It's fucking unbelievable. Bloody post office is ruining my Christmas.
YKM and I agreed to be each other's secret Santas. Minus the secret part, obviously. I said
"Yaay! Let's do it, as long as you don't expect anything expensive cuz you know, that ain't happening." She said of course not so I assembled a package with some candy and little gifts I had laying around. Nothing too big, I've heard it's the thought that counts.
First of all, finding good Croatian candy - not as easy as it seems! It appears we eat a lot of Milka, Snickers, Twix, chew a lot of Orbit and Airwaves, and snack a lot of Crunchips and Mogy. Fucking import. But I did manage to dig out some of the candy and snack I like eventually.
Then I went to one post office to buy the box.
"Oh we don't sell boxes. In fact, we don't even take packages here. You have to go to the main post office."????! Fine. I went to the main post office.
"One small box, please." "Go outside, turn left, and enter the first door.""To buy the box?", I asked thinking maybe she thought I was trying to send a package and they didn't take them in there either. But she said yes so I went out of the building, turned left and found the place that actually sells boxes.
"One small box, please." "Show me what you are sending."????!"I don't have it on me." "It's just that you might like one of those envelopes with bubble wrap..." "No, I need the box." "But if you're sending something small, the envelope..." "I'm sending stuff I really need the box for!" Finally he agrees to sell me the fucking box. "Should I leave the box open before I send it?", I ask, just in case.
"Yes, you better."A'ight. he also added that if the package weighs less than 2kg, it passes for a letter. Awesome, I figured.
So I brought the box home, filled it up with the goodies, wrote a Christmas card, and a letter, and around 1pm today I went to the post office in my village to send it. I was given a little form to fill out but not before I was asked this question:
"Why didn't you tape and tie the package?"Dunno. Maybe cuz I was told NOT TO! Anyway, I filled out the form and handed the box and the form to the woman and she goes:
"OH! It's for BELGIUM!"????!"You better come later this afternoon cuz we're switching shifts and we can't do this now. "
#$?*!!@"!#! They said I should come at 4.30pm. Fine.
I returned to the post office at 4.30pm. Now a guy was there. I told him how I was told to return in the afternoon and added I didn't know why was that and he said:
"Because it takes about an hour to process it." ????! Seriously, it would be easier to send a kidney to another continent. Then he said there mustn't be any written notification in it. I said I wrote a card and a letter and he said I should take it out or it would be sent back to me from the customs.
???! So I took the envelope out. He weighed the package, said it weighed 900g and said it was good it was under 2kg cuz it would pass as a letter. And then he informed me that it would cost me about 30€ to send it. My jaw hit the floor. I'm sorry, but I didn't expect it to be that much. So I said I didn't have enough money and he suggested I make it lighter. He also told me how much it would be if it was 0,5kg and that was acceptable so I went home to fix it. Read: take stuff out. Oh and the only reason I had to take stuff out because the woman who was there when I first came told me I should put more stuff in the box so things in it wouldn't move. Apparently, they don't like it at the customs when stuff move inside the box.
So I got home and told my sister what happened (I told her yesterday how I was barely allowed to buy the box) and she said:
"You're really out of luck, aren't you?"I nodded thinking of how my mother would put it: "If you held on to a dick, it would fall off." (Or it wouldn't function - but the impotent boyfriend belongs to another story.) And then she took out some money and gave it to me, to help me with paying for it. So thanks to my sister, I am sending that package if it's the last thing I'll ever do! Oh and the letter will come separately.
*yellow = red - The colour of Croatian postal service is yellow
