Niet mogelijk met een draai

Before we arrived we were amply warned of the 'niet mogelijk' -- a catch all phrase to indicate something that cannot (or in most cases will not) be done. Today we ran into our first major one, as we applied for our residence permits. Our application lacked validation of our marriage, even though our marriage certificate had already been apostilled through a complex beauracracy in the U.S. Validation is performed through our registration at the town hall--a process we could not get scheduled before February 15th. So typically they would give you the option to send in the validation within 2 weeks, but...it seems that the validation process takes 4-6 weeks if you have been married less than 10 years. So submitting our application was in fact, niet mogelijk.

But the twist (draai) on our much-anticipated governmental customer service bureaucracy interaction was that the lady who rejected our application immediately phoned the town hall, spoke with the chief of staff, and got us expedited to the front of the queue. So we headed down there and got registered right away. We still need to reschedule our permit application appointment--pending an investigation into whether we are really, really, really married--but the extra effort in the customer service department was unexpected and quite nice.

We have 90 days in the country without our permits, so let the countdown begin...