The Berlin citizens’ offices force me to get up early
The technology diary has been around for so long now that I have to apply for a new passport for the second time. The first time, in 2014, I documented the passport photo production technique here. Nothing has changed since 2014, except that this time I can book the photo session online and after taking the photo it is retouched in a relatively laborious process in Adobe Lightroom. Although I don’t know whether it wasn’t done in 2014 or whether I didn’t look like I urgently needed it. After retouching I look about four weeks younger. Maybe the photographer just likes playing with Lightroom.
That was the easy part. The difficult part is the appointment at a Berlin citizens’ office, any one. Ten years ago, with the last passport, it was the same and it hasn’t changed since then. I have occasionally looked for available appointments since November. It should happen at the end of February because I’ll be out of the country again after that and won’t be back until shortly before my old passport expires. Since the processing times for new passports are in the range of months and this certainly won’t get any better during the summer vacation season, I would prefer to start applying early. I need the passport because since Brexit you can no longer simply come to Great Britain with your ID card.
During my attempts in November, December, January and February, there were no available dates in the period in which I would be in Berlin. In retrospect, I know that I was naive: there is exactly one day for every office on which the appointments are activated for exactly one day in a distant future that varies depending on the office, and these appointments are all gone again a few seconds later . It is practically impossible that there will be an appointment at some point for exactly the period you are looking for.
As the last possible day for a visit to the citizens’ office approaches, I am dedicating myself more intensively to the topic. On Wednesday I realize that frequent visits to the appointment search page won’t make any progress. I google the topic and find an appointment sales website that promises to solve my problem for just 44.90. However, you have to pay the money first and you can’t give any information about the desired dates, and I can only do it tomorrow or the day after. The Citizens’ Offices website also states that purchased appointments are not valid. That’s probably a lie, but I’m not desperate enough for such a solution yet anyway.
I found a helpful article at netzpolitik.org that explains that you have to be on the appointment page from 6:30 in the morning because the appointments for that day will then be activated. Basically, you only have the choice between an appointment in exactly two months (that is the one day in the future for which every office releases appointments every day) or an appointment today. There is nothing in between. I set the alarm for 6:30.
I try to get an appointment from 6:30. You can only try once per minute:
ALT
Sometimes I see appointments at community offices on the other side of town at times that I can’t make that day. While I’m still thinking about whether I could get there in time, the appointments are being booked by other people. Sometimes I get to the theoretical possibility of booking an appointment, but someone else was quicker and the moment I reach the booking page, the appointment is gone again.
Most of the time I get the information that there are no free appointments at all. In the minute that passes between my attempts, the “number of new appointments booked across Berlin today” continues to increase. Meanwhile, other people, thousands of them, managed to get an appointment. That annoys me, but it’s also reassuring because I know that appointments basically exist and that the appointment booking page isn’t simply broken. When, at some point after eight o’clock, the number of successfully booked appointments between my attempts only increases by about 1 each, I assume that all appointments for that day are gone and give up.
The next day, the last possible day, I am determined to immediately book the first appointment that comes along, even if it is in a suburb near the Polish border. Plus, there’s no way I’m going to fall asleep again and waste ten precious minutes of snoozing like I did yesterday. Additionally, at 6:30 sharp, I remember that Firefox has the valuable “Container Tabs” that have often helped me. These are tabs that act as if they were a completely different browser.
I open the appointment search in eight different container tabs and am now eight different people who are allowed to search for an appointment every few seconds. There are no appointments activated between 6:30 and 6:50, which can be seen by the fact that the “appointments booked today” number is not displayed. It probably always depends on when the first person in any office starts working flextime and releases appointments. After twenty minutes of reload clicking, the first appointments of the day appear, I type in my details as quickly as possible (because even then you can still be overtaken) and on the second attempt I get an appointment at a citizens’ office that is only moderately far away. I didn’t need my multiple container tab personalities at all.
I don’t like setting my alarm for 6:30, especially not on several days in a row, and I also don’t like spending hours of my life just trying to get a damn office appointment, which is easy to do in all other cities in Germany appears. But I would have liked even less to call the Citizens’ Office for hours and hear the busy signal, so thanks to digitalization.
(Kathrin Passig)