A New Nightmare

I am still in the heat of the emotions of the moment, so hopefully I am blowing this entirely out of proportion.  I REALLY hope!!

This morning, I rushed through my weekly grocery shopping trip, threw the cold food in the fridge, and drove to the notary.  It should have been an easy 20 minute on the Autobahn.  It ended up being an hour-long drive that started on the Autobahn, but ended going every which way "through town" after a ridiculously long "Stau" (My favorite German word - means any form of traffic congestion, jam, etc.)  So, I was already a little stressed when N & I made it to the Notar, but I was determined to make the best of it.  We found the place rather easily thanks to our GPS, and we even got lucky enough to find a FREE parking lot nearby!  I know that seems like no big deal to you in the states, but here that is a HUGE deal!!  Like, the rough equivalent to "driving 90 past a state trooper on the interstate and having him wave and tell you to have a nice day" huge!  (I would add "through construction", but that might be a tiny exaggeration....)  I got N into his stroller and enjoyed a nice walk along the tiny sidewalk that is right next to a busy road....Ok, I was a little freaked out by that, but I also acknowledged that the Germans don't ever do stupid things like drive on sidewalks....well, not with people on them anyways.  /rant

After our lovely 5-10 minute walk, we entered the building and discovered that the Notar was on the 2nd floor.  (That means 2 flights of stairs here, not 1)  I saw a sign that said there was an elevator, but I couldn't tell where it was indicating and there were more stairs where I thought it said to go, so I assumed I wasn't reading it right.  I collapsed the stroller and carried it up the stairs while holding N & my folder of documents in the other arm.  And it was my bulky stroller.  I hadn't even thought to bring the umbrella stroller in case of steps!  D'oh!!  Anyways, we made it and once there, I re-strapped N into the stroller to keep him contained so he didn't destroy an office.  The receptionist spoke very little English and basically had no idea what I was asking for.  (Um, hello...you are a Notar!  People come to you to get things Notarized!)  She went and gave my pile to someone else (not the actual Notar), who eventually came out and asked me what I wanted from them.  I explained that I needed all of the documents notarized, so that we could get them certified, then authenticated and that all of this was for an adoption.  She just stared through me.  Finally, she said that she didn't know what I needed.  She said that she could either make certified copies of the documents or she could notarize the signatures, but that every person who signed our documents would have to physically come into their office.  I explained that we had to have originals, but that most of the people who had signed would not be able to come to their office.  Heck, 2 of the signatures are from IL!!  She didn't care.

I see her point, but this is just so frustrating!!  Most of the signatures (our Dr. and the lady who certified translations of our police reports), have stamps over them which are supposed to verify that they are valid signatures.  Apparently, those mean nothing.  The process of having to get everything notarized, then certified, then authenticated (twice!) was already daunting enough, but having to get so many people to physically travel to this office during there insanely short & inconvenient business hours is just not possible!  I mean, how many doctors do you know who would be willing to leave their practice for half of a day, then drive 20 minutes each way just to say ,"Yes, I signed that...you know, right UNDER MY STAMP!"  It's just unheard of!  I have been trying for the last hour to call the Crescent Moon Embassy to see if this step is actually important or if we can somehow get around it, but they still won't answer the phone.  Tonight, I will have D call our placing agency and try to relay what it going on and see if they can think of a solution, but I have a feeling they are just going to say that we have to figure it out on our own.  :-(  As easy as it is to get things notarized in the states, I never would've thought that we would have such a hard time doing this step here.  I am hoping to have some positive news about this soon....