The Germans love it. Any excuse for forms? They will take it. Any excuse to ask for your passport? They will take it. Any excuse to photocopy any sort of official form? They bloody love it!
When you move out here you need to do anmelden, which means to register. Luckily, my host mother took me to the office to sort it out and it wasn't too difficult. Then we set up a bank account, which was another opportunity to sign several pieces of paper and have my passport checked a few times. Then we went to buy a sim card, and even at the Phone House (their Carphone Warehouse) I still had to show my bloody passport!
The worst of all of these processes, however, is enrolling at a university. When you have done this you can buy a Semesterticket, which gives you free travel throughout Nordrhein Westfalen until the end of March so is worth all the trouble, but only just! On monday I went to Essen to meet Mari, Katie and Alex so we could go and register at Essen uni at the same time. When we got to the office we were eventually told we needed an appointment and to go back on tuesday. When we went on tuesday we were told to go over the road and get some sort of insurance confirmation. When we had that we were finally able to enrol and go to bank to pay for our Semestertickets... or so we thought... the banks have variable opening hours here and the Sparkasse was closed when we got there. So I had to come back to Ratingen and cash it here today, and post my receipt to Mari so she can hopefully collect my card for me on friday. It might not sound like such a stressful process, but believe me it was! I am looking forward to this free travel though.
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