The Process

Years ago, I tried to read The Trial by Kafka. It is not a cheerful book. The title is German is Der Process and at the moment I am going through a very Kafkaesque process.

Yes, I have a new teaching job, at St. George's International School in Sofia. That is the good news. 

The bad news is that I need a Police certificate from the copshop in Shenzhen, to say that I was a good boy while I was in China. 

 The good news is that Alicia, the wonderful HR lady at GOS, has replied to my e-mail and she has  promised to help me get this certificate from the SZ Fuzz. 

 The bad news was that first I had to get the Power of Attorney document translated from Mandarin into English and Bulgarian. Then the three documents all needed to be stamped by a notarius, after which the documents went to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry. The BFM told me no, go away. The Ministry of Justice will stamp them for you, Mr Hill. I found the Justice Ministry behind the Ivan Vzov National Theatre in Sofia and collected the a form to fill in. Of course it was in Bulgarian, so I did not know that actually the form was all about how long my sentence was and in which Bulgarian prison I had done my time. （Well, I was at a boys' boarding school in the UK for seven years, so that is almost the same thing.）

Anyway, after I had gone back and filled in the correct form, the lady in yet another microwave oven at the Ministry of Justice told me to come back a week later. 

NOT Wednesdays!
Next I had to take the documents, now proudly stamped by the Ministry of Justice, to the Chinese Consulate in Bulevard James Bouchier. Not many British journalists have the honour of having a street named after them, but then again not many deserve it. Of course, the Consulate was shut. It was Wednesday. Silly me! On the Chinese Embassy website, it says that the consular section is open "Tuesday - Thursday." I therefore assumed that it would be open on a Wednesday. Guess what? It wasn't. 

So Thursday's breakfast was earlier than usual and I took the train from Dragoman into Sofia. This meant that I got to the Chinese Consulate about half an hour before it opened. There was a queue, of course, but I managed to get inside quite quickly. Just when I thought that my problems were over, the Chinese dragon of officialdom, bureaucracy and red-tape tripped me up. An official at the Ministry of Justice was supposed to have sent the approved signatures to the Chinese Consulate. But this is Bulgaria and so what happened? Nothing. He (or she) did not send them. Therefore the Chinese Consulate could not approve the documents that had been stamped by the Ministry of Justice. There was only one thing to do: go back to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry, do not pass "Go", do not collect £200 and just hope that today there will be another official who might just be prepared to stamp my documents.

The gate wherein I went out
To cut a long story short, there WAS a helpful official (is that an oxymoron?) at the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry and, about fifteen minutes and 30 leva later, my documents were indeed stamped by the BFM. So now it was time to go back to the Chinese Consulate (my third visit!)

All went well at the Chinese Consulate and I even had time to go to Fibank and pay the thirty dollars fee. Then this coming Thursday, only a week later, I will be able to go to the Chinese Consulate for my fourth visit and collect my stamped and officially-approved documents. After that, the documents must be sent by DHL to Alicia in Shenzhen, together with my passport, so that she can finally apply for the Police Certificate.

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