Hiking and the DMV

The only interesting thing that has happened recently is my trip to the DMV, but nobody wants pictures of that.

So I’m going to tell the DMV story and show you totally unrelated pictures from recent hikes.

On Friday I decided to get my Liechtenstein drivers license. It’s supposed to be a straight exchange: hand in my Texas license, get Liechtenstein license.

The only extra step is that you need an eye exam before you go to the DMV. So I did that. It was basically an extremely long peripheral vision test plus a super short “can you read those numbers” test, which I almost failed because I was trying to say the numbers in German and they thought it was taking me so long because I couldn’t see.

Anyway once I realized I was allowed to say the numbers in English, I passed with flying colors.

That day was also remarkable because I had two entire conversations in German. Yes, there were hand signals and slooowwwww speech and a lot of repetition, but the point is there was no English involved.

After the eye exam it was time to go to the DMV and get my license.

Just kidding. The DMV was closed for lunch, of course.

After the DMV’s lunch break, I went in with my eye exam and my application and my Texas license and handed them over. And the man started typing into his system.

And typing

And typing some more

And I was starting to get worried.

I was worried for good reason! Eventually the man handed me a green paper and told me – in German- that I had to take a test.

“Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t understand.”

I understood perfectly that he told me I had to take a test – I just didn’t understand why, but I didn’t know a polite way to be like “what the fuck?” so I kept repeating “I don’t understand.”

So he repeated many times that I needed to take a test, but don’t worry, he said. Not the written one. Just the road test.

I felt like it was pretty obvious from the way this conversation was going that I was also incapable of understanding verbal directions in a road test, but okay.

So anyway, I left in tears, obviously.

After calling everyone I know while sobbing, I decided to write an email to the dmv asking them to reconsider, since literally none of the Americans I know here had to take a test, so there must be a mistake.

And while I was feeling really bad for myself, I checked my email – only to find an email from the DMV saying they made a mistake and my license was in the mail.

All’s well that ends well I guess.