May the 16th, 2024 – Croatian bureaucracy is infamous, but much like an octopus, its tentacles can reach into the most unexpected of places. Here’s one love story, involving a car license plate.
We currently live in a moment in time (I sincerely hope) where the current Croatian bureaucracy will soon be dominated by technology and efficiency. Perhaps the stories of Croatian bureaucracy will be totally alien to future generations. To be honest, the logic of most of the way this country is fairly alien to all of us.
As I got back into my car recently, I got the inspiration to start this series – an attempt over the weeks to document a snapshot of absurdity for my grandchildren exploring the daily grind in this beautiful land.
The inspiration for this Croatian bureaucracy documentation was a parking ticket on my windscreen as I returned to the car. I’m not driving my usual car at the moment, and I had faithfully entered the Croatian car licence plate number into the SMS parking (fun fact – did you know that SMS parking payment was a Croatian invention?).
No doubt I had made a mistake, I would deal with it later. And on it went to the ‘to do’ list.
A couple of days later I went on a business trip to Zagreb. I was there for two nights and stayed in my favourite central parking spot which charges just 10 kuna a day. I once again entered the car licence plate number into my phone, and once more I got confirmation.
And two days later, when I returned to my car, I was greeted with not one, but two parking tickets on my windscreen, one for each day.
Wtf?!? I could type the number in incorrectly once perhaps, but twice? Not even I am that big of an idiot.
I looked at the number. ST46020, which I what I typed.
Could the two zeroes by the letter ‘O’? Did these number plates require a letter at the end? Should it then be ST46O2O?
They looked identical. Don’t they?
My next meeting was with the legend that is Marko Rakar. Among all the other amazing things he does, he managed to put the ‘anal’ in Croatian bureaucracy analysis, and I greatly enjoyed his elaborate explanation of how he was busy educating one of his service providers on how to issue an electronic invoice.
Not having seen the plates, he told me that the 0 in 4602 was a number, and the last digit was the letter O, as this type of Croatian car licence plate must end in a letter (you learn something useless every day in this beautiful land). But if I looked closely, I would notice a difference in font between the number and the letter.
My eyes are not what they once were, but can you see a discernible difference?
Now the MRAK in Black was curious, insisting that the first had to be a number, the second a letter. It would show somewhere.
And so it did. In the place that matters most in Uhljebistan – on the parking fine.
Not even a dumb foreigner like me could mistake the zero for the letter in the fine.
I shall appeal, of course, and keep you updated. I am hoping that the MRAK in Black will be able to dedicate some of his precious time to guide me in my appeal and hopefully lead me down some awesome labyrinths of Croatian bureaucracy which will give me more material for this series.
