Never-ending waiting

All actions in progress. The only problem is, that I have to wait a lot. 

Last week we went to the right department of City Hall to write me in as an inhabitant of Nijmegen. Everything went very smooth and fast. The city clerk was sooo nice and interested about us and our story. Fifteen minutes later and 10 Euro poorer I got my own BSN number (which is essencial to get any legal job). From now on Maurice and I are officially living together. After half a year they are gonna start recognizing us as a partnership, which means we are gonna be able to get a health insurance together, etc. Et voila! According to what we were told by the nice man from City Hall, this process (getting BSN number) usually takes even up to 2 weeks. Why did we get in in 5 minutes than? I guess that might be thanks to Maurice's passport... Coming to the City Hall with a Dutch person, who certifies for me and takes a responsibility of taking care of me, makes me look more reliable and they don't want to waist the time for extra verification. At least I guess... To be honest I don't know where's the catch. But who cares. Never look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Freshly signed papers in the City Hall

This weekend we got me a Dutch phone contract and made an appointment in bank. Apparently in Holland you always need to have an appointment. Everywhere. Even if you want to open a bank account, what normaly takes no longer than 15 minutes... Anyway it didn't take longer for me. And again, a very nice, smiling man was helping me with my case. The only thing I was surprised about was, when he started talking about Internet banking he gave me... a calculator. Well actually something that looks like a calculator, but you're supposed to insert your banking card into that. I didn't know what to think about that, but as they told me later at home, in Holland this is quite common thing. They are using the "calculators" instead of cards with codes and text messages. Oh Great Civilized World, what else are you gonna surprise me with? ;)

Beautiful begining. But nothing can be perfect. First problems started when I went to Bureau Inburgering, or other words Office for Integration for Foreigners. Speaking of integration we are mainly talking here about learning the local language. A lovely and smiling (again!) lady gave me a form to fill and informed me, that unfortunatly they can not offer me anything, unless I'll bring them a copy of my passport with a stamp from IND (Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst). My brave secretary Maureen made a quick call to that immigration office and (surprise surprice) he made an appointment. In two weeks. And it's just the begining:

• to get the stamp from IND, you need to have your BSN number, valid passport and insurance
• we sent application for the insurance the next day, but the process takes some time and we are not sure if I'm gonna get my insurance on time, so we wouldn't have to postpone the meeting
• I have to pay for the insurance, so it means I need to have money on my bank account, but I can't put any there since I didn't recive my banking card, which luckly should happen within next few days
• basic health insurance costs 100 Euro. That's quite a lot for me now, so I applied for zorgtoeslag, health insurance benefit 
• I can't send the application (it's online procedure) without my personal DigiD, which is electronic signature
• I also applied for this signature... you need to wait about a week for that

Typical chain effect. One thing is dependent on other and so on. In short: I need to wait.
To make it even more annoying, I visited this week some job agencies. In all of them thy told me that without knowledge of Dutch language they can not help me a lot. Basicly they have nothing to offer to me. I'm stuck. The only thing I can do is to study this crazy language on my own at home till I get the stamp for IND and looking for job in other alternative ways (like sending motivation latters wherever I can).