Hungarian Bureaucracy

I was going to write about the bath/shower situation, but that can wait for another day! Today's Hungarian culture lesson will be dealing with Hungarian Bureaucracy!



Edit is an English teacher here at the school, and she was assigned to be my liaison for this year. This is the first time for her to do this as a different teacher is resposible for this each year. She told me yesterday to bring my passport and paperwork as we would be taking care of a number of business items today.



So, we started in the secretary's office with a lot of confusion regarding my work visa. They asked me a number of times if I had it, and I explained that I had nothing and that I thought Hajni (pronounced Hoyni - of the CETP that placed me in this job) had given it to them when she brought me on Monday. After a number of phone calls - none of which were to Hajni - and copying of my passport and the "certified true and exact copy" of my diploma (of which I brought 8 as instructed, but the secretary wanted to make her own copy), Edit and I headed to the Finance office of the school. There Edit engaged in conversation with the Finance director and again asked me if I had a work visa. The Headmaster was sitting there, and he spoke up and said he had it, as Hajni had given it to him when she dropped me off. Apparently some of the phone calls were to the local work permit office that insisted that I needed the work visa to get the work permit, but that Hajni said is not really required anymore, but that some of these small local offices don't know, so she got the visa anyway. (whew) And then that was it.... I don't know if there will be more on this or not -- I think I have to go into the larger city to an office there but will just follow whatever they tell me!



After an hour of this, Edit and I headed to the bank to open an account. These guys like forms, multiple copies, copies of passports and stamps - yes, multiple stamps. I don't know if it is the noise they make when they stamp something or what, but everything gets stamped with two to three stamps. It took two people to figure out how to get my address, name, etc., into the computer system, but they were finally successful. In two to three weeks I should receive either a notice in the mail, or a phone call (although no one asked for my phone number!), to let me know that my ATM card is available at the bank and that I am to go and pick it up.


Another hour down, and we now headed to the tax office. It was probably a mile and a half to the office and Edit clicked along in her high heels like it was nothing. When we got there and entered a fifty foot long hallway, we saw people clustered around three different closed doors. Mind you, they weren't in lines, rather all clustered around the door and all of the staring at the door! The door Edit chose for us had two other women waiting. We watched as people went in and out of the other doors one by one, while no one came out our door! Finally, Edit decided to try another door and after a short wait we got our turn - only to be given a form, told to go back out in the hall to fill in out and to wait in line again. When we got inside, the same scene as in the bank occured: confusion about how to input my data, and a lot of forms and copies and stamping. I was given carbon copies of the forms, and again was told that I would receive something in two to three weeks.

I guess the experience wasn't much different than what we experience at home, other than not having access to the forms without having to wait in line, and of course the stamping of everything.