Registration at municipality in Maastricht

Monday, 31^st October 2011 – Maastricht – permalink

In order to be able to get my bank account at Rabobank and get tax discount I needed to get Dutch social (BSN) number, which requires registration of my stay in Maastricht at local municipality. The meeting was scheduled for today.

Workers, source: my picture

The first strange thing is, that you actually need to make an appointment for that, and it can scheduled minimum 3 weeks after you ask for it. As I was there on the 3^rd of October, I was offered the 24^th, but I had planned my visit in Czech Republic for that date, so we scheduled it for today Monday, 31^st of October, 9 a.m.

As I missed the green light at the traffic light near my place, I wanted to use the way around as usually so I could save time, but there is some construction work on the street. So I wanted to ride with my bike over the footpath for about 2 meters, and there was a fence on the road. An old nervous guy stopped me, that this ia a place for pedestrians and forced me to get of my bike for these 2 meters. I was really pissed off, because I was in a hurry, you cannot see anyone in a range of a few hundred meters except of these 2 guys, each of them on the other side of the construction (about 20 meters long), forcing people not to ride on bike on the sidewalk. Aahh… This has nothing to do with security as they do not protect anyone, it is only a big waste of money and people get annoyed. But these guys think, how important they are. They also are not pleasant to ask you kindly or reason why. So after this small incident, the rest of my way was ok.

At the municipality in Maastricht

I parked my bike at the last time in front of the municipality and went to the information desk to ask what to do. There was exactly the same lady as the last time, she looked at the copy of the registration paper I signed there last time and printed me a small piece of paper with queue number and show me the direction to the other side of the hall. Nice, so at least they know about me, as there was also my name the paper, just above the number "o901". After about 3 minutes of waiting I was called into office 18. The guy sitting there asked if I am Petr Polak, then asked for my passport and the birth certificate (As I was told last time by the lady at the information desk, I had a certified copy with me). He looked at it and than a bit disappointed gave it back to me, as it si not "international", so no use for him. Then he asked how long I will stay and wanted to look at my subrent agreement – my friend fortunately told me to bring it with me, so I had it, but I wasn't asked to bring it while arranging this meeting 3 weeks ago. Then all the guy did, was filling up some form with my name, address, phone number, my place of birth and then names and birth places of my parents. Before I signed it, I noticed, that he wrote, that I was born in the Czech Republic, but I did not exist then, so he had to rename it. He apologized for that, but instead of writing everything into new formular, he just used white tape and wrote it over And he also wondered how long it is to write "Czechoslovakia".

Municipality in Maastricht and Intersport on the right side, source: my picture

I signed it and that was all. He told me, that I will get in about 2 weeks by post residence confirmation and the BSN number. Hm. I do not get it, what all these procedures. Strange bureaucracy, everything takes ages. And also one strange thing. Place of birth is mentioned on my ID, but it's labeled only in Czech language. I have actually never noticed that, but it's funny, as I see no reason for that, as other information, even the issuer are labeled also in English. I am curious, when I will get my BSN number, as I started the procedure of applying for it on the 3^rd of October.

Update: as I really needed the social security number, I went to the municipality on Thursday 17^th November and asked about the status. I was told that I am registered and I should receive it within days. The woman there today was fluent in English and another bonus point for the fact that she kindly wrote my BSB number on a piece of paper, so I can finally active my account.