"Don't worry," said Shannon (who had been there before and knew what it was like), looking at our tired faces. "Your souls will eventually come back. You will feel better ..."
She was right. We went to our favourite restaurant and filled our cold, tired bellies with delicious food ... and already memories of four soul-destroying hours in the visa office are fading.
How it all starts
The day started early - well 8.30am, except of course Ali slept in and so the first part of the waitıng was simply waiting for Ali ...
The first requirement for a residence permit here is evidence of a certain amount of American dollars in a bank account. So we had to take a heap of money to the money exchange and get it changed. And then take the American dollars to the bank and open an account. Then we took our new bank books back to our office and photocopied them to prove the money was there.
That was relatively easy and painless - it was early in the day and the bank wasn't clogged with people yet.
Oh, and then we remembered that we needed passport photos, so we dropped into a little photo-shop, and had them in our hot little hands in no time at all.
Getting there
The visa office is right across town, so we caught a little bus to the railway station, and then we rode the metro for 10 stops ... it was good to see the sights from the train.
Umbrella Office
The next stage was a complete surprise to us.
On this windy, rainy day we had to visit this little "office" on the sidewalk.
There was a little man sitting there using a typwriter. Yes, a typewriter ... I didn't think you could even buy those nowadays ... with carbon paper. You hand him your passport and for 15 lira he will type your name into an application form and a "petition" for residency.
Ali was with us to help translate the two questions we had to answer: "What is your mother's name?" "What is your father's name?" The only problem was these names were totally foreign to him and he made a few mistakes typing them with his two fingers. That was okay, he had a mate there with a bottle of white-out to fix the mistakes. White-out Man managed to drop Peter's passport on the muddy ground, and then transferred mud to Peter's form, but he managed to wipe it off with his fingers ...
Into the Big Building
At this point Ali left us. He pointed down the road to a building entrance guarded by police with machine guns. The instructions were simple:
Go through there, hand your passport over the counter and then get it back.
Go across a courtyard and into that other big building - its easy, you can't go wrong.
Go up to the second floor.
Get a number, and wait until your number comes up.
Just do what they tell you.
Well, it sounded simple enough - although the last one sounded a little daunting as it would likely all be in Turkish.
So in we went. Through the security check - we're used to that, it happens everywhere, but for some reason the police officer wanted to have a rummage through my handbag ... maybe she was jealous of my grubby little Chinese handbag. We handed over our passports and got them back. And so we went out into the courtyard.
There were several doors on the other side, none of them that obvious. We stood in the rain and muttered about Ali and his directions. Then we saw some people heading into the left-hand door with a big 'A' above it, and decided to follow them.
Inside we saw a lift, and thought we could go in and press '2' to get to the second floor - after all "second floor" means different things in different countries, depending on whether we were already on the "ground" floor or the "first" floor. So we crammed ourselves into the lift. From where I was stuck, it looked like there were about 20 people in there - until I recognised one of the "other" people as me, and realised it was a tiny lift with a big mirror. I couldn't see which floor we were on, but after a few minutes and several stops we got out again. We offered our papers at a reception desk, and were directed to the stairs - we had to go down a floor.
Getting a number
We pushed our way along a crowded corridor, turned left, left again, left again .... and of course we were back to where we started, but no number. I noticed a sign with the word "numarasi" (it sounds something like 'number') and an arrow, so we set off again. Then there was another sign, in English - Wow! - "Follow the arrow to get a number". Around we went again - still no number machine. So we decided to go back the other way, maybe we missed something, maybe we could find someone to ask. Finally I noticed a police officer sitting on a stool in the dark corner and the end of the first corridor where the arrows were. She looked bored and tired - but maybe she could tell us which way to go. We attracted her attention with some difficulty, and then notcied that in front of her there was a machine, covered up. By way of explanation, I handed her my paperwork, she glanced through it, uncovered the machine and punched out a number for me and then one for Peter.
Waiting at the window
We stood in the hallway with all the other bored-looking people, leaning on the wall opposite the window where our help was supposed to come. We had numbers 25 and 26, and the window numbers were 18 and 19, so we figured there wouldn't be too long a wait. But there was no one serving at the window, the officers were all sitting at their desks looking very relaxed. I wondered if we should go and lean on the window even though our numbers weren't up there.
Suddenly a big man came bustling up to the window. He had about ten people in tow, and they all had papers like ours. He had a sheaf of numbers which he dealt out to them and started pushing them ahead of him to the window. The officers at the desks beyond jumped to and got to work.
I felt a bit annoyed - this felt like the next few hours of my life waiting for this group - so I sidled forward into the middle of his group and glared at him. He looked questionningly at me, and I showed him my number. He told me in English that his group had the numbers 19 and 20 - what all of them? - and he showed me his number - 27.
And then all of the numbers at the windows were suddenly switched off ... so I stepped back and waited. When the group were finally through I stepped forward (before the officers all went back to chat on Messenger at their desks) and waved my number. The man asked for my papers and looked through them.
The card index room
He said something in Turkish, and sighed when I replied "English?" He thought for a moment then said "Card index room" pointing down the corridor and handing me back my papers. People around had presumably heard and understood because people pointed for us and we entered a door that said (in English!) "Staff only. No unauthorised personnel".
There was a long blue counter, and behind it four police officers. The rest of the room was like a cartoon of an incredibly disorganised records room with ancient filing cabinets and drawers open, missing and broken and everything in apparent total disarray.
The first officer shook her head, handed our papers back to us and sent us to the other end of the counter. After the officer at the other end had played with our papers he sent us back to the first one, so she could play with them too.
And so then we went back at the window in the long hallway.
Nearly there
The man recognised us and accepted us back at his little window. He did a lot of playing with our papers - gluing on our pasport photos, stapling, stamping, entering into the computer, and handed us a sheaf of papers each. Then with a sigh he summoned up his English and told us:
Downstairs and pay, then back up here to table 2 (pointing to a window further along) and then table 1.
Time to pay
We went down the stairs, and we were a little startled to find that one floor down was the entrance from the courtyard - where had we been to in the lift?
There was no sign, but there were three booths - one had a photocopier, the second an ATM, and the third one had two men inside. We chose the third one and proffered our pile of papers. They gabbled something, and I smiled "English??"
So they wrote 346.90 on a piece of paper, and we paid.
Oddly enough, they rounded the amount up to 347 lira. At the end of the day, where do all those .10's go to, I wonder?
Back upstairs to "table 2" with our receipts in our hot little hands, vaguely wondering why Ali told us we would need 420lira when it was only 347lira.
As we approached the second window we saw firstly that there was a sign saying we would need to pay (another) 70 lira, and secondly that there was no one at the window - in fact the whole corridor was suddenly almost totally empty ...
Lunch break
We are glad not to be in China where they have three-hour lunch breaks.
I stood at the window waving my papers and looking wistful. The nice officer came across from where he was reading his newspaper and explained something in Turkish. I forced my tired face into one more smile and asked "English?" He sighed, and thought about it. "One o'clock".
So. It was 12.30 now, we only had another half an hour to wait.
And we had learnt our lesson about leaning on walls. Instead of moving away, we clung to the counter by the opening at "table 2" for the full 30 minutes. By the time the officer put down his paper and wandered across there was a large crowd gathered and pressing in behind us.
One more "table"
We paid our money and he shuffled our papers again, then pointed to the next window, "table one". There was a tight crowd of people behind us, and people waiting at the next counter which was still unattended. Rather than push out through the crowd and back in, we slid along the counter to be second in 'line'(!) at the next one. The lady ahead of me looked at my papers and hers, and decided she was at the wrong table, and we swapped places.
The officer finally arrived at the window, we handed over our papers and receipts, and he gave us a tiny scrap of paper.
This is what its all about. Later we have to return and swap this paper for our actual resident's permit.
Final Stages
Oh, and we need to go to the bank and take out all the American money and change it back into Turkish money. At that point someone (not us) stands to gain a fair bit of money - this would apparently be the reason why they insist on everyone having American dollars in their account.
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