of foreigner registrations, I.D. cards, and other fun stuff

The title says it all, no? The last three days that's all mom has been doing: trying to get her registration and I.D. card. She managed to procrastinate long enough, until another American from a related-to-Fulbright program came to leave in the same building so she decided that it was about time to bite the bullet and get the process going.

"Get the process going", of course, is a euphemism. Yesterday, mom, T., and our landlords went to the police station where this is all supposed to take place. The first - and only - surprise to mom (who has extensive experience with extreme bureaucratic processes) was that the police staff was very nice and police to her, spoke English (!!!) while they were quite hostile towards her Bulgarian landlord. Maybe it's mom's CLF attitude, who knows...in any case, the woman there told Mom that she needs to get her work contract translated, and - read this - unless there is a specific clause in the contract that says specifically that mom and T. have "the right to be in Bulgaria for free", they would have to pay for their papers (a couple of hundreds of leva). Then the same woman noticed that mom has also a Greek passport, so she said it would be a lot easier to do this via E.U. route, so that even if she has to pay, it would only be 7 leva. That meant, of course, that T. (who only has a U.S. passport) would most likely be stuck with paying the hundreds of leva. Mom later learned from our landlord that the other staff at the station kept saying (in Bulgarian) how it is only fair that Americans go through a lot of trouble, since Bulgarians have to go through the same and worse in order to get U.S. residence. I must say that he does have a point... but what does poor mom have to do with this?

Now, the Fulbright officers insist that "they should not be asking for x,y,z". The problem is, "what they should be asking" and "what they ARE asking" turn out to be two very different things. Of course, if mom was in Sofia, things would be different. There, there would be a lawyer appointed by the Fulbright commission to help out. But as I might have mentioned, if you are not assigned in Sofia, you're out of luck. All you're left with is your CLF skills :)

Then was the whole issue of the apartment lease. I'll keep this short, and will just say that after lots of negotiations, it was decided that our landlords will sign an affidavit that we live here.

So, today after school, mom and our landlords went to the notary, had the affidavit notarized, then went to the translation office, got the translated contract, then stopped briefly at the radiology office to get an x-day of mom's wisdom tooth (to be extracted shortly), and then got the police station, only to be told that they need some other things and that it's too late for today.

That's the short version. Tomorrow is another day, so keep your fingers crossed. The I.D. saga is to be continued...