Anyone who thinks the Germans are the most organized, efficient people on the face of the earth must never have had to really deal with German bureaucracy. The Germans do indeed have a million offices for a million different things, but the offices never seem to be responsible for exactly the things that you need, and none of the offices knows what any of the others are doing.

Case in point: my marriage. I am an American, and exactly one month and one day ago, I married an Irishman in America. We both live permanently in Germany, however. I agree, this is kind of complicated, so I was prepared for the little odyssey that I would have to go through to get my marriage recognized in Germany.

First I went to the courthouse, where they generally take care of all things marriage-related. The first very nice lady I talked to sent me to a different office. The very nice lady in the new office told me that I had to go to the citizens’ affairs offices at city hall.

I went to city hall and talked to the distracted man at the information desk of the citizens’ affairs offices. He was obviously clueless, but rather than saying, “I don’t really know where you should go,” he told me that, since I wasn’t German, I couldn’t go to the citizens’ affairs offices. Instead, I was supposed to go one floor up to the foreigner registration offices.

The foreigner registration offices are, as far as I’m concerned, the inner circle of Hell. They are the entirety of Kafka’s The Castle packed into one long, gloomy hallway. They are so horrible and disheartening that they deserve their own little essay, so I won’t go into the details of them here. Let’s just say that, for the amount of optimism I felt, the Information Man may as well have told me that I had to throw myself in front of a bus.

I reluctantly trudged upstairs to the inner circle of Hell, which quite surprisingly wasn’t nearly as hellish as it usually is. I talked to the gruff woman responsible for foreigners whose last names begin with “S". She was the same woman to whom I must grovel once a year so that I can get a new residence permit. Maybe it was my imagination, but she seemed pleased that I was there for a different reason this time. Maybe she was just pleased that she didn’t actually have to do anything because, as it turned out, she couldn’t help me. She said I had to go downstairs to the citizens’ affairs offices.

I went back downstairs, dashed past the information desk, waited for ten minutes, and was finally called into another office where the people are responsible for citizens whose last names begin with “S". There was yet another nice lady behind the desk there, and after I explained my situation, the first thing the woman said was, “Oh, you have to go to the courthouse…”

Welcome to Germany.