Challenge #316 - week of 28th January 2018

Another Monday, another early morning appointment. This time at the local transport registration office. Anyone who knows anything about Germany knows that it's a bureaucratic system and this will be my third visit to the office in an attempt register our new car. Not easy for a non-native but all part of the fun of living in a foreign country. :-)

So this week, I'd like you to be inspired by bureaucracy.

A layout from a previous WM#79 prompt to just show you that I love Germany despite the rolling eyes at all the red tape sometimes!

And another one to show you that I love my adopted home country but can still get frustrated!  Sometimes it all just makes me smile!

There are some ways to take this so shall we have a look and see where we can find inspiration?

• local government - we all have our stories of "fighting" the local government system to get something done. I'm not thinking negative stories here, although of course, feel free to tell those too! But the Catch 22 type of scenarios that I'm sure we've all experienced at least once! I have one that springs to mind about receiving my British passport with my new married name here in Germany with an eventful trip to the post office so that might be my story this week! Local government has a reputation for having a lot of red tape no matter what country so this could be a direction for you.
• national government - perhaps you've been affected by something bureaucratic at a higher level that you could write about this week. Again, Catch 22 situations spring to mind where you just seem to go round in circles! 
• business - jobs and business is full of red tape. Maybe you made a recommendation that would have reduced red tape in your company that you'd like to write about or something that was introduced that just seemed so crazy that it was funny! This might be the week to put that down on a project.
• Project Life - if you are recording your daily/weekly/monthly life in a Project Life or pocket page system, then you're bound to be recording snippets of life that include aspects of procedures or processes that could be linked to bureaucracy. Get it written down for this week's prompt!
• red tape - of course, bureaucracy is also known as "red tape" as I've mentioned above so how about using red tape on your project. Washi or strips of red paper or even twine could match this idea. 
• the origins of red tape - in the past, the files that lawyers needed to refer to in court were wrapped with red (or pink) tape. So you could write a story about a lawyer you know, studying the law, official files, or a legal story.

Enough? I hope so. I really think that that post office story might be the one for me. It's hilarious and familiar to anyone and everyone I've told, no matter what country they come from. Let's see if I can get creative this week.

However you interpret it, we'd love to see! You can connect with us in our Facebook group here. Tag your entry with #WMXX so we know exactly which inspiration you've taken.

Have a great day everyone!