I knew it. Being (or pretending to be) grown-up sucks. The past two weeks validated my assumption regarding that matter. Gone are the days in which your parents supervise your finances and take care of insurance issues. You never really thought about where your pocket money came from in the first place and why your parents freaked out when they found that you spent the fifty bucks granny gave you for your birthday on nothing but candy. Well, now I do realize how much red tape holds everything together.

Who would have thought that opening a bank account in England could be so much hassle? I tried out several banks, but none would accept my current accommodation as valid proof of address since it’s a student hall and I am getting out of here in three week’s time (hooray!). The co-op bank reassured me that my tenancy agreement would therefore work as proof of address and even though the guy behind the counter (who btw looked like Sanjay, the Indian boy from my good old English textbook from fifth grade) didn’t really seem to know what he was doing without the constant approval of his chewing-gum torturing colleague, I was positive that everything would be sorted. Well. That was until I received a letter from the co-op bank telling me that my application was ALMOST accepted (how the fudge is that possible? Do I answer a yes/no question with almost yes/almost no?), but they’d need some more documents proving my identity. At least they didn’t expect me to drool on some cotton stick and send them my DNA with lots of love. So I went there yesterday, ready to give my fingerprint or whatever else they expected me to deliver, just to find out that my application had been declined. When I dared asking why that was the case, the co-op lady just shrugged off my comment and murmured something like “Dunno, but you can send them a letter and ask them”. Hello? I was there. In person. Like…for real, not just as a flickering blue Star Wars hologram. They could have had the courtesy to at least tell me to my face why my application had been declined.  Sanjay messed up, then. I don’t know how he managed to get that done, but he was damn lucky that he wasn’t in yesterday.

However, I still needed a bank account. I start working in like ten days and would like to receive my wage. Luckily, incompetence is not omnipresent over here. I went to see a lady from Barclay’s and (fingers crossed!) should receive debit card and stuff via post next week. Just as my NI number. And that’ll be about it for the time being regards British red tape.

But hold on, I’m going home to Germany on Sunday because I’m having so much fun annoying myself with bureaucracy that I go to another country for a refill. There, I will hopefully get unregistered, cancel some contracts and get a passport. If not, I’ll probably go all nuts, take the next plane to Venezuela and enjoy some anarchy. Oh, but what’s all this rant about? I’m a member of the EU…imagine I’d come from overseas and would need a visa. That is, matters could be a lot worse. And with this I literally dive into a rainy weekend.

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