No lines, plenty of waiting
I have been remiss in posting here to keep you all updated on life in Sweden. Can I blame it on having just started another blog? The other one is for my company, so it's focused on business and software development rather than more personal topics, but you can check it out at http://nomadnetinc.com/blog/ if you think such things might interest you.
Here, though, I think it's time to write about queuing in Sweden... In Sweden, unless you're taking your groceries (or whatever) up to the cash register, nobody stands in line. Instead, banks, government offices, and even lost baggage counters at the airport have you take a number. Even if there's nobody else there.
But it's generally not like the normal "take a number" setups in the US, with a plain paper roll of tickets that you just rip the next one off the end of. Oh, no. That would be too simple. They have a machine inside the door. A machine with (usually) 2-3 buttons on it that you hit to specify what you're there for and each button issues numbers from different sequences, effectively making 2-3 separate queues. It actually does work pretty well, even if it does seem a touch overcomplicated, and it really beats standing in line for the amounts of time that are involved...
About a week and a half ago, A and I took a bus ride down to Malmö to see Migrationsverket ("The Immigration Bureau") about renewing my residence permit. We made it a Thursday afternoon visit, because they're open from noon until 5pm on Thursdays vs. 9am to noon the rest of the week. (No, I'm not sure how they get away with only being open 3 hours a day.) We got there at about 12:15 and took our number.
Roughly two hours later, our number came up and we went in to talk to one of the immigration workers, only to be told that we needed to give him copies of both of our personbevisen, which we didn't have with us, so it was out to take a number for the tax desk's queue... (According to the online dictionary I just checked, "personbevis" translates as "birth certificate", but that's not really accurate. It's used similarly, but it includes your current address and similar information as registered by the tax office (Skatteverket).)
Fortunately, that line moved more quickly and the immigration worker we'd talked to said that we could skip the line and he'd fit us in between numbers, so we didn't need to wait in the immigration line again. It still ended up being about 45 minutes before we got to talk to immigration again, and it was a different worker because the first guy was with some people who were taking quite a while.
The new worker went over forms, asked questions of his colleagues, and typed really slowly until he was ready to ask us each a few simple questions individually while the other one waited in the hall - at which point he realized that he'd lost our personbevisen. Luckily, he found them inside the application form while interviewing A, so we didn't have to go back to the tax line again.
In the end, we were there for about four and a half hours, but at least he seemed pretty sure that my renewal should be approved without any problems, since I had a valid excuse for not getting over here faster after the original residence permit was issued.
That done, we wandered into downtown Malmö to find something to eat. (A had wondered on the way out whether we should bring lunch, but we decided it wouldn't be necessary...) Between expensive Chinese restaurants and everything else not seeming particularly appealing, we ultimately ended up at Subway. Then we went through some stores until about 8pm, when they started closing for the night, and caught a bus home.
Here, though, I think it's time to write about queuing in Sweden... In Sweden, unless you're taking your groceries (or whatever) up to the cash register, nobody stands in line. Instead, banks, government offices, and even lost baggage counters at the airport have you take a number. Even if there's nobody else there.
But it's generally not like the normal "take a number" setups in the US, with a plain paper roll of tickets that you just rip the next one off the end of. Oh, no. That would be too simple. They have a machine inside the door. A machine with (usually) 2-3 buttons on it that you hit to specify what you're there for and each button issues numbers from different sequences, effectively making 2-3 separate queues. It actually does work pretty well, even if it does seem a touch overcomplicated, and it really beats standing in line for the amounts of time that are involved...
About a week and a half ago, A and I took a bus ride down to Malmö to see Migrationsverket ("The Immigration Bureau") about renewing my residence permit. We made it a Thursday afternoon visit, because they're open from noon until 5pm on Thursdays vs. 9am to noon the rest of the week. (No, I'm not sure how they get away with only being open 3 hours a day.) We got there at about 12:15 and took our number.
Roughly two hours later, our number came up and we went in to talk to one of the immigration workers, only to be told that we needed to give him copies of both of our personbevisen, which we didn't have with us, so it was out to take a number for the tax desk's queue... (According to the online dictionary I just checked, "personbevis" translates as "birth certificate", but that's not really accurate. It's used similarly, but it includes your current address and similar information as registered by the tax office (Skatteverket).)
Fortunately, that line moved more quickly and the immigration worker we'd talked to said that we could skip the line and he'd fit us in between numbers, so we didn't need to wait in the immigration line again. It still ended up being about 45 minutes before we got to talk to immigration again, and it was a different worker because the first guy was with some people who were taking quite a while.
The new worker went over forms, asked questions of his colleagues, and typed really slowly until he was ready to ask us each a few simple questions individually while the other one waited in the hall - at which point he realized that he'd lost our personbevisen. Luckily, he found them inside the application form while interviewing A, so we didn't have to go back to the tax line again.
In the end, we were there for about four and a half hours, but at least he seemed pretty sure that my renewal should be approved without any problems, since I had a valid excuse for not getting over here faster after the original residence permit was issued.
That done, we wandered into downtown Malmö to find something to eat. (A had wondered on the way out whether we should bring lunch, but we decided it wouldn't be necessary...) Between expensive Chinese restaurants and everything else not seeming particularly appealing, we ultimately ended up at Subway. Then we went through some stores until about 8pm, when they started closing for the night, and caught a bus home.