Bureaucracy Wars: Part… Who’s Counting?

Here's a slideshow of some selected pictures from everyone who came to our party - links to everyone's pictures can be found on our party page!

So much has happened since our last post, I will sum it up in the shortest, incomplete yet deepest sentences possible. Think of it as a Haiku or something poetic and beautiful like that.

Belgrade was awesome. Better than we expected. Checked out Timisoara. Timisoara was ok. Decided not to live in Timisoara in favor of Bucharest. Went to Bucharest. Went to Brasov. Rented an apartment for a month. Landlady had no teeth. Toothless landlady offered Amanda her old wedding dress. Planned our party. Learned how to use Torrents. Tried to get married legally. Got shut down due to a missing document. Amanda broke down in the civil court room. Forged some documents. Amanda chickened out. Still not married. Continued planning for the party. Bought some alcohol. Bought some plates. Bought some spoons, knives, forks. Reserved the citadel on the hill. Reserved the hotels. Organized transport for trips. Asked family members to bring things. Made welcome packets. Made welcome fliers. Went to Bucharest. Met family members. Everyone was on time. Everyone made it. Went out to eat with entire family. Slept at Vlad & Carmina’s place. Family members discovered roosters crow at all hours of the night. Went to Brasov. Train ride was stressful. Got a call from the Romanian border guard. Border guard was giving our Moldovan friends a hassle at the border. Talked him into letting them through. Got to hotel. Went to organ concert. Went to eat. Moldovans arrived. Went to sleep. Problems with rooms. Small breakfasts. City tour with Alex. Free time. Genealogy and potluck night. Went to Brancoveanu Monastery. Problem with minibus. Went on Transfagarasan. Went to Balea Lac. Went to Curtea de Arges. Arrived home to eat some more. Bed time. Setting up for the party. Long walk to the citadel. Party was awesome. Mom danced. Cheech was drunk. Alex says inappropriate things. Barbeque was delicious. Nathan gets freaked out by singing children in the woods at night. Everyone gets home. Trip to Bran castle. Waited for a bus for way too long. Checked out “Za Pub”. Got some shwarmas. Went to Sinaia. Michelle was sick. Went to Bucharest. Went to Otopeni. Slept at Vlad and Carmina’s. Said goodbye. Went to Brasov. Overpaid the toothless landlady. Got suitcases full of stuff. Went to Bucharest. Dropped stuff at Andra and Razvan’s. Went to Moldova. Got into Cahul at 2am. Stayed at PC Volunteers’ place. Went to the village. Met Alex, Simona, Cristi and Mihaela. Ate well. Toured the village. Saw village’s museum. Back to Bucharest. Started (unpaid) training at work. Looked for apartments. Found an apartment. Landlady didn’t want to rent. Amanda was upset. The search continued. (Unpaid) training continued. Settled on an apartment. Decided on a good apartment at a good price. Moved into the apartment. Continued (unpaid) training. And then…

Ok where was I… Oh yeah… another battle with the bureaucracy. Here’s how that went:

We finally received all of our necessary documents for getting married. No forgeries were necessary with the exception of one. We had received our health evaluation about 2 months ago in the same fashion that we had received it for our visas. We went to the doctor and asked for a health evaluation. She explained to us that we could get the evaluation, but if we both felt that we were healthy enough she could just give us the document and avoid making us take x-rays and getting blood drawn which would be cheaper for her and less work for us. Since the evaluation is only good for 14 days, and the paper-pushing process at the marriage office takes 10 days, that gave us a 4-day interval to get all the documents in but as I said before in my “haiku” that we were missing a document. We went back to the doctor who agreed to write another evaluation, free of charge, and we could write the date in the blank at our convenience for next time. We thanked her.

We took all of our documents to the civil court with the exception of our health evaluation since it was missing a date and obviously would need to receive its forged date later so that we could get it in on time. This trip was just to make sure that everything was ok and we weren’t missing anything. The lady looked through our stuff and told us that we needed a notarized statement saying that we were both able to marry legally in Romania although we already had one of these from the US Embassy. We needed another one with a few stamps and signatures. We went and had this done for 100 lei, and the notary lady said that if we had any problems then we could come back and they would change what needed to be changed. We said that we understood.

Now we had everything. Our documents comprised of our birth certificates, an apostille with an attached copy of our birth certificates, a translation of both apostilles and birth certificates, a copy of our passports, an affidavit from the US Embassy, health certificates, a notarized statement saying we are legal to be married in Romania, and a notarized statement giving up the rights of our first-born child. Ok, so one of those is made up but it was a lot of paperwork! No wonder Romanians are always surprised when we tell them that you can get married in Vegas in a drive through and have the ceremony conducted by Elvis. Their next question is if it’s legal. Yes it is my friends. Yes it is.

This past Tuesday we went back to the courthouse with all our documents, including the two that were still outstanding the last time we went there. This time it was a different lady. And this lady was kind of a… not nice lady. She looked through our documents and half-way through she kind of huffed and asked where our residency permits were. We said that we didn’t have any, that we were both foreign and that residency permits were not required if two foreigners want to be married in her frustrating country. She was adamant that we needed residency permits and pointed to some documents that a past married couple had turned in, one of the couple being Romanian, and a copy of her ID. We again tried to explain that according to her country’s laws that are remarkably easy to find online, and according to our remarkably efficient embassy, a residency permit was not required.

The not-nice lady wasn’t having any of this nonsense. She wouldn’t look at Amanda’s printed document that stated the rules, probably since it didn’t have any official stamps on it. She opened her circa 1973 law book and pointed to a clause stating that one person in the party has to have a residency permit, but this was talking about when a Romanian marries a foreigner. I was starting to get angry and was probably red in the face at the time because the lady’s not-niceness was hard to manage. We said that she doesn’t understand the law and that we would just go somewhere else.

I should have left for an (unpaid) training that was coming up in a couple hours but Amanda convinced me to go to another civil court office and give it another try. The worst that would happen would be that we get turned down again. I was glad that she was not upset and that there were no more breakdowns at the courthouse. She promised that I wouldn’t miss my (unpaid) training so I agreed to go with her.

When we finally found the place we were surprised by how nice the building and the flowers and everything looked. We went up the stairs into the yellow building and straight into the door on the right. We sat in front of the desk of another sulky government employee. We should mention that the government employees just discovered that their salaries would be cut significantly (25%) so this is not the best time to be getting good service at the courthouse. The lady quickly looked through our papers and asked sharply what my mother’s maiden name was. My heart was beating quickly and I was getting ready to be my normally patient self without a red face. I answered her that it was Gresham but that she was married to my father at the time of my birth, and I indicated where it was written. I don’t know what this had to do with anything but I was feeling defensive.

The lady asked me what should be written on our marriage certificate. Did this mean that we were getting a marriage certificate? I didn’t quite feel at ease. I asked her if she could write “Gresham” for my mother’s name but she said that couldn’t be done since it was written “Gwendolyn” (my mother’s middle name). I said ok, whatever. As long as we could get a certificate. The lady went on to explain that we had four options as to what our last names would be. First, she could take my last name. Second, I could take hers. Third and fourth, we could have some hybrid (McMasters-Golub/Golub-McMasters or probably even McGolub). Amanda said she was prepared to take my name, no problem.

The lady eventually cracked a smile and said that our Romanian was very good. She wanted to know our story. We obliged her and said that we would have liked to get married in Moldova but this wasn’t possible. She was warming up to us. She had us fill out no less than 5 other documents. She signed, dated and stamped them. She sent us out into the corridor to fill out some more paperwork. Amanda and I discussed whether or not this means we would really be getting married. We admitted it looked good though. We went back with our paperwork and she filled out another couple of official documents and then told us to go across the hall to the director’s office.

We went to see the director but he motioned us to wait as he was in there with one of his cronies and they were having a chat fest over a crappy-smelling cigarette or two, or twenty. We waited for about a half hour as they finished their BS session and I was getting antsy since I had to go to my (unpaid) training. Finally we were called in and were asked to sit down in the nice chairs in his office, not the uncomfortable ones in front of his desk. With his cigarette slowly burning down to the butt in his ash tray, he looked over his glasses at us after reading our official documents. He tried some English with me, and I answered in Romanian (this was to avoid having to get a court-appointed translator that we would have to pay for). He tried the same thing with Amanda, but at the end he felt confident that we could speak the language well enough to forego the translator. I will mention that in no less than two of our documents, it officially stated with an official stamp that we are able to speak the language. Our new friend across the hall said that she wanted to write “super” but obviously this would be in violation of official bureaucratic protocol.

He brought us into the back room (where we’d actually get married) which was pretty big. There were two desks at the opposite side of the room by the window, and both the desks had some imposing-looking Romanian flags on poles behind them. He explained to us that we would be here at 3:30pm in 10 days and he quickly explained to us what to expect. He made sure that we would have two witnesses and explained that if they were Romanian then they needed their IDs, and if they were foreign then they needed their passports. He explained that Romanian passports were not good enough because they are just legal for foreign travel. Whatever.

We assured him that we would have our witnesses. They would have their documents. We shook hands with ol’ Smoky and left the courthouse. He had our number in case something happened and we couldn’t get married. So far we haven’t received a call. This is a good sign. Now we wait. We are planning to wear our “bride/groom” baseball hats if the old commie guy will let us. We have some prospects for witnesses. We should be good to go, and we will write more on this later. Keep your fingers crossed.

Of course, we weren't allowed to have cameras in any of the government buildings, but if we were, here's what it would have looked like...