Oh, I HATE this country

The extended story: I want to switch to an Orange subscription or service plan. 3 years of prepaid cards (first Connex than lately Orange) was quite enough, thank you. When I saw sometime last year that I have to bring some official paper before signing that service plan deal I was a little disappointed and forgot all about it for a while. When you have to get an official paper for something in Romania you get quite scared. Because those can be VERY HARD to obtain. Then sometime later I remembered again, remembered about the paper, got scared again, forgot again. Some of these days I remembered and yesterday I started out quite convinced that, yes, today I’ll have the subscription, no matter what. Searched with my mother for the required paper and found something dated 1979. Hmmm, I never thought that would be OK but nevertheless I tried.

I went down to Baia Mare and entered the biggest shop that sells Orange stuff. Of course, the paper wasn’t right, they said I have to come back with one dated from the very day I want to get the subscription itself. And I also found out that I have to make a 50$ bank deposit since my cute little town is “restricted” due to the considerable amount of frauds related to subscriptions. Cool. No problem, I thought, I’ll make it just give me that damn subscription already. Although I don’t understand just why aren’t they happy that you’re giving them the money and that’s that. No, you always have to get some freakin’ papers.

Anyway, I woke up early today to get that official paper attesting that I live in this house I’m typing this from. I went down happily that whooohooo I’ll have email through GPRS today. Not so fast boy! Have you forgotten the small fact that you live in Romania? Turns out I can only get that paper on mondays from 8 to 10 AM. Wow! Cool. I don’t know why not today, guess there were too busy drinking coffee and talking about bullshit as I saw they did.

Lesson learned: when you want to get something in Romania and an official paper is involved never start out with the thought that yes, you’ll have that today. Because you won’t. They hold on those papers tighter than to their drowning kids I think. And you can only get them on certain days at certain hours after you wait for all those who “know someone” at the office where you go to get their stuff first. Because that’s how it works. If you “know” the right persons you can get everything presto. Pretty cool. Not.