*drool*

The Ausländerbehörde, a.k.a. the place where fun goes to die. If you’re a foreigner in Germany, then this is a place you’ll have to visit a least a few times. If you’re me – and, seriously, thank your lucky fucking stars that you’re not – then it’s a place you have to visit one millionty trillion times.

Here’s the best way that I can describe it:

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Imagine you have to go to a grocery store. You need to pick up a few items vital for your existence. Except this grocery store is only open 4 days a week from 8am-12pm. Also, three-fourths of the store is just a waiting room and the one-fourth that isn’t, doesn’t actually have any groceries in it at all. Additionally, since there are only like four people working there, customers can only go into the other part one at a time. Sometimes, you have to fill out an application for the groceries (which are kept at another location). Sometimes, the only thing you get is an appointment, which will allow you to come back and apply for the groceries in roughly a month. You can’t bypass this step by going to where the groceries are actually located – and even if you could, it wouldn’t matter, because none of the four employees at the grocery store where you are have even the slightest idea where groceries are located and how / when they (will hopefully eventually) get delivered to you (that is, if you’re lucky and they don’t "accidentally misplace" your application for a few months -- and I speak from experience here). They can fill out a form and send it out. That's about all they do. Eventually they get permission from somewhere else to give you some groceries.

This is Germany’s idea of a one-stop government. Awesome, right?

Having been fucked over by at least two of these places, I can say with confidence that I hate these motherfuckers and, for all I care, they can all go eat a dick. Preferrably one belonging to some type of laboratory monkey carrying a horrible deadly disease. I mean, I’d feel sorry for the monkey of course, but hey – my hate for German bureaucrats is strong (and somewhat justified, I think).

Anyway, today was my first time at Bezirksamt Altona, the Ausländerbehörde nearest to my (not-so-new-anymore) place. I must say, it really makes me miss Eimsbüttel. At least those fools had the decency to put up a list, so at least you had some sort of inkling as to when your turn was coming up. Hamburg-Nord had no such list, but somehow people managed to civilly figure out who was up next. Maybe it had something to do with the „let’s put all the foreigners in a long hallway“ approach. A vague line sort of formed and from there, it was rather intuitive. In Altona, it’s like fucking Lord of the Flies. It’s just a huge sitting area, no type of attempt at organization by anyone who works there. A janitor pointed out the way to me. Some Turkish woman was seriously fixing to beat down this one dude (and probably his wife and kid, too) because she insisted she arrived before them. She didn’t seem to compose herself until someone threatened to call the cops or security...I don’t recall which, because it was about then that I decided to put my headphones back on. At the end of the day, we’re all just trying to take care of some immigrant shit – and being held by the Polizei would basically be counterproductive. Especially, when you only got until noon to wrap. it. up. bitches.

My suggestion for simplifying things? Well, you can do that whole marry a German thing, I suppose, if that’s what your punk ass is into. But, honestly, you’re probably better off getting a damn lobotomy.