Too many tickets is the problem, man

Hung over is not the way to deal with bureaucracy. Especially when you live in a place that doesn't really know about Bloody Marys. (It is at least mostly socially acceptable here to order coffee with cognac in the morning, but it's not the same.) Anyway, I dragged myself to the Office of Extranjeros to pick up my NIE, which I need in order to open a bank account, which I need in order to get paid. I got my ticket and I waited in line and they gave me a form and told me to take it to any bank and pay a tax of nine euros and 18 euro cents and bring the receipt back. Annoying, but doable. Except that it wasn't, because of the five banks I went to, three of them would only take my money if I had an account with them (see my reason above for needing the damn NIE in the first place) and the other two only accept these tax payments before 10.30am, which it wasn't. So, I gave up for the day and had a beer which, as the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, is sort of its own little Catch-22. At least I didn't have to go to the bank to get it.