Roll call of Deutsche / in Deutschland mummies !

[Nightynight]

how many are there?

Im english, but in Germany, moving down to München next week.

Hi thank you hausfrau.

do you know anything about the toytown munich crowd? and why is it called toytown munich anyway, sounds a bit patronising but maybe Ive got the wrong end of the stick. social life appears to revolve around beer.

Heeeere!
Yup, Hausfrau's right - am in a little town east of Stuttgart, in the depths or heights of the Schwäbische Alps. It'd be cool to have a southern German meet-up sometime
HF, how are things with EMIL?
NN, am afraid I have no idea about 'toytown munich' - have to admit to never having been there, despite having lived in Germany (with gaps) for years

Mch is fab. Im so looking forward to living there. dx is dragging me across europe at the mo, it'll be Paris next year I think.

I'm English, in Frankfurt, married to a German.

Are we a mn clique?

ja naturlich

anyone else for our clique?

heh heh - this one has special joining rites. You need to have spent at least 4 hours politely arguing till blue in the face and pointlessly filling in forms at one or more of the following:
Finanzamt, Rathaus, Auslanderbehördeamt, Arbeitsamt, Deutsche Telekom, AOK.

Platinum membership will be awarded to anyone who successfully got the better of any of these institutions.

I had accounts simultaneously last year with BT, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. Incredibly, BT was the best!

I paid a deposit of 150 euros to DT when we opened our account, and recently realised that I dont remember ever getting it back when the account was closed. Do you have to chase them for it, or could it have been credited to my account somewhere?

Berolina - where are you? I lived for a year about half way between Reutlingen and Ebingen: Gammertingen. Do you know it?

Am in German-speaking Switzerland. Does that count ?

youre in!

have heard lots of lovely tales about Switzerland - an ex-colleague was fined once for putting his dustbin out on the wrong day

oops, forgot the Kindergeld people in my list of bureaucracies. they once sent me a form with a box to tick to say if my five year old was currently doing military service or not

Ooh don't get me started on the Kindergeld folk - no seriously by the time I've finished regaling you with the sorry tale, you'll have lost the will to live.

oh dear - got all that ahead of me - sent the Kindergeldantrag off last week. Had to tick if ds, born 18.5.05, is single
Roisin, I'm over Aalen way, I think Reutlingen's the other direction?
I claim double platinum membership! last summer dh and I were messed around something rotten by Telekom, wrote a strongly worded letter and got overpaid money reimbursed and an apology! Why did you have to pay a deposit NN? I've never heard of that.
I've also only had positive experiences with the Arbeitsamt (so far!). Really dislike the Ausländerbehörde, primarily because when you go in through the 'privileged Ausländer entrance' (Europeans, Americans...), you pass the huge queue of the 'not so privileged Ausländer' (everyone else) - I find that very uncomfortable indeed.

An apology? Is there a word for that in German?

I'm being unfair really - we've had mostly very efficient service from all the various amts we've dealt with, and plumbers tend to turn up when they say they will too.

Oooh. Can I join your clique? I'm English & in Dusseldorf.

Although, TBH, I've had a truly hideous time here, have been shouted at by the woman in the ground floor flat for not knowing that I should put one small bin bag out each day and not one large one once a week, for accidentally leaving a box of personal possessions in a communal area (she told me she threw them out and then slammed her door in my face) and for not collapsing my buggy. I'm flying back to UK on Friday with utter relief.

Having said that, it's all worth it if I can be in my very own MN clique (Klüngel?).

You mean you're going back to the UK for good?

Then no, you can't be in our clique, bog off.

Half-German, (German-speaking) but living in England.

Gave up on applying for German nationality for my kids, after the bureacracy caused me to lose the will to live. I have dual nationality which, contrary to popular German myth, is entirely legit, but is regarded by officialdom as roughly on a par with trying to have simultaneous membership of Al-Quaeda and the CIA.

What was the problem Frogs? DD has a German and a British passport (got the German one at the embassy in London) and will do the same for ds when I get round to it - it was really easy.

Oh sorry - is it because you're dual too? Can they not get their little heads around that one?

Pinot - we're really close - for about 4 days!

sorry to hear about your bad experience. I think most Germans are really nice, but there's always the odd old cow anywhere

Ive successfully got Kindergeld now, but had to use a special form as my children live in France though still supported by me.

(a) They can't really get their heads round me having dual nationality;
(b) children have dh's surname despite the fact that we were not married when we had them (in Germany they'd have to have been given my surname);
(c) my German birth certificate gives my surname as my mother's maiden name, as my mum wasn't married when she had me;
(d) my mum was born in Prague and has a Czech birth certificate as my grandparents went into emigration in 1933 and had been stripped of their German citizenship by the Nazis.

You get the picture. German officialdom is deeply suspicious of dual nationality; whenever you are in German you are treated as if you are German, and any extenuating circumstances arising from your other nationality are disregarded. Dual nationals are also liable for military service, though I don't know if they actually enforce this, as I am (a) female and (b) was living in Berlin, which was then exempt from army service. But when I got an Erasmus university scholarship to study for a Semester in Germany I wasn't able to take it up because they worked out that I had dual nationality, and as a German, I needed German school certificates. Since I was educated mainly in UK I didn't have these and therefore couldn't be immatrikuliert. The only way round it required notarised and officially-translated copies of every certificate I'd ever gained Cylcing proficiency, anyone? and would have taken months and cost a fortune. By which time the Immatrikulationsfrist would have been up. Bastards.

The attitude was summed up for me by some snotty cow in the Sekretariat of the university who said, "Ja, wie denken Sie sich das denn, dass sie die Vorzuege der deutschen Staatsangehoerigkeit geniessen, und Ihren Pflichten entgehen wollen?" It was a certificate, FFS.

frogs - the average bureaucrat will NEVER get his/her head around (b), (c) and (d)!

can you hire a lawyer? in the UK, it usually smoothes ones path when dealing with the awful Home Office.