An Irish/British TV sitcom from the 90s called “Father Ted”. (source: YouTube)
We invited our copy editors to share their reflections on life in Slovakia over the past year. This letter comes from Oscar Brophy.
Slovakia is a hard country to live in. I dream, one day, that it will be easier. One of the single hardest things is the bureaucracy. Imagine if Slovakia was a nightclub. The Foreigners’ Police are the bouncers. Have an ID? Check. Coming from inside the EU? Check. Do you have written permission from the owner of the club that you can be here? Huh?
We’ll need to see your birth certificate – translated into Slovak, of course – and to make sure that you won’t be a drain on the economy of the club, you need to show us bank statements going back months proving that you have thousands of euros. Make sure to get those translated too.
If you’re married to a Slovak you can skip the queue, yes, but only if the booking system hasn’t crashed.
Want to buy a drink? I hope you have the forms, buddy. Want to go to the bathroom? Book your visit three weeks in advance.
There’s an Irish/British TV sitcom from the 90s called “Father Ted”. It follows a cast of priests, relegated to living on an island off the west coast of Ireland. Their housekeeper is a woman named Mrs. Doyle, whose defining character trait is being incredibly pushy with offering cups of tea to the main cast of priests and their guests.
In one episode, a salesman shows Mrs. Doyle the Tea Master – a device, he says, that “takes the misery out of making tea”. When asked what she thinks, she responds blithely, “maybe I like the misery?”
People who have lived here all their life are probably used to the ‘misery’, the inherited practices from decades past. Imagine if life could be 15 percent easier for everyone here, with 15 percent less paperwork; even Slovak people’s feelings about Slovakia would start to improve.
My message to Slovakia is nemusí byť takto: it doesn’t have to be like this.
If you’d like to share your own letter to Slovakia for publication on our website, please send it to peter.dlhopolec@spectator.sk.
