Erasmus: A Burning Hellhole of Bureaucracy

Now...why I decided I wanted to go on Erasmus isn’t important, what matters here, is all the bureaucratic craziness that ensued....

The day I applied for Erasmus, started out bad and got worse in a hurry.

I woke up late, but that’s not really that surprising because I’m constantly late, in fact I’m late so often, that when I’m on time, people think I’m early.
It was actually a good thing that day, because since I was, once again, late, I decided to skip class altogether and make that little trip to the administrative services I‘d been procrastinating for the past 4 weeks.

There’s an old joke that goes like this: “diplomacy is to continue to say ‘nice doggy’ until you can find a big enough rock.”
Now, administrative advisers at my University are absurdly good at finding big rocks, so they seldom bother with the appeasing flattery.

Result? I dreaded any and all experiences, somehow related to the academic services.

I’d a friend of mine who went on Erasmus, and she told me, the first step to apply was to speak with one of the advisers there, and so this series of unfortunate events began:

I walked trough the doors and looked around, trying to find someone to answer my questions, now this takes some skill, and particularly good eyesight, thankfully I had had an eye corrective operation last year, so no biggie.

“Hi” I said to the only visible (hardly so, since she was cooped up in a tiny cubicle in the farthest corner from the entry) University worker.
She was wearing a stiff grey suit and a incongruous amount of eye makeup. “I came to the Academic Services to--”

“I’m sorry, miss, we are closed at the moment.” She interrupted me, without even looking away from the computer screen.

“Hum? But--” I said looking at the rectangle of paper badly taped to the cubicle window, that stated the opening and closing hours of the Academic Services. “It says here it’s open from 10h to 12h and from 14h to 16h. It’s 10:45h.”

“Yes, yes, but there’s no one here that can attend you right now.”

“You are sitting right there!” I was starting to get pretty tired from talking to the side of her face, since she continued to look at the computer and ignore me.

Thankfully she finally looked up. “Yes, but I can’t possibly attend you, and my co-worker is on her lunch break, so come back later.” The silent or don’t came back at all went unsaid.

Still I was feeling persistent. “Why can’t you attend me, exactly? I haven’t even said what I came here to do!”

The women looked at me like I was a sort of talking piece of gun that she had just steeped on.
“I don’t really attend public, I’m the Senior--” and yes, she put a capital letter on the title “adviser, I can’t possibly go around answering everyone’s questions.”

“Well there’s no one else here,” I said reasonably “so it’s not really everyone’s questions, it’s just my questions, which there’s no one else here to answer, even though this are your attending hours.”

“Look here, I very busy at the mo--” she looked away from the computer and turning her back to me yelled to someone, somewhere inside the room behind her. “ Marjorie, you’re never going to believe who just added me to their facebook!”

Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me! I thought as a blond, equally tacky dressed women showed up, probably Marjorie, and bending over to look at the computer, began a series of half-sentences, that basically consisted of: “ No way…”; “Really?”; “You, lucky you!”; etc.

I got pissed. Obviously.
“Now, look here--”

“We are closed for lunch break.” The one named Marjorie said while closing the little glass window on my face.

Ok....
That didn’t go very well, but I wasn’t ready to throw the towel just yet.
I decided to try to go talk with my Department advisor; he should know what to do.

I knew he was called Ricardo, because although I’d no previous interactions with him, personally, I remembered hearing my classmates saying his name a couple of times.

So I headed down to my Department, I entered the tiny, overstuffed room walked right up to the first woman I saw, and said with a determined tone:

“I’m here to see my Department Advisor Ricardo, about applying for Erasmus.”

For my audacity, I spent the next 20 minutes filling out paperwork.

Finally the woman called me, and showed me a place to sit, right in front of a man, who I presumed was Ricardo.

He was a pleasant-looking young fellow, which offered a nice variation, from the stiff older women I’d been interacting with so far. He had dark, short hair and chocolate-brown eyes behind round, black wired glasses.

“Hi, I’m Ricardo, you wanted to speak to me?”

“Yes, I hoping to apply for Erasmus--” I began.

“What’s your student number?” He rudely interrupted. I told him the number and after tapping it in his computer and taking a look, he continued. “Everything seems alright…”

“I hope so, I’m trying to apply for Erasmus--” I began again.

“Have you talked with the Academic services?” He, once again, brusquely interrupted.

“Well, I tried, but they always seem to be on lunch break…”

“You should really talk to them.” he said absently, still looking at the computer, and supposedly my transcripts.

“Right, right, but while they are on lunch break, and since I’m already here talking to you, I’d really appreciate if you could give me some information. In fact, I have a quest--”

Ricardo looked vaguely alarmed. “Hum… I have to stop you right there. We can’t do that here.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

“We are the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, we provide information. That’s what we do. We can’t answer questions.”

“Sure, I get it, but can’t you--?”

“No, no, no, if you want to ask any questions, you have to call the University. Or use the Internet. I’m sorry but we can’t answer your question here.”

“Let me get this straight, this is the place I go to get information about this University…”

“Yes…”

“And you have the information necessary to answer my questions here--”

“Absolutely!”

“But, and even thought you know how, you can’t answer my questions?”

“Yes that’s correct.”

“Oh, okay.” This was weird, but after the morning I just had, I could be cooperative.
Probably.
I leaned back in the uncomfortable plastic chair. “Okay, so can I use your phone to call the University?”

Ricardo spread his hands apologetically. “Ah, jeez, you know, we used to let people do that but some folks abused the phones, and so--”

“So you’re telling me, I can’t call my own University, using one of the phones in that University, to get anyone to answer my questions about that same University?”

“Well technically, we are only a department of the University--” I suddenly wondered if the guy was technically robot… or drunk, yes perhaps he was drunk, I sure as hell would be as soon as I got out of this bureaucratic hellhole.
“And that’s why we can’t let you do that.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

I leaned forward and speared him with my most fearsome gaze. “I need. To use. Your phone.”

“No!” He hunched over and clutched the phone protectively to his chest. “It’s against policy!”

While I was still trying to untangle myself from this behemoth game of bureaucratic twister, he continued, “You will just have to go home and contact the University, on your own dime, like everybody else.”

And they still wonder why kids bring machine guns to schools....
TO BE CONTINUED