Only in LV...

Perhaps 95% of my posts could start with that title, but here's a fun story for you...

On Tuesday, I was trying to make a phone call to a government office. (That sentence in and of itself should let you know that you are in for a good story!) About two months ago, I had called the office from which I had received my permanent residence visa, asking how I will go about getting a new visa in my new passport once I have changed my last name. That was a fun phone call too - the one where I had first called and no one answered so I called back about half an hour later to the lady picking up the phone and screaming "We are on our lunchbreak right now!!!" and I timidly answered, "Ok.....I just have a quick question - when would be a good time to call back?" and she screamed back "well, if I've picked up the phone and you must ask your question then ask it!!!" The weirdo answer I got at the time is that I need to go get the new visa from the same office where I have declared my official address. (This is something everyone in Latvia must do and keep up on every time you move so you pay your taxes to the correct districts.) Anyway, this sounded fishy to me, but I stopped in at that office a few weeks later to declare my official address (oops, I had been living at the new address for over a year and only just got around to it) and they looked at me like I was from Mars when I asked if this would be the place to come get my new visa.

So Tuesday, I thought I'd try to call back and hope to get the nice lady to pick up the phone this time (there are two who work in this office - the good witch and the bad witch - and everyone who has ever had to deal with this office knows what I am talking about). So I really tried to plan my times accordingly for the phone call, took a deep breath and went for it. No answer. Ok, I gave it the same half hour that I did last time and then tried again. Busy signal. And for the rest of the afternoon whenever I called, busy signal. But the crazy thing that started happening, is that I started getting many a phone call from random numbers, of people thinking that they were calling this same office that I was trying to call! Obviously, I figured that in some twilight zone way, their calls were now getting forwarded to my phone. But this being Latvia, I really didn't know what to do about it, so I just sort of dealt with it for the afternoon, hoping someone would catch on and the problem would just go away.

No such luck - next morning, I am still getting these phone calls. (Honestly, were I not such a straight person, I could've had quite a bit of fun with this. Mostly, these were Russian speaking people, looking to renew their permanent residency visas - that means people who have lived here at least five year (probably longer for most) and have still not bothered to learn the language - MAJOR peeve.... One lady really did panic when she called and asked if she could speak in Russian and I said no, only Latvian. I could've stirred up some great trouble that day....but I diverge....)

So what to do... I begin by calling my own mobile phone company. I explain the situation and there is an uncomfortably long silence on the end of the line. Finally the "customer service rep" (I use that term loosely) just tells me, no that's not possible and it's not happening. Um....ok. So it takes five more explanations until she gets what I am saying and is starting to believe me, but of course, this has nothing to do with her. I must try to call the local company for landlines.

Call the company for landlines, and the woman almost immediately hangs up when I tell her my story because I'm calling about my mobile phone and they don't do mobile phones. I kept her on the line long enough to tell her the story once more so she gets how it has to do with her, then she tells me the same thing, that it's not possible. When I explain to her that it is possible and it is happening, she tells me that it must be my fault, I have done something to forward these calls to myself and there is nothing they can do about it. (How much fun would that be, if I could forward the calls of any government office to my own mobile phone?) No, I told her, that doesn't make any sense. So she tries to locate the landline phone number and tells me such a number does not exist so it can't be happening. Again, I must explain that it IS happening. Then she told me that I must work in that office and so I should want these calls to be coming to me. Um.....ok. No. Finally, she put me on hold. She came back and said she found that this phone number does exist and is being forwarded to me and will try to contact someone to see if they can fix it.

This did not leave me with a great deal of confidence that the problem would be solved. We were calling around trying to find the address for this office (as the office has moved location since we had been there) and were getting ready to go in to the office ourselves to see if we could fix it (because of course we can't call them since I keep getting the busy signal and the calls are coming back to my phone!) Did I mention this was already a cuckoo day as we were driving around like madmen, running wedding errands - to the seamstress for final dress fittings and hurrying to meet they people who will be marrying us at Jaunvitagas? So, we're getting ready to go to the office in person, hoping and praying for the good witch, when I realize, I haven't had a random phone call in about 15 minutes. I tell KB to try to call the office, and by miracle, he gets through to them!

It was the good witch on the phone. KB explained everything, but of course she says (in some form of apology), it was not her fault or her colleague's fault, it must've been the phone's fault or the phone company's fault... And that is the story in Latvia - blame anyone, so long as it's not me....

And then the good witch politely explained, that I do indeed need to get my new visa from the office where I declared my official address. I'm just gonna leave that one for after the wedding....