A 21st Century defenestration of Prague?

Temporary Residence - forever!

I blogged previously on 11^th March, regarding our ongoing battle with Czech bureaucracy in seeking to obtain our residency permit with respective social security numbers from the Czech Foreign Police. Last week, more than a month after Andrea from the private registration agency had submitted all our signed & notarised forms, apostilled, translated and notarised marriage certificate, certified protocol regarding our flat etc, etc, we got an email saying that all was finally ready. Please would we attend the offices of the Foreign Police on Tuesday 12^th May with our passports and health insurance cards, and our residency permit and respective social security numbers would be issued to us.

The offices of the Foreign Police open at 7.30am and we were advised to be there at that time as it would speed up proceedings. Sybille & I are not early morning people, so getting up at 5.30am to get washed, dressed and across Prague to the suburb of Žižkov where the Foreign Police are based, in order to arrive on time, did not fill us with joy. But bus and metro connections worked perfectly and we got there with ten minutes to spare.

As EU citizens, we had been told to use the entrance at the back of the building where there was a lift to the office on the third floor. We found the entrance and the lift but then both dissolved into fits of laughter. There on the wall was a notice in English solemnly declaring that “EU nationals will be dispatched from the third floor”. If you are familiar with European history you will know of the ‘Defenestration of Prague’ which occurred in 1618 and resulted in the Thirty Years War. The victims on that occasion were two Catholic noblemen and their scribe. Were the Czech Foreign Police reviving this old Prague custom with non-Czech EU nationals as their 21^st century victims????

On the third floor we met Lenka (Andrea’s agency colleague) who had got third place in the queue. Just before 8am, we signed our papers, were presented with our residency permits and our passports were stamped. But the wording on the stamp clearly indicates the ongoing mentality within Czech bureaucracy in believing that no EU national might actually want to permanently reside in the Czech Republic. We are only granted ‘Temporary Residence’ but it is ‘neomezený’ – forever!