National ID card

So, I am in Poland now.

The first thing to do is to get the ID card. Poland does have a national ID card that is pretty much necessary to have if you live here. In particular it is necessary when dealing with customs once the container arrives to Gdynia. It takes up to three weeks to get it, so the big question is whether the stuff arrives before that or not.

To obtain the ID one has to show up in person in Urząd Miasta and submit the following documents:

1. Three pictures. The pictures are kind of special, “left half-profile”, different than what is required for passport. In Lublin there is a photo service located in Urząd Miasta. The set of four costs 28zl ($10). Don’t forget to shave in the morning, this picture stays with you for ten years.
2. The request form. This can be downloaded from the Urząd Miasta site of the city you want to live in.
3. The previous ID. In my case that was the booklet-style ID from communist times.
4. Marriage certificate may be needed unless you married in the city where you request the ID. It is better to have it just in case.
5. The receipt confirming you have paid 30 zl to the Urząd Miasta account.

So this is the official list. However, when I came to the office the clerk wanted to see my passport as well, so I had to go back home and come again. There is also some tricky part with “zameldowanie”. In Poland everybody has to register his/her address with the goverment. It is a really annoying remnant of communism. In my case I didn’t unregister my address when I left Poland in 1994, which technically is a misdemeanor, but it simplified things somewhat when I was applying for the ID. It is not that easy to get the address registered as the owner of the dwelling you live in has to sign the form. If you rent, forget about it. I don’t know what happens when you don’t have a registered address.

Renting an apartment in Poland

My wife went to Wroclaw to look for an apartment we can rent. I turned out that almost all advertisements we looked at were from real estate agencies. To actually look at the apartment one has to pay a fee of about $10-$20, which is strange, but acceptable. However if someone decides to rent it the fee for the agency is one month rent which in our case is about a thousand dollars. I think this is outrageous.

Shipping the household

I shipped the car on Tuesday. The usaautosystems.pl representative could not guarantee a specific date for pickup, so I gave them a range between Monday 03 and Friday 07. They called me on Monday that someone will show up on Tuesday around noon. I got another call at 11 on Tuesday and at 12 the guy knocked at the door. What was susprising was the he didn’t know where he should he take the car to exactly. He also didn’t know what documents he should take from me. After a call or two the destination was cleared up, and I was pretty sure that only the title was needed.  He didn’t give me any official receipt, just wrote a couple of words on a sheet of paper. I checked his driver’s license if it agreed with what he wrote and gave him the keys. He loaded the car on a trailer with two other ones that were already there. All that was in a typical Polish improvisation style – the guy was Polish. He was even planning to make a similar move later this year, so we chatted a little bit why one would want to do something like that. I felt less crazy after that.