Today I could pick up my NIE which stands for Número de Identificación de Extranjero or Foreigner’s Identification Number.
Two weeks ago I did the application for this much needed number and since it took not that long then, I expected that this time it would be similar.
How wrong I was!
I arrived there at 7:30am with Gianni, my new friend from Uruguay, who also was scheduled for pick up. We were number 141 and 142 in line! Crazy! Then at around 8:30am a police officer came out to assign official numbers to everyone and send people away that were standing in the wrong line. We ended up with number 94 and 95. Luckily within the first 100, otherwise we could have waited until after the siesta break which starts at 2pm and ends at 5pm.
Then at 9am the office opened up and the first people were dealt with. It would be so much easier if they would make different lines for different services and perhaps even different people, but they haven’t figured that out yet. This means that all people are together for all kinds of applications, such as residence card applications, residence card renewals, residence card pick ups, NIE applications, NIE pick ups, lost/stolen ID’s, etc. etc.
From 10-11am there was the much needed desayunar (breakfast) break! Yup, these officials come to work on an empty stomach and use the taxpayers money and time to have breakfast.
Finally after 5.5 hours of waiting it was our turn to enter the office. My application first could not be found which made me a bit nervous, but finally it was found and I walked out with my green paper with the NIE!
When I got back home I saw that I had 42 missed calls from Mia (forgot my phone at home in the morning). I tried to call back but her phone was off. I finally reached a friend of hers and he told me that Mia’s plane had left with a 5 hour delay. I found that very strange, because I thought Mia would arrive on Saturday…
Anyways, since she had only 50 minutes to make the transfer on Munich, for sure she would not be able to make that connection, so that would mean that she would arrive on Saturday after all…
Later, when her plane finally had arrived in Munich, she called me and explained that the plane had all sorts of problems before being able to leave Beijing. Lufthansa put her up in the Kempinski airport hotel for the night and that she would arrive the following afternoon!
