Post

I’ve had numerous encounters with the Czech postal service the last couple of days.
What I wanted the first time was to pick up some books I’d ordered. The line took about 20 minutes, but no surprise there – I’ve visited the Czech House of Post before.
The woman behind the counter had a particularly bad day that day, a prerequisite for everyone in the Czech Republic dealing with customers. (If you’re cheery, you get to spend your shift sorting stamps.)
She was even less happy about me not bringing my passport. I mean, I did have my International Student ID card (ISIC) with me, given to me by the Czech office for international students, but that just wasn’t enough. Surprisingly, I understood all of this, even though my Czech is worse than my German, and I’ve never had a single German-lesson. She eventually let me off the hook and accepted the ISIC. Second surprise of the day.
It was a payment on collection sort of thing, so I needed to pay about 400 crowns. They had a bank terminal, but it didn’t do MasterCard. (Seems like most of this country is agreeing here: Yeah, this whole credit-card thing is probably just gonna be a fluke, no point bothering getting the terminals up to date.) So I went home, got some cash from the wallet I’d forgotten, and went back.
New line. Same woman. And, hold on to your hats: she needed to see my ISIC again. I live about 150 metres from this office, I guess I was away for, let’s say six minutes, tops, including the line, and then she needs to confirm who I am again, even though my books are lying right there on her desk.

Second run-in with the postal service was when I needed to send my little sister a present. For that, I needed a box. I figured I would have more luck trying the bigger post office a bit further away. The line was longer, but they actually had this woman who spoke passable English. (There’s a first time for everything, I guess.) They gave me a flat piece of cardboard and a tiny slip of paper, so I went to a corner of the waiting hall to assemble the box. There was some sort of an explanation as to how to go about putting it together, but I thought, arrogantly: I’m from Norway. I’ve been putting together IKEA-boxes since before I learned the alphabet.
There wasn’t really anything else going on in the post office just then, so I had about fifty pairs of eyes on me. Turns out that IKEA and the Czech Postal Services have somewhat different views on how to put together a box. Before I knew it, I had smashed off one of its sides and I was left with some sort of a cardboard hat that I would have put on to cover my face, had I thought I’d ever meet any of the people in the post office again.
The thing is, many of the people here seem to have a rather different view on where the line is drawn with staring. Or, to be honest, I haven’t actually found the line. I mean, usually, or in all other Western European countries that I’ve visited, when some stranger looks at you, and you look back at them, the general idea is that the stranger has to look away at something else, preferably, you know, a bit downwards, to show you’re sorry for invading someone’s privacy by staring intently at them. Here, they just continue to stare back. Not in a determined sort of way, just as if they’re saying “Yeah? I’m good. What d’you want?”. And then it usually ends with me being the one who has to look away, embarrassed.
Anyway, new ticket, new line, new box. Actually managed to send the thing this time, only took two rounds.

The third time, I went to the first post office to post this box with, well, stuff. And so I went to the cranky woman’s office, which is closest to where I live. They were closed, obviously, seeing as it was only a mere fifteen minutes until closing time.
This security guy, however, lead me to an adjoining part of the same office, next door, and there I met the (presumably) only other person in the whole of Czech postal services that speaks any English. I couldn’t believe my luck. I even think I might have seen a hint of a smile on his face at some point, but that might just have been me projecting my steadily warming feelings towards the Czech postal services onto him.

Kaffebar.

I blant har man ikke internett. Du kjenner situasjonen: landlorden lovte fritt internett, landlorden løy, du må gå på starbucks og surfe på nettet der.

Uansett, da jeg hadde funnet meg sted å sitte på dette forgudede stedet med kaffepriser som tar meg tilbake til gode gamle Norge, viste det seg at jeg hadde havnet ved siden av tre trønderjenter som totalt manglet sans for å holde ting privat. (De manglet for øvrig også sansen for å se når nok sminke er nok, men det kan jeg bitche om, jeg mener blogge om, ved en senere anledning).

Jeg hadde tydeligvis havnet midt i en opphetet diskusjon om hvem som hadde litt sjokolade i håret og ikke, om noen skulle ta bort sjokoladen eller om den bare skulle bli der førrdi det va meninga, og om itj dæm to annjer kunnj ta å ro sæ ned førrdi det bare handlet om litt sjokolade.

Man kan så si.

Gjennom de mest solide øreproppene ryggsekken min kunne tilby, kunne jeg fremdeles høre en palatalisert debatt om sjokolade, ispedd en kort digresjon om hårfarging, før man landet på mer kjefting, denne gangen om falske rykter som en av dem tydeligvis ikke ville høre om seg selv.

Det hele toppet seg, vil i alle fall jeg si, da den ene spanderte hele to minutter på utelukkende å etterape en av de to andre med heliumstemme:
-Mennj æ føle…
-Mennj æ føle!
-Ehm.. at når du si at dæm har sagt dæm tingærn om dæ-
-Når du si at dæm har sagt dæm tingærn om dæ!
-Altså..
-Altså! Mnæmnæmnæ!

Nå vet jeg jo allerede at nordmenn blir litt dummere i utlandet. Man drikker litt mye, må konsentrere seg om bare sykt mange kart og brosjyrer, og valutaen krever vanligvis all den matematikken en norsk folkeskoleutdannelse har forberedt en med.

Et sted syns jeg likevel man bør trekke en linje. Greit, jeg har jo sett han Syden-Tor eller hva enn det er han heter på TV, men han virker jo som om han takler den manglende bagasjen han kom hit til verden med ganske greit, spør du meg. Han har jo funnet sine egne der nede, siden de allerede har drukket seg ned et flere titalls IQ-poeng. Men hvorfor skjer så det samme når man bytter ut billig øl med dyr kaffe, strippeklubber med Zara, og grøftefyll med å ta trutmunnbilder foran tilfeldige statuer? For man har jo åpenbart rykket lenger ned i Mensa-køen når man roper stygge ting i Disney-stemme etter den som holder nøkkelkortet til hotellet?