One Good Apple

The temperature has reached 25 this morning at a chipper 7:45 a.m. The high today is 25. Well, at least we got it out of the way early. I can't always complain (which means I'll never go native here). I have to admit that the daily train rides between Erfurt and Weimar are pretty spectacular right now. The fields are covered with a wintry baking soda, the bare tree branches dusted with powdered sugar like my walnut butter ball cookies, only much more a part of perfection. I like the sound of Kies, the gravel they toss out like chicken feed during the snow season, crunching underneath my clogs or boots. I can hear the music for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly playing in the background music in my head, becoming a part of the soundtrack of my life. Watching little kids freak out with a squealing joy at the sight of a sled or a carousel at the Weihnachtsmarkt can also be entertaining.

Other times, the innocent tyranny of children can make you pause, like the one yesterday who stared straight at me, even when I stared back at her for 20 seconds. It wasn't bad enough that no one ever told her staring is impolite. No, she had to beckon to her mother to bend down and then whisper something to her, never unlocking her eyes from my person. The mother, who looked at me and smiled sheepishly, said something back to the girl, who then carried on a whispered conversation, most likely question and answer, in whispers with her mother, still staring the entire time. I can imagine the questions. I've experienced them all before: "Mommy, what's wrong with her hair?" "Mommy, why isn't she as dark as the other ones? "Mommy, does it rub off?"  "Mommy, why does she keep staring at me?"

That is also guileless, but bad nonetheless.

I had my other appointment at the Ausländerbehörde yesterday afternoon. Well, it wasn't really an appointment, surprisingly enough. When I called to make an appointment, I was put through to the case worker who'd be escorting me through the last step of the grueling process of getting the Aufenthaltserlaubnis. Frau Greiner, a remarkably pleasant and down-to-earth woman with a Thuringian accent the thickness of aioli or pesto, unctuous but still manageable and enjoyable, told me that she had received my file, was waiting for the materials to be forwarded from Aachen, and we should renew my fiktives Aufenthaltserlaubnis, a "fictional resident permit."

Great name, right? It's a resident permit that doesn't actually exist, typed up by Kafka, signed by the cousin he never had, and stamped by banshees. I can not leave the country until I get it. A fiktives Aufenthaltserlaubnis is the purgatory of migration, located inside the general hell that is the Ausländeramt.

Frau Greiner told me to my surprise that I didn't need an appointment, to just come by and knock on her office door and we'd take care of the permit in five minutes. I wanted to ask her what she was really up to. Germans make Termine, appointments, for everything. You are issued your first appointment calendar at birth and are trained from an early age to make Termine. Children in sandboxes make Termine to decide who will kick young Hans in the balls on Tuesdays. Once, one of my friends did actually make a Termin with me for spontaneous fun.  "We'll meet two weeks from Friday at 7:56 and then do something...I dunno, spontaneous." I'm joking, right? 

So for something as massive as a resident permit, and a fictional one at that, I couldn't imagine doing it without a Termin. But I went, to at least start the process of rejection and get it rolling at an efficient rate. I would rather hear, "You will have to come back during the three-quarter moon in a month beginning with 'X' between 8:43 and 8:45" now instead of later.

When I got there, a man was standing at the door to Frau Greiner's office, waiting to go in. He looked at me with a mild fright, as though I might club him over the head to get into the office before him. I asked him if he was waiting for Frau Greiner, to which he murmured yes while inching closer to the door. I decided not to threaten his territory and retreated to a chair about 30 feet away. He still looked at me occasionally with suspicion. I almost said, "No worries honey, I won't kill you--yet."

After a few minutes, the man came out again, looking normal. No scratches, no crying, no muttering, "The horror, the horror," between chattering teeth. He sort of smiled at me and motioned that I could go in. I figured I might have a chance. But I was loaded for bear anyway. I had a receipt, a piece of paper that confirmed I had paid for my resident permit, the real one on its way to Erfurt, but still probably sitting at Kafka's missing desk. The receipt even had a stamp on it, which is the holy of holies in the land of paper. Never, ever leave an official Termin without getting a stamp, seeing something of yours being stamped and properly filed, or set on fire. Don't trust it if it doesn't have a stamp. And naturally, the more mammoth the stamp on the paper, the better.

When I knocked on the door, no one growled in response from behind it. I heard a chirpy, "kommen Sie rein," took a deep breath, and walked in. Frau Greiner, a plump ruddy-cheeked woman in her late 40s, whose hair style indicated a former love for rock concerts in which the Scorpions most likely headlined, greeted me with a facial expression I'd only seen on one other case worker, Frau Möckel, who helped me get the resident permit filed and granted in Aachen just before I moved. A smile. Frau Greiner had something else, though, energy, movement, and the ability to multi-task. I started to feel a little at ease.

As she punched my info into the computer to check the progress of my official ID card, I looked around the office, which she obviously shared with someone else. The office was huge, full of natural light, graced with the warmth of modern wall radiators that unobtrusively hide out in the background. The view from the windows was fucking awesome, a 300-year old building topped with snow, the steep roof shaking off the annoyance of winter as if it were a gnat worrying its ass. This, in combination with the sensation that Frau Greiner seemed to like her job, made me glad I'd moved to Erfurt. There is something to be said about starting from scratch.  The solidarity tax has provided for a number of good things. Other good things will follow, with time. Other bad things as well. But I digress.

As Frau Greiner prepared the extension of my resident permit, the man came back into the office. He had a receipt. I recognized it from when I paid  my fee for the resident permit. He had made it a step further as well and was pleased as punch. You could tell in his smile, which was like a kid with a candy cane. The item in his hand so special.

Frau Greiner took the receipt and handed him the stamped piece of paper that his life basically depended upon. He looked at it, and his face immediately melted into disappointment mixed with mild fear.

"What's wrong? Is your name spelled incorrectly?"

The man twisted his baseball cap in his hand and turned one of his feet towards him. "No. It say my name, but not name of wife and two kids." His anxiety started to fill the room, and I could imagine exactly what he was thinking. Another full moon, another month. Maybe. No one is strong enough to repeat the process more than twice. After that, you get a scholarship to the mental institution of your choice.

Frau Greiner sighed, said, "I knew I should have asked you at the beginning. Go pay the extra 20 Euro and come back."

"Oh thank you, thank you!" And he scurried out the door in search of the vending machine they send you to in order to make your payment. It's like buying soft drinks or cigarettes, but instead you get a piece of paper that you redeem somewhere else. It's very bizarre, very efficient, and particularly impersonal when you are forking over 110 Euro.

"Sorry about that.  Let's get this done." And she began punching buttons on the keyboard again, pulled out that beautiful piece of paper that would get signed, stamped and added to my passport. Without that card, I was screwed, and how.

At that moment, the man came in again, with another receipt. Frau Greiner took it, printed a new version, and passed it to him. He looked at it and I watched his face go through the same transformation as before.

Frau Greiner looked a little exasperated, as one would with a child. "Now what?"

"It no say about son. He turn 18 soon, need his own. For driving license."

"I really should have known. Just sit down for a second and hold on. What's his birthday again?"

The man told her and she filled out another form, stamped it, and then passed it to him. "Is there anything else, she asked in a sing-songy way tinged with a hint of ironic annoyance.

"No! No! Thank you so much!" He left sort of sideways, like a crab, bowing all the way to the door. He looked like one of those bird paperweights that dips its beak into the water, all day long.

When he closed the door, Frau Greiner smiled at me with amusement,  rolled her eyes and shook her head as if to say, "Kids these days..." I smiled and nodded back. I would have been just as discombobulated and panicked in his position. It's hard to act like a fully-functioning adult in the Ausländeramt. I think the infantilization is the worst part of it all.

Frau Greiner stamped my little fictional card, put a fictional stamp on it and handed it over to me. Fictional salvation.

I thanked her, to which she replied "No problem! See you when the official papers come in!" I wished her a good day, left and did what all Germans do: go to the One Euro store to look for bargains on practical household items.

And our time (has been way) up.