| [Tags**|bureaucracy, depression, kafka] [Current Location** |
Switzerland] [Current Mood |
bitter]A note for Thalian on why Aki and I can't come to visit him and Rapante:Okay. Three months ago my life got taken over by a certain exuberant and clumsy squeaky hairball.This means that I can't travel by train any more. Squeaky Thing is a big, powerful dog, and she's one year old and absolutely full of energy. There's no way she can spend six hours in trains. It'd be wretched and exhausting for both of us. I need a car.That means I need to be legal to drive in Switzerland, and that means I need to switch my EU driving licence for a Swiss one (a thing I never previously felt much need to do). That's a pretty straightforward process, should only take a week or two, which is just as well because they take away my EU driving licence at the start of it.I decided to carry over my C1 and D1 licence categories too – that extends the process with a quick medical exam, but fair enough.The Strassenverkehrsamt (Road Traffic Authority) helpfully provides a Web site listing doctors who are qualified to carry out the exam. There are four levels of accreditation for this exam; I need a doctor at level 2.I look up one from the Web site, and spend a congenial hour being examined. The doctor looks at my retinas, palpates my liver, listens to my heart, takes my blood pressure, makes me touch my nose with my fingertip with my eyes closed, tests my hearing with headphones, holds a vibrating fork against the soles of my feet, hits various bits of me with little rubber hammers, asks about histories of fainting, diabetes, substance abuse, mental health ("depression? Huh, obviously well handled, I wouldn't have guessed"), and finally pronounces herself satisfied and says she'll send a summary to the Strassenverkehrsamt.Four weeks later she calls me up saying that the Strassenverkehrsamt has decided she isn't accredited to give the exam, despite her own protestations and her presence on the Web site, and I have to start from scratch. And incidentally they decline to fix the Web site.So I go to another doctor, who gives me exactly the same examination but a bit less rigorously, and he sends pretty much exactly the same summary off to the Strassenverkehrsamt.Two weeks later (we're now up to about two months since my original form submission to start the process), I get a letter from the Strassenverkehrsamt saying, "You have a transport-relevant illness. You will be scheduled for an examination with a level 3 or 4 doctor at the Institute for Medical Law, Transport Medicine, and Forensic Psychiatry."What? I just mentioned I get depression!So I start looking up what this process is all about, and my blood frankly runs cold.The Institute is where they send people who've committed grossly dangerous driving behaviour and need to be examined to see whether they're fit to be allowed behind the wheel. I find a document published by the Institute on how to prepare for psychological examinations there, and it includes gems like:_The goal of the discussion of the subject's history of traffic offences is to determine whether the subject has succeeded in developing an appropriate understanding of the problematic nature of their offensive behaviour in the past. [...] If the subject shows that they have engaged in deep self-criticism, then this shows that they have accepted responsibility for their previous criminal offences._The letter from the Strassenverkehrsamt says that the Institute will send me an appointment, which will be in about four weeks. After two and a half weeks I've received nothing. I phone the Institute and they say they're backed up solid with appointments and they'll probably be able to contact me in January to set an appointment.I've contacted the Strassenverkehrsamt to ask if it I couldn't just cancel the whole process and start from scratch. They say no: now that they have the note from the doctor saying that I'm depressed, it's on file and they'll make me go for an examination anyway. So all I can do is sit on the conveyor belt and wait for it to bring me to the machine.I've now been three months without a driving licence, with the prospect of at least a couple more. And since I can't drive, I can't go any sizeable distance with Maia. And since I can't leave Maia so soon after her adoption, that means I'm not going anywhere at all. Especially not back to Germany to see my partner, our new house, or our friends.This is what I get for allowing the Swiss authorities to find out that I have a common and (in its effects at least) well-understood psychological condition.—This post was made on dreamwidth.org, here. If you can, please comment there (it's simple with OpenID), because LJ's bugs make it gratuitously hard for me to answer your comments on LJ. |
mikosquirrel. What, exactly, makes you think I'm going to suddenly incur a million Swiss francs' worth of expenses meanwhile?Okay, sure, I have a record. I'm getting psychotherapy, which is going well and which I'm paying for out of my own pocket, and I previously had an operation on my leg which is unlikely to recur because they, er, fixed the problem. So you're going to have to pay for maybe another three months' worth of generic citalopram. I don't go base-jumping or bog-snorkelling; I'm a perfectly average, reasonably fit and health-conscious youngish adult. What on earth could possibly have brought up red flags all over your risk models?I'm going to ring you up tomorrow and I'd really quite like something of an intelligent explanation.Best regards, but not much affection,Me.