finnish bureaucracy, finnish passports, and we (almost) bought that house in pargas

[cimorene]

Okay, this is getting farcical:

1. Nobody knew that since the beginning of this year waxjism needed a passport to open a bank account, and frtdneatj she needed to do that at her mom's bank (so they could co-sign a single loan to buy the house with the in-law wing), but it didn't occur to her mom's bank lender guy to tell us.



2. So we showed up with them ready to sign a loan and got sent back for a passport. Wax said her passport was expired, so he sent us down the street to get a passport photo and she put in the online application for a new one right away, BUT



3. Due to neoconservative cutbacks in the last few years most of the police stations that used to exist have been closed, and you have to go there in person to be fingerprinted for ID that contains biometric chips. 15-minute timeslots book up months in advance in Turku, so we looked through every single staffed police station with a permits and licenses clerk in the entire region, but the closest any of them had a single slot was 3 weeks out. You CAN show up and queue in the waiting room for a moment in between appointments, which used to be totally doable in Turku (I did it every time in the first ~3 years here which was a lot of visits for my student visas) and take under 2 hours usually, but due to the lower staff and their insistence on booking appointments plus a reduced waiting room space, you can now show up in the morning and wait all day without being seen in Turku. So we were looking at 3 weeks before she could send the application officially, at which point she might have been able to sign for the loan (but bank dude wasn't exactly clear, so I presume it involves some fudging and you're not really supposed to before the account paperwork is finalized), or she might have had to wait for the passport to actually arrive.



4. As I found out last March when I had to go in person to be fingerprinted and present my passport to get my non-driver's identification card, the Pargas police station, just down the street from where we want to move and 20 minutes from here by car, but over an hour round trip by bus (because long-distance busses, yay), is tiny and staffed by one clerk, and is the opposite of busy. We arrived for my then-appointment over 15 minutes early due to having allowed time to get lost (my wife grew up in Pargas, but the station has moved to a tiny office upstairs in the town hall/library building), but the clerk waved me in because the previous appointment was gone already (that is... about 1 min into their timeslot?), and my entire transaction took about 2 minutes, so I also left before mine. So Wax went there late last night and slept at her mom's so that she could go there as soon as they opened this morning before she has to work the late shift this evening, and they once again completed her transaction within 5 minutes. Application sent! BUT...



5. ...The police clerk informed her that her old passport hasn't expired. We had spent about half an hour looking for the 'expired' passport last night, and we couldn't find it anywhere, but we've also already exhausted all the places I can think of to look (Wax isn't the kind of person who has an idea of places to look - all the labeled boxes and sorted hang files and things like that in the flat have been my idea. She keeps about half of her papers in an inbox on top of her computer, and it contains both unread mail and things she already took care of up to 3 years ago. The other half form a carpet on the table beside her side of the sofa where she rests her mug of tea and her keyboard shelf. She's one of those geniuses who says they can't find things if you put them away, though, and refuses to let me take charge of these papers, beyond permission to place them in the inbox in case of emergency).



6. She'll still get her new passport in 5 to 8 days, but I guess in the meanwhile she can't open her account or sign for the loan unless we find this one, but I've already gone through the pockets of old coats and backpacks, all of our empty luggage, a bunch of photo albums and old journals and sketchbooks, and my own recently-organized hangfiles that contain only my own documents. So I'm not sure where else to look and that usually leads to just looking in the same places five times just in case.



7. Meanwhile, they already signed a contingent contract with the seller today - so you could say the move is pretty much decided - but the installation of showers and kitchen appliances that has to take place before anybody can move in can't start until the loan is done, and one obviously wants to minimize the amount of time one is paying for two residences simultaneously. MIL can move into her summer cottage if she manages to sell her flat first, but we can't (because our stuff and our four pets won't fit, not to mention that it doesn't have any plumbing so I won't go without being dragged there). So now I really need to find that passport I guess.


ETA
8. Oops now she found it in her hanging file where both of us had already looked, twice.😂 All the fingerprinting and renewal applications were for naught.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Bureaucracy seems to be universal.! Good luck with the closing!

[cimorene]

If it's not one thing, it's another! - I'm always amazed by Finnish bureaucracy because Finns tend to be so rule-loving that they end up with, in a way, a more finicky and, well, stupidly complex bureaucracy most of the time, but it still works better.

I'm kinda going out of my mind about the closing and it feels like it's been unbelievably delayed, even though I know that actually this has all happened amazingly fast. House Fever.

[hypertwink]

Whenever this thing happens, I always attribute it to the faerie folk who live in the garden. Because almost always, I have looked at that particular drawer or in that bag in the cabinet, no, the other one. And the next day, someone will always find it there. Or it reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode, A Matter of Minutes, and they just forgot for that sliver of a second.

[cimorene]

When I was a kid once my mom lost her keys and I eventually found them under a vest on the ironing board where she had already looked three times. I remember this particularly vividly because other than the keys, there was only one thing on the ironing board and it wasn't even that big.

[hypertwink]

We're their soaps. They fuck with us, because our reactions are so entertaining. And guys, if you're listening in, can you please give back my Winter Soldier DVD? Thanks.

[cimorene]

I guess you forgot to leave out a dish of milk, or brandy, or whatever it is that kind of faerie likes...

[hypertwink]

Probably. They're benign for the most part. A medium/occultist has come by the house and cleansed it of evil spirits but they told us not to worry about our 7 housemates (which prompted my mom to buy garden gnomes/dwarves for each one).

[krait]

I used to explain it with "my portable black hole."

This is how the homework in my backpack was mysteriously transported to the shelf in my closet, and the pens on my desk keep ending up in my backpack, and I can't find the shoes that should be in the closet anywhere - oh, they're under the bed.

Obviously my room hosted a portable black hole that popped up here and there, redistributing items while I wasn't looking. :)

[hypertwink]

I know that the last DVD I watched was The Winter Soldier but my player died and I had to go to the repair shop to get it fixed (RIP DaViD Player, you served me for so many years, thanks for your service) but when we opened it up, there was no DVD in it. And there's been a precedent before. I've lost DVDs before, their cases are in my shelf all neat and in their alphabetized place but no DVD (Lost in Translation, I miss you).

My takeaway from this is they must love Scarlett Johannson.

[anatsuno]

augh that's a lot of stress but also OMG HOUSE!!!!