The visa process

I hate applying for visas. The bureaucracy, the administration, the organisation, the endless waiting, the sheer tedium. And I always feel a little bit nervous, I guess just at the thought that someone else has control over whether or not I'll be able to go on holiday. So it wasn't a good disposition that found me waiting in the queue outside the German embassy yesterday in the a.m.

There was a young couple standing in the queue in front of me. They were holding hands and gazing at each other in mutual adoration, and I thought 'Awww, how cute. How romantic'. And then they started kissing passionately right there in front of everyone and left me disgusted and emotionally traumatised for life. So I had to spend the rest of the wait staring alternately at my toes and the sky to avoid making eye contact with the spectacle six inches in front of my nose.

But then things took a turn for the better. The visa officer warmed to me instantly when I wished him "Guten Tag" (heh heh, yes I too have a few tricks up my sleeve).
"Why all the way to Mainz for just two days??" he asked. So I told him all about P&P's wedding, and he was duly impressed by how they'd organised it all the way from New York. Turns out the chap was from Mainz too, and was excited that I would see his hometown. So he told me about some restaurants that I simply HAD to go to while I was there, and I told him about the river cruise they had planned, and how excited I was to see JC again. I chatted away for a few minutes, as I am sometimes wont to do, and before I knew it I was heading off visa in hand.

Unrelatedly, on the way back to work I noticed a 'Yoga Centre for Under-5-yr-olds'.
WHAT?!!
Seriously.
And it was teeming with little kids. Tsk, tsk. That's New York for you.