Saturday 23rd February 2019

Good grief, has nearly a month past since I last wrote anything here? I'm sure if you read the previous entry you'll be able to guess what my days have been filled with - yes, citizenship! It's been a bit of a madhouse of trips backwards and forwards to Gabrovo, sending off for information or documents from the UK and then finally plucking up courage to actually book a date for the dreaded interview.

I think the last thing I was doing was starting to get the correct paperwork to prove my medical fitness to become a citizen (luckily national service is no longer compulsory here or I'd have had to tread the thin line between fit enough to be a citizen and definitely unfit enough to do any mad boot camp training). It proved to be possibly the most drawn out aspect of the application process so far, possibly because the local hospital in Dryanovo is not particularly big and many of the specialists only hold surgeries there on certain days.

The first step was to obtain a psychological report from Dr Stoykova, and so I duly turned up at her office to see her. I must admit I was very impressed to see that such a relatively small hospital provides daily access to mental healthcare for the local population, but I've since discovered that this probably isn't the case at all. It seems that for some instances of driving license applications, jobs and so on, a psychologist's report is mandatory, and, as in my case, it's not so much a matter of an in depth therapy session as a filling out a form and being paid handsomely for it session. That's not to imply that the proper care doesn't exist here, but I feel that Dr Stoykova might be a tad too busy doing the more mundane side to her job to get into any 'tell me about your childhood' sessions.

It turned out that she didn't really want to know much about me at all. She just asked the usual - name, date of birth, what level of education did I have - and then sat quietly filling out the form. Towards the end she got a little more chatty, asking me if I liked living here, but that was about it. So for a fee of 30 levs I got a document saying that I didn't abuse drugs or alcohol (did she do a sneaky sniff for signs of booze, or was it the levs I handed over not being coated in cocaine tha was the give away), and that I suffered from no psychological issues. Aha, maybe it's a little like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz who got his diploma. If you give someone a certificate stating 'you are such and such' then it must be true.

Next stage was to have a blood test to check of all things that I don't have AIDs or syphilis. Are you really wondering what the results were? Okay, well it came back clear. I'm thinking of having a t-shirt made with it printed on. Think of the fortune I could make standing in a lay-by. Hey, look at me lads, no diseases here!

The final medical stage was to go and see a skin specialist doctor (who unfortunately only comes to Dryanovo once a week, meaning another delay) who had to fill out some kind of form. This was kind of worrying as she didn't seem to know what to do and kept asking her assistant where she should sign and what to write. It took many attempts to even get her to spell my name correctly and in the end I told the assistant who corrected it on the form. I'm still not sure whether 'skin diseases' or lack of, is one of the requirements for citizenship or if she was just the only available person with the authority to fill out the form. Annoyingly I didn't have my wits about me as she asked me what the psychologist had charged and like an idiot I told the truth. Okay, she said, then it's 30 lev for us too. I could have got away with much less I think!

All the documents completed and it just meant handing them over to the not so cheerful woman in room 205 who would then submit them to some committee or other who would produce the final essential report which the ministry of justice need to see as part of my application. All in all the medical stuff took a good 3 weeks from start to finish, but I now have my official report safely tucked away in my application folder.

The only document I am now awaiting is the legalisation of my birth certificate. That too has been a journey and a half: Courier birth certificate to Milton Keynes to have an apostille stamp put on it, proving it's genuine. Wait for this to be couriered back to me. Take it to a translator who translates both the certificate and the apostille. The translator then takes it to a notary who then reports that everything is genuine and done in the correct manner. Collect documents back from translator. Total time: 3 weeks.

My final task will be to put all of the documents in the correct order into a nice folder, all neatly labelled, ready to present at the ministry. They then check it all within two weeks and if there's anything missing or incorrect you have two months to rectify it. I sincerely hope it's all in order!