It is not an easy feat to open a bank account in Scotland. You have to provide the perpetually unsatisfied bank employee with all sorts of documents that are supposed to, at least in theory, prove that you are you and that you keep your dirty underwear where you say you do. By definition, you are bound to come back at least three times, as they will always come up with something new everytime you think you have everything they wanted. Anyone who dealt with beaurocracy knows that it's one of the main laws at work here...
Today, happy as a bird, literally singing on the street as I was approaching the university offices, I was expecting to receive a document, printed on pretty official university paper, proving that I was a student. I went inside, got the piece of paper in question and noticed with amusement that the term adress and home adress are the same and they are both in Poland. And, on top of that, it wasn't exactly a Polish adress: it was a hybrid between my family's adress in Poland and my adress in Amsterdam, where I was living before moving to the UK. Most of it was Polish with the exception of the post code which was Dutch. It was, apparently, a somewhat misguided attempt at computing a mean of my two confusing foreign adresses. Since I was of Polish nationality and lived in the Netherlands only for a few years, this new hybrid adress reflected correctly my geographical sense of belonging, giving most of the space for the Polish and living only a bit for the Dutch. In an uncanny statistical way, it reflected my place in this world of pain and suffering.
Since I was waiting for that gem of the document for 3 weeks, I decided to swallow the little mistakes it contained and, still in a good mood, headed towards the branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. There I met the same unnervingly calm and cheerful employee, under the name of Laura, who proceeded to explain to me why this time, to her enormous regret, my account couldn't be opened either because of this and that document missing. I felt blood rushing to my cheeks as I got more and more irritated and made some sarcastic comments about bringing the X-ray of my chest next time, just in case. As I was getting all worked up she was getting calmer and calmer, making me think of these psychological training of how to deal with difficult people that the stewardesses have to go through. Then, as I was deflating somewhat because of her lack of cooperation in getting angry, she had a moment to (oh bad luck) scrutinize the documents once more and noticed the hybrid adresses in the university letter. She couldn't of course tell they were hybrid (that spicy little detail I kept for myself) but she did notice that it appeared also as my UK adress... Oh bother..
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