unamerican

I went home today, sort of. I went to the embassy.
It's American soil, they say, but it didn't feel like home.

There were armed guards and metal detectors. I did not interact with any native English-speakers. The bureaucracy and slowness of the place were decidedly post-Communist.

I sat in a sterile waiting room with years-old magazines and watched employees lounge about. Thankfully, I brought a book. After a chapter, my name was garbled through a loud speaker & I stepped into the "interview room." There, I explained that I needed more pages for my passport. The clerk told me that I needed to have an appointment (although all of the information that I could find on the website said that appointments are not neccessary). I filled out a form. The clerk told me that she might be able to put the pages in within an hour, but it will definately be done by tomorrow morning. When I told her I would come back to pick up my passport tomorrow, she said I shouldn't go a night without my passport. Quite the Catch-22. So she photocopied my passport information page and said she'll put in the pages when I go back tomorrow morning.

Apparently, putting more pages in a passport is a quick enough process that it can be done while one waits. So why couldn't she have done it today?

I have learned not to ask such questions in Belgrade.
I thought things might be different in pretend America.

Today makes me happy that I am not a foreign service officer.