Adventures in Postal Confusion

 A few days ago I got a slip in the mail from the Czech Post Office, but as it was all in Czech, I was a little clueless. A couple days later I got around to sending Filip a photo of it and asking what it was.

A draft notice? Deportation order?

Turns out I had a package waiting for me!

Despite my lingering cold, I bundled up and headed out today, taking the tram four stops to the not-too-far-away post office.

Cheerful-looking place!

This intimidating experience is all-too-familiar to foreigners in Central and Eastern Europe. It starts with a computer system asking you to choose which service you need. These days you can choose to operate it in English, thank goodness, though since "picking up a package" was of course not one of the options presented, I still needed to ask a woman next to me to help. She — working on the system in Czech — guessed that "picking up letters" was probably the right one, which seemed most likely to me as well, so I went with it and headed into the waiting room.

One thinks of Beetlejuice

Printed-out number in hand, I went in, grabbed one of those yellow chairs, and sat, staring up at the sign, which would assign a number to a window. I was 272, but among the numbers called before me were 912 and H11.

Still, only about two minutes after I sat down I was directed to the stern-looking woman at window number 2. Her demeanor sent a strong message, so I started by saying, in Czech, "I'm sorry, I don't speak Czech." She nodded, curtly, took my note, made a few keystrokes, wrote something mysterious (it looked like "F2F") on the form, pushed it back to me, and said something in fast Czech at me. I said, helpless, in English "I'm sorry," then switched immediately to Czech. "I don't understand." She nodded, then said exactly the same thing, at exactly the same speed. All I got from it was the words "doprava, a doprava."

I nodded, and backed away. Back near the chairs, I opened up Google Translate on my phone, and saw that that meant "transport." Hmm.

At this point I was stuck. I had literally already told her I didn't speak Czech, and she had repeated her instructions for me once. Going back to her seemed unlikely to help, and by now she had another customer anyway. I thought about giving up and going home, but ... who knows? Maybe someone sent me a new car, or tickets to Bali. Would be a mistake to give up so closely. I could print out another number and hope to be directed to another window, but ... that seemed far less confident than simply asking someone if they spoke English and taking them back to my window for translating purposes, but I found myself overwhelmed at that prospect as well.

I reopened Google Translate and discovered that a secondary meaning was "to the right." Ah. Um. My right or her right? There was nothing to my right. I went over to her right, at the end of the line of windows, and there was door there! I tried to open it, but it was locked, with what looked like office supplies behind it, so ... I guess that wasn't it.

Feeling pretty defeated, I went outside and walked over to the right side of the building, but nothing there. I thought about getting on the tram, but turned and walked back inside one more time, when, over the number-printing-out machines I saw a poster that said something like "vydat a basiliku" that had a big map on it showing, if you exited the building and turned right, and then right again, there was another office of some kind! 

Almost excited, I ran around the corner, found an office with two windows, went up to the first one, asked if he spoke English, and — when the answer was positive — gave him the "F2F" notice. He confirmed it was the right place! I won, I won!!!!

Got my package — no car, no tickets to Bali, but a new credit card and a check for a refund from State Farm, so not bad! — and took the tram home.

Not the most exciting story, I know. But at the end of the day, a definite success story.