Oh my, the British have left their mark with the most bureaucratic experience yet. When Ron and I left Portland, we left our hats in Bruce and Donna’s car. Just too much to track with all the luggage and excitement of leaving. Donna packed the hats and sent them off to us and they arrived today. I went to the post office armed with a 12-page form that had been delivered to Ron at work. When I got to the post office, I was directed upstairs to the parcel section. The first thing I was asked to do was put our address in six places on the form and to sign it in three places. Just wait. I was directed to have a seat and told to wait until my number was called.

After about 10 minutes I was directed to the counter where someone looked at my papers and directed me down the hall. I went to foreign parcel section and again someone handled my papers and instructed me to customs. Two people handled my papers in customs. One person interviewed me about the hats: were they my hats or was I importing them? What were they made of? Oh straw. Where were they hats made? Beats me. They will need to go into quarantine in case there were bugs in them. Sir, my husband’s hat is two years old. So we went back and forth and he sternly told me he was going to let them through but in the future they would be quarantined. I was then directed back to foreign parcel section where someone handled my papers and sent me back up front where someone else handled my papers and sent me back to customs. Customs is on the other end of this block long building. I said I have already been to customs and he said go again. I went back to customs where a different person in a different office handled my papers and I was sent up front again. A different person handled my papers and a different person opened the box and showed the hats to another person. Another person put a string around the box. I was told to have a seat until my number was called. Two more people handled my papers then I paid 100 rupees ($1.00) to yet another person. All told over ten people wrote on the papers. Nothing is on a computer. Everything is hand written and entered into paper journals.
It seemed like I had stepped back in time to another era, another century or two. The process took one hour. I was terrified that at noon they were going to tell me to come back at one but fortunately I finished about five to noon! DO NOT SEND US ANY PACKAGES FOR CHANUKAH OR CHRISTMAS OR ANNIVERSAY OR….. Thanks. I hope I don’t have to go through this every time we have mail forwarded. So far none has arrived. I know of one more package that has been sent and it contains our mail order vitamins. I can hardly wait to repeat this activity.