Tapas and a birth certificate
Had dinner with my parents and Betsy today at a Portuguese restaurant serving tapas. Dinner was *very* good and not all that expensive (just over a 100 euros for four). Afterwards, we had a couple of drinks at our place and tried push-ups with someone sitting on your back. Hard.
Earlier, I picked up my Iranian birth certificate. A good thing, since I’ve been waiting for that for over five months. Not only do I need it for Zimbabwe, I also need it to get an Iranian passport, with which I’ll be allowed to enter the country.
So this awfully nice guy at the embassy helped me out, filling in the right forms since they’re in Farsi (I neither read nor speak the language) but to no avail. I was sent home, having to find the passport my mom traveled from Iran to the Netherlands with… back in 1977! They need it as proof for my leaving Iran. Great. I’m happy to see there’s still a bit of bureaucracy left in the world.
Turns out, my mom doesn’t have the passport anymore (what a surprise!) so now I have to get proof of my starting to live in Delft, which was sometime back in 1978.
When I arrived at the embassy, 10-ish, it was already crowded and I had to wait for close to an hour before I could request my birth certificate. When I finally *could* ask, the guy behind the desk kept on insisting it wasn’t there. Vahid, the nice guy from before, had called me earlier in the week, saying that it actually had arrived, so I *knew* it was there, but the man was very sure he didn’t have it. Luckily, Vahid helped me out again and the man was able to produce my birth certificate. ‘He thought you said FakhImzadeh…’
So at the next desk, handing over the papers to start the process of obtaining my passport, I had to produce proof of entering the Netherlands as well as three addresses of family or friends in Iran.
I almost started to believe there was some conspiracy going on, trying to keep me from entering the country.