The rules are changing here, as far as the acceptance of foreigners is concerned. The Czechs aren’t particularly gung-ho about enforcing the new rules, but their neighbors in the European Union are. Now the Czech’s data systems have been integrated, reducing their ability to let things slide.

Currently I am completely legal here, but in the past I’ve let that slide a time or two. Getting the paperwork done to exist here legally will greatly improve my peace of mind, and get me reasonably affordable health insurance to boot. Overall, it’s the sensible thing to do. (It was the sensible thing to do long ago, but the recent changes have lit a fire under my butt.)

I don’t do well with bureaucracy in general, and although the communists were overthrown twenty years ago, some artifacts of that culture remain. There are plenty of government agencies here that exist for the sole purpose of existing, and to justify their existence they must create problems so that there are problems for them to solve. The Czechs certainly don’t have a monopoly on this sort of thing, but they’re awfully good at it.

Anyway, wading through all the requirements, getting all the documents together, and all that stuff is not the sort of thing I enjoy doing, and something that I tend to make even more complicated than necessary. Enter the professional bureaucracy-waders. You give them the power to represent you, and some money, and they take care of most of the crap. I have retained once such person, a nice guy named Robert. (Don’t tell him, but I expected to pay a lot more.)

The first step is to sign a series of nearly-identical forms granting him the power to represent me. He sent me the forms in an email, and today’s step was going to a friend’s house to print them out. They were Microsoft Word documents, but Word didn’t reproduce the wacky czech characters correctly, so I printed out a second batch using Apple’s butt-simple text editor, which did just fine. Armed with the documents, I set out in search of a notary. Soup Boy had told me where one was near my house, so that seemed like a slam-dunk.

The address Soup Boy gave me turned out to be a house. That was #7; across the street was #6, an office supply/copies/laminating shop that seemed like a natural place for a notary to be. (When Soup Boy had told me the address, I had originally assumed this was the place anyway.) I entered the shop, and in pre-rehearsed czech I asked for a notary. Confusion ensued.

It was not that I did a bad job asking for a notary; in fact I think I did a pretty good job. The difficulty was that no one present had any idea why the hell I would be asking for a notary there. What followed was a guessing game in which the shop owner and other shop patrons tried to figure out what I really wanted. One patron spoke pretty decent English. “What is it you want?” “Notař,” I replied. “Notary.” “You want something to write notes in?” I was actually pretty proud of my czech as I explained that I had documents I needed to sign and for someone official to stamp. Eventually everyone concerned decided that I did, indeed know what I wanted, and all agreed that they had no idea where I might find one in the area.

Tomorrow I’m heading to the embassy, and somewhere out there is a notary. Big steps tomorrow.

Sweet!

Thanks!

I’m a guy. Most of you probably knew that already, and find that statement obvious, if not gratuitous. But this episode is about two corollaries of the guy postulate – I eat like a guy, and I shop like a guy. The Czech Republic is perfect for the guy diet. There are two food groups: meat and potatoes. As far as shopping goes, for a guy it’s a simple matter of going to the store that sells what you want, and buying it.

Yesterday, however, I broke both those rules. I was at the grocery store picking up meat, cheese, and bread, when I was hit by a hankerin’ for some apples. This store, being almost as big as a single aisle in a major US supermarket, generally carries some produce, but yesterday, no apples. Undaunted, I carried my quest to fulfill a spontaneous dietary urge to another store. Just up the street a few doors is a fruit and vegetable store I had never tried. Surely they would have apples.

And yes they did. Lovely Fujis, delectable Granny Smiths, and a couple other varieties were on display in that cramped little store. A rainbow of beautiful bell peppers. What makes this store interesting, however, is the wide variety of items that are neither fruit nor vegetable. In defiance of all czech tradition, this store carries items not within the advertised narrow category.

The first thing I noticed was the chocolate. The owner of this store must be a hard-core chocolate lover, because these weren’t just your ordinary huge chocolate bars, they were the ones that advertise an enormous chocolate content. I generally consider 70% coco to be pretty hard core, but there were several 85% slabs of pure chocolaty goodness to choose from.

There was also an impressive selection of tea – all green. It was when I was surveying the teas that I realized that behind this store is someone who has decided to sell what they like, dammit. In the back somewhere is someone who believes that green tea is better for you than black, and therefore in this store you get green. Chocolate is good, and the more pure the better. Whoever’s running this show isn’t above making money (the apples were pretty pricey), but there’s a passion that shows in the inventory. Then there was the wine and a remarkable selection of booze.

I resisted all those temptations — I was a guy on a guy shopping mission — but I fell prey to the hand-packed baggies of nuts by the register. As I type this, I’m munching pistachios. I’ve had some disappointing bags of nuts before, but these babies rock. They’re going to be seeing more of me at that store.

Sweet!

Thanks!