The-World-Noticed-Us
The city felt less foreign than anywhere we’d been.
The signs were difficult to read. The systems were difficult to understand. Every simple transaction seemed to involve another counter, another form, another rule that applied only in this particular circumstance.
I recognized the feeling.
The stubbornness. The paperwork. The expectation that a system would work because someone insisted it should. The exceptions that had become rules, and the rules that nobody could quite explain.
It reminded me of home.