When I first got to Berlin, I was informed that I needed to register with the city. Germans like to know where everyone is all the time, apparently, so every time you move to a new place, you have to abmeld (unregister) from the city where you used to live and then anmeld (register) with the new city. The basic registration process is easy: you show up to a city office, fill out a short form, have some one stamp it. Done. No problem, right? Wrong.
In reality, there are about a thousand extra complications that disrupt the process. Added to that right now is the fact that most of the city employees who can register people have been on strike since we arrived.
[Side note: the official party line here is that Germans don't go on strike. The French are the ones who strike all the time. In Germany, everything runs smoothly and efficiently. Whenever there is a strike, most Germans soberly maintain that this one time is an exception. Unfortunately for this theory, it seems to me like someone is on strike all the time. Last fall when I was on study abroad, it was the train conductors who literally brought travel to a standstill in most of the country for an entire weekend and severely hindered it for months before that. Then, the transportation department in Berlin when on strike and shut down the subways for days. A few weeks ago, the teachers all went on strike, so Matt and Leslie's daughter missed school because there was no one to teach. And of course, now the city workers are at it, too. Needless to say, the evidence is piling up on the side that says Germans do, in fact, strike pretty often.]
Anyway, we needed to get registered with the city strike or no strike, so we set out this morning with a strategic plan of attack. In three separate groups, we left home at 6 a.m. to get to our three respective offices by 6:30. (We had heard rumor that some of the offices are open some of the time, so if you catch the right one on the right day, you just might get in). Dan, Krista, Andy and I walked 20 minutes from our apartment to our designated office only to be told that they were closed. Lucky for us, though, the nice police man in charge recommended that we try another office right down the street. So, we headed over to try one more time. To our great delight, a few other people were standing around inside and the woman at the desk nodded for us to get in line as well.
When 8:00 rolled around, there were about 100 people in line waiting to get inside, but we held strong at numbers 6, 7 and 8. One lady who walked in the door tried to creep up and cut in the line, but Desk Lady directed her to the end of the line. Once we made it into the waiting room with our official numbers, we saw that the Creeper had slipped in near the front, but at least she didn't make it in before us. Fifteen minutes later, I finally made it into the office to talk to a real person, who promptly typed my information into the computer, printed out a sheet, stamped it and made me sign it. Five minutes, in and out.
Next week, I get to do this all over again to get my visa.
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