do they care? It's only immigrants.
The last time we were there for Gabe's residence permit, we unfortunately went on a Friday, and it was busy. This time the double parking scheme was equally effective, however Wednesdays are better. I think there were maybe 4 people who went ahead of me. So I had my little card and was out in under 20 minutes I think.

Here's what you get:I don't even want to begin to speculate as to just what that guy looks like. Not sure I'd hire him, that's for sure.
Some days "approach with caution" might be a good caption.
But if you look really hard, you can actually see where its says "eww"

Click on the pic and look at the letters.

2 comments:

  1. If I read your dog license correctly, you need to un-reside on Christmas Eve this year. So this permit adventure will be a repeating process for you?? ..... Gunnar

    ReplyDelete
  2. yup...only good for a year. Isn't that special?

    ReplyDelete

Well, I've been getting too many spam comments showing up. Just a drag, so we'll go another route and hope that helps. So, we won't be hearing anything more from Mr. Nony Moose.
I guess I'll just have to do without that Gucci purse.