One of my favorite places to walk
I have recently seen quite a few comments on moving to portugal pages of people complaining about well....everything, especially when dealing with government paperwork issues. When you decide to emigrate to another country you need to realize that it's not like the one you are coming from (USA), and if you don't speak the language the differences will be magnified. Honestly this whole process has made me appreciate how much people who come to the US struggle and I have a new respect and understanding for them.
Take for instance something fairly easy to do in the USA: get a driver's license. Not too hard in the US right? When you go you maybe have a bill/social security card/bank statement whatever, and it's not too difficult right? Take everything you know about that and forget it. I first submitted for my driver's license exchange (thankfully if it's within a certain time frame you don't have to do a test) in January. I went online and submitted everything I was supposed to mostly things you would think I would; my residency card, my drivers license from the US, my driving abstract, my medical release, a certificate from the Portuguese Embassy in Washington DC. So I uploaded all that and waited, and waited. Finally at the end of March I heard back, they had completely rejected my application. So back to square one. This time I upload all the same things plus having my drivers license apostilled as well as my driving abstract apostilled, to be clear no where did it state I needed those to be apostilled since I had the certificate from the Embassy but I figured at this point I would do more then asked and hope for the best. So I submitted everything again at the end of April and received an email at the end of May with an appointment date of June 24th! Yay!
As for the appointment itself, I arrived 20 minutes early and I'm glad I did as I was initially confused since the office was above a fish market! Once I figured out where to go it seemed to go well, time will tell on that I suppose. I handed over my large stack of papers, paid the fee, and she printed out a temp driver license and said (through google translate) that the temp was good for 6 months and I should get the card sometime in that 6 months. Success!!
As you can see from my driver's license exchange, clearly "you're not in Kansas any more." This is just one of many instances of things that are different. When you move you have to take your expectations of how things were done where you used to live and give them up completely, if you hold on to your expectations you are bound to be disappointed and frustrated.
Σχόλια