This July, about five weeks after the European Union granted Ukraine visa-free travel, I decided to apply for a biometric passport – supposedly the only document Ukrainians now need to enter the EU.
But getting hold of that document can be a much more adventurous experience than one might imagine, as I soon found out.
I knew that the biometric passports were in high demand and there would be lines at the passport service centers. So I did the smart thing, and went to one at 8 a.m. on July 18, a whole hour before it was due to open.
It turned out I hadn’t been smart enough. More than 200 people had arrived before me.
The crowd of waiting people was keeping a handwritten list of those who wanted to apply. As I enrolled, my saw number was 249, and since I knew that only 250 people can apply in one day, I crossed my fingers really hard.
Why did I put my name on an unofficial list in the first place? Because in our country any list is better than a chaotic and uncontrolled crowd.
Why didn’t I book an appointment via the passport center website beforehand? Because there is no such option.
At 9 a.m. people started entering the passport center. The process is this: a person comes in and gets a ticket with a number that guarantees they can apply for a biometric passport the same day. Some people claimed several tickets at once, as they were also applying on behalf of their kids and spouses.
When I finally got inside, three hours after I arrived, the man who was standing in line right ahead of me received the last, 250th ticket.
“I’m sorry. Come tomorrow,” a nice lady at the counter told me, smiling with sympathy.
Even though there was no chance to apply on that day, a group of about 20 people, including myself, did not leave. We stayed outside the passport center, disappointed and lost.
“Let’s start a new list for tomorrow,” one woman suggested, and everyone gladly agreed.
We put our names on a blank paper sheet, thrilled about the fact that we would be the first ones to apply on the next day. But then someone asked who would stay with the new list near the passport center to make sure that no one cut in or started an alternative list. It was 11 a.m., and everyone had a job or studies to go to.
“I can stay until 2 p.m.,” someone said.
Other people chipped in, claiming shifts of several hours each, even through the night. I took a two-and-a-half-hour shift in the evening. We exchanged phone numbers, and by the time I was entering the nearby Pechersk metro station, I had been added to a group chat called “Passport” on the Viber messenger app.
We jokingly called ourselves the passport patrol: We shared pictures of the list’s updates with new names written in, we fought off brokers who tried to put in 15 people at a time, knowing they were selling the slots in our list to their clients. In fact, we were having fun.
One member of our group, Andriy Lavryk, deserves a special mention. Being No. 17 on our list for July 19, he had managed to get hold of an extra ticket on July 18, and applied on that day. All the same, he still joined our watch at night, and stayed for several hours as he had promised.
The all-nighters brought mats to sit on, thermoses with coffee, snacks, and even some wine.
By around 6 a.m. on July 19, there were more than 260 people on the list we had started the day before.
By 7 a.m., our entire group was there, forming an orderly line, based on our impromptu handwritten document. Some people who came in later objected to the list, saying it was “unofficial” and thus non-binding, but the majority supported the initiative as the only way to bring some order to the process.
After all of the tickets were handed out on July 19, the people who didn’t make it in continued our “passport patrol” initiative and even took over our group chat to coordinate shifts.
As Oleksandr Dyshlevoi, a fellow passport applicant whom I spent part of my shift with, said: “These days, life management classes have become very popular. But here it is – real life management in action.”
And once again I have been reassured that even though our state agencies still might lack efficiency, the Ukrainian people are, as ever, brilliant at self-organization and giving each other mutual support.
