Siempre Seré Extranjera

With Spain, although it’s the first time I truly see myself as an immigrant, I’m launching into my third residency in a foreign country. So I’m all too familiar with the low that often hits around the six- or eight-month point, when the novelty of a new place has worn off, the faults have become all too obvious and it seems like one will never feel at ease. This has, for the third time in my life, resulted in a strong urge to go running home. In the current case, this has weirdly manifested itself as longing for Berlin, which gives me the strangest sensation of wondering if Berlin, then, had become more of a home, or at least “my place”, than the States.

This particular low point came after numerous phones calls resulting in treatment ranging from indifferent to poor to downright insulting, as well as three futile visits to government offices, in one case waiting well over an hour (at the infamous Avenida de los Poblados sin número, about which more in the future). All of this happened at various of the Spanish immigration offices scattered around Madrid (which seems to have half a dozen), with absolutely no result. The reason for this? I’d been set the impossible task of coming here to “pick up my packet at the foreigners’ office”. Said task was given me by the Vice Chancellor of the Spanish Consulate in Berlin. Who I finally figured out had been sitting on the informational letter (which included my foreigner’s ID number) that I needed in order to know which damn office to go to in the first place. Sitting on it, I might add, since January 13th. You can bet I will be submitting a formal complaint against that guy just as soon as I can, even if it means I have to do it personally the next time I’m in Berlin.

It was a stressful couple of weeks, as after DocumentaMadrid ended, I spent almost all of my time on paperwork, trying to figure out the residency question, then getting signed up for the Spanish social security system which is the way into the health care system (free to all citizens and residents). At some point in the future which will be announced to me, I will have to be fingerprinted, and that sort of invasion of privacy, quite frankly, heightens the desire to run fleeing back to the good old data-protection stronghold of Germany. I’ve been over it countless times in my mind but can’t think how I could extend that German visa, and even if I did, I never got free health care there. So should I look at it as fingerprinting in exchange for socialized medicine? I’m working on getting used to the idea.

As for those feelings of alienation, I know from experience that they’ll fade with time, at least to some extent. In Nicaragua I came to terms with my role as the exotic, impossibly desirable gringa. In Germany no one ever looked twice at me (other than to ask directions) as I was nearly indistinguishable from the locals. In Spain I’m neither desirably exotic nor anything like the locals; I generally feel like a great gawking pale stork. But I suppose I’ll find some way to come to terms with that too (I’ve decided limb reduction surgery is probably not covered by the Spanish health system).

I think of the song by Celia Cruz, possibly the greatest salsera the world has ever known and also (to use the unkind term) a gusana. Politics aside, she got one thing very right: the song Siento Nostalgia which juxtaposes perfectly with La Vida es un Carneval. I’m happy to report that a week or so ago, after the hassle and stress of so much bureaucratic torture was finally over, I found myself dancing to that very song with Desaparecido. A Carneval, indeed.