Family and Friends

This week is all about family and friends. But in addition to these joyful events, we’re once again facing challenges with public transportation, government agencies, and various service providers. After everything we’ve been through in Germany since May of this year, we’ve decided to leave Germany again. This time, we’re not heading to Switzerland but to Austria.

On the Move Again

Unfortunately, there are a few hurdles to clear here as well. According to the Registration Act, when you leave Germany, you must deregister from your place of residence. As a rule, this must be done in person at the citizens’ office. The deadlines are very tight; you can do this no earlier than one week before departure. Since we’ll be leaving Germany at the crack of dawn on Monday, we decide to go on the Friday before. We look up the opening hours online and arrive right on time at 9:00 a.m. to find the town hall doors locked. A sign informs us that the town hall is closed today due to a staff event. Our attempt to reach a possible emergency service by phone fails after an hour on hold, during which we were counted down from number 7 to number 1 in the queue. Unfortunately, no one ever picked up the phone. It wasn’t clear either online or by phone that City Hall wouldn’t be open that Friday. We subsequently canceled our registration by email. It remains to be seen whether we’ll still need to show up in person. Above all, the question arises: Who will pay for any necessary travel expenses? So the story remains to be seen. On the way to Stuttgart, yet another signal failure occurs, to which the railway company responds by abruptly canceling the train service, leaving you to figure out an alternative connection on your own. We’re prepared for things like that by now, though, so these are just minor challenges. We run into a bit more trouble renting a van whose list of defects, even though the vehicle has only been driven 16,000 kilometres, is exorbitantly long. To be on the safe side, I photographed all the damage before leaving. After returning the van with a full tank, of course I’m accused of causing damage that supposedly wasn’t there before. After being passed around to five different people, I finally reach the right person. I’m told to email the photo I took to the claims department. Unfortunately, this informal email wasn’t enough. The next day, I received a request to fill out a damage report and resend the photo as evidence. By the way, we’re not talking about some small, hidden damage here, but a huge dent that’s actually impossible to miss. 

Dent in the car

On top of that, my regular gas station is charging me €120 for 16 liters of diesel. The pump displayed a price of €2.29 per liter, which comes to €36.64. That’s already a hefty price, but I’m not willing to pay €120. Since this gas station consists entirely of self-service pumps, I once again have to do some online research to file a complaint. The woman on the other end of the line isn’t responsible for this, of course, but she forwards the request. Unfortunately, so far without success. I’m afraid this is going to be an expensive affair for a few moving boxes. I’ll keep you posted.

By the way, the man of their dreams is on the left

But there’s some good news to report, too. In perfect weather, our niece married the man of her dreams and threw a small party. Finally, something decent to eat (and drink, of course) again. Unfortunately, these kinds of events always seem to pile up, and the next day we’re celebrating another birthday with a barbecue in the garden. Such a concentrated schedule of activities has become very exhausting for me. They say that as you get older, you need less and less sleep. Unfortunately, I can’t confirm that. At least when combined with going to bed very late after having a fair amount of Weiss-beer, the importance of sleep for recovery shouldn’t be underestimated. When you run out of time because the interval between events is so short, it gets difficult. But we’ve managed to overcome that challenge as well, and so, although we’re still a bit tired, we were really looking forward to seeing the people we hadn’t seen in a long time due to our absence. With that in mind, may there always be fair winds, and keep a stiff upper lip.