I'm Officially Swiss!

So I officially became Swiss this week... well sort of. I apologize in advance for the ranting nature of this post, but sometimes a girl's got to vent.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we? 

You arrive in Switzerland, and you are super excited! After spending a week or two exploring and getting your student visa problems straightened out, you figure it's time to go declare your residency to the city so you don't get kicked out of their country. Yeah, you should probably get on that.... 

So you arrive at city hall, or at least where your GPS told you city hall is supposed to be. And after 20 or 30 minutes, you finally realize that that little hotel you've walked past 4 times, is actually city hall because "hôtel de ville" actually means city hall in French... As you enter, you silently curse all of your previous French instructors for never teaching you this little key phrase.

So you go inside, and open the door that says "Contrôle des Habitants" because this is what you were told to do. And you walk in the secretary starts yelling at you to leave in French... WHAT!?! So you stand outside the door with a befuddled look on your face before reading the sign on the door that instructs you to ring the bell before entering. Okay so you ring the bell, and a little light turns green and you enter again... Was that really necessary? Nope... but the Swiss like their rules. 

You're finally in, and you give them your paperwork and you pay your $150 fee and return home only to get a letter saying you are missing some of the paperwork. So you go back, and this process repeats itself a few times. Until you lose your nerve and start yelling at the city hall receptionist in English, and you really wish your French was better so they could actually understand how frustrated you are... Luckily, after that little spat, you have finally completed your paperwork and you will hopefully never have to see that receptionist ever again... Phew!

A week later, you receive a letter in the mail, and you nearly cry at the thought of having to deal with the contrôle des habitants AGAIN. So you open the letter, and jump with joy when you see that it is you summons to go to the Biometrics Lab to be fingerprinted. This is a good thing... this means you are in the home stretch of finally getting your residency permit! (Even though you have been living in Switzerland for a good two months now.) 

You go to the Biometrics Lab, and you step into this booth and put your finger on a screen that catalogs your finger prints and then takes your picture... Unfortunately, you weren't aware that your photo was going to be taken, so, like any other college student, you just dragged yourself out of bed without out brushing your hair or putting on any makeup. Great! Well, at least it can't be any worse than those passport photos you had to take in the Paris metro station. And when it's over, the nice Swiss woman directs you to a desk where you have to pay yet another fee for their services.   

Four days and one long trek to the post office later, you receive an envelop containing none other than your residency card! All of your hard work finally paid off! So what's the first thing you do? Take a picture with it and write an obscenely long blog post about the grueling process so everyone understands what you have accomplished!

With love, from Lausanne

Mindy