As Though I Didn't Know What Would Happen...

Yesterday Jube and I went to the DMV. It was a pretty involved process for us, since we don't have a car right now and the DMV is really far away from downtown Norfolk (I guess they figure you have a car if you're going there... whatever!). We biked into Ghent where we could catch the bus that went out to Military Circle. It was a 30 minute bus ride, but we made it.

When we arrived, I warned Jube that it was something like the Prefecture. "The building doesn't look too big, though," he mentioned, happily. As soon as we walked inside and he caught a gimpse of the dozens of chairs and tellers, he smiled ruefully. "Bureaucracy is the same everywhere, I guess."

We waited in line at the information desk, where the woman approved Jube's documents and declined mine--I didn't have two acceptable proofs of identity. I'll go back next time with my passport, I guess. It took 15 more minutes for us to be called up to the desk, where the teller spent a lot of time trying to decide whether Jube's license could be exchanged or not. It turns out that it CAN be exchanged, but Jube (like me) needed another form of identity. Of course they wouldn't accept his carte nationale d'identite or his driver's licence.

We took it in good form, however. We're used to dealing with stuff like that--and it wasn't nearly as bad as the immigration section of the Prefecture!