German efficiency (or not)

There is, as far as I'm aware, a common stereotype of Germans and Germany that:

• people follow the rules
• there are rules for everything
• trains etc are punctual
• things are done efficiently
• bureaucracy exists everywhere, but at least it's efficient

Nearly all of the above are completely wrong (except perhaps for the bit about there being rules for everything).

My most recent (in 2024) example of German bureaucracy (specifically involving local government, although not only that) is that:

• in 2021 I obtained a German residency permit, which allows me (as a UK citizen) to remain living and working in Germany for as long as I like, just as I was allowed to before Brexit, when the UK was part of the EU
• I specifically asked at the time I obtained this permit whether there was anything else I needed to do in order to continue living as I had been in Germany
  • the answer was "No; this residency permit is all you need; you can carry on as before - but it only applies to Germany; you can't live in any other European country (as I used to be allowed to do)"
  • no problem; I don't want to go and live in another European country
• fast-forward to 2024, when someone reverses into the side of my car whilst I'm driving along a city street
  • the German system with RTAs (Road Traffic Accidents, in case you were wondering) is that someone phones the police, and they come along and have a look at things, talk to the drivers, occasionally draw lines on the road where things happened, and ask to see the documents you're supposed to carry with you in Germany:
    • ID card (or, in my case, residency permit)
    • driving licence
    • vehicle registration document showing who the vehicle belongs to
  • in this case the other driver admitted liability without any discussion, and the police told him what the likely penalty would be (about €150 fine and one point on his licence)
  • however they then spent a remarkable amount of time in their vehicle before coming back with our documents, and it turned out to be because they couldn't quite work out whether my UK driving licence was valid (and even phoned their regional office to discuss it)
  • they decided on balance that it wasn't valid, and (very sheepishly) told me they couldn't let me drive my car home, and that I would have to contact the local city council to get my licence converted to a German one (such things are done locally rather than centrally in Germany)

So, zero points to the German immigration office ("Ausländeramt") for failing to tell me I would need to get my driving licence converted (which, as an EU citizen, I didn't need to do before Brexit, which was the cause of me needing to see them in the first place).

Oh, and whilst I'm at it, this reminds me that Ausländeramt didn't send me the letter they were supposed to early in 2021, telling me how to get the residency permit. I had to phone them to get things going.

It turns out that the reason was that they didn't realise I was British; they thought I was Irish (and therefore still European, without any requirement for a residency permit). This was because Meldeamt (the local government office you need to go to in Germany when you take up a permanent address, no matter what nationality you are) back in 2008 had looked at my passport, which on the front cover states that it is issued by "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", and only bothered with the last word, so they had registered me as being Irish.

Zero points for Meldeamt recognising a British passport when they see one, then.

Unfortunately, the story continues.

• Going to the local city council office (in 2024 again now) to get my driving licence converted into a German one (oh, and by the way, when they say "converted", they really do mean "we will give you a German one and we will take your British one away", which I think is over-stepping the mark of their jurisdiction a bit) resulted in a requirement to get the classification of the vehicles my licence allows me to drive converted into the German equivalent. Fair enough, you might think - they should have a list of the most common licences they encounter (British, American, Australian, South African, just to cover the English-language ones) and a summary of "this foreign thing means that German thing"
• Oh no. You have to take your licence to the German equivalent of the AA / RAC, they take a photocopy of it, and send it away to a translation company, who then take a week to translate it into German (as though nobody has ever seen one of these things before, and can't just take the text that was created the first time someone presented one, and send it back within an hour), charge you €65 for the privilege, and then you can take this to the licensing office to get it converted into the German equivalent
  • The grumble on my part this time is that ADAC (the German equivalent of the AA / RAC) failed to send the document correctly (I don't know the full details, but that's as much as they let me overhear) to the translation company, so they took two weeks to send the translation back.
  • This is turn buggers up my attempts to renew my UK passport, since the German driving licence issuing office needs to see my UK passport at the same time as seeing the translation of the UK driving licence (goodness knows why, since my Aufenthaltstitel is sufficient German evidence of who I am, and I had to present my UK passport in the first place in order to get that) before they will in turn issue me (after 2-3 weeks, of course) with a German driving licence.
  • I knew I had to renew my UK passport, of course, but I had plenty of time to do this until the Germans suddenly came up with a requirement to get a German driving licence, and not send my passport away for renewal in the meantime
    • Of course the Germans don't see this is as a problem - they don't do risky things like sending their passports off in the post, hoping it arrives, and then waiting around for 2-3 weeks without one - they take the old passport to a local renewals office, say they want a new one, take the old one home again, and then hand it in when they collect the replacement once it's ready. They do the same thing with their ID cards, and it's a mystery why the British don't do the same thing - you could renew your passport at the local council office, it still gets processed by the passport office who know what they're doing with these things, and you don't have to spend any time at all without an important and valuable document
• Fortunately (for the long term), it turns out that the UK is not so selfishly nationalistic as the Germans when it comes to driving licences, and so even after Brexit, the UK allows me to drive for as long as I like in the UK on a German licence, whereas the Germans no longer recognise a UK licence.
  • One up for Britain (and I don't say that very often these days).
• I'm still strongly tempted to tell DVLA that my driving licence has been stolen and I want to get a replacement. I just won't tell them that it was stolen by the German government.
  • Update: unfortunately the Germans have thought of this, and it turns out that when they take your British licence away from you, they send it back to DVLA, who then presumably wouldn't issue me with a replacement British licence without taking my German one away in turn. This could go on for ages…

The most bureaucratically annoying part of this is that you can find on the official German website for the German Department of Transport (Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr) the statement that "British people who live in Germany for fewer than 185 days in a year do not need to obtain a German licence".

This turns out to be bollocks. They do not mean "live in Germany" - they mean "registered as having a German address". They don't care whether you're living at that address, or even in the country, at all. If you have a German address and live in another country, Germany regards you as living in Germany.

This, in my opinion, is both silly and unreasonable. I live in two countries, agreed, but not both at the same time.

Aaaargh: Update, two weeks after ADAC sent my British licence away to get it translated: I take the translation, my licence, my passport and a photograph to the German licensing authority in order to get a German licence issued, and they don't ask to see my passport! I could have sent it away for renewal two weeks ago as soon as I got back to Germany from England, and not had the doubt as to whether the replacement will get back to me in time for my next planned journey.

So, I send my passport off to England to get it renewed (which anyone in Europe thinks is a batshit-crazy idea in the first place - they take their existing passport to an application centre, apply for a new one, take the old one away with them, and then hand it in when they collect the replacement. The idea of being without a passport while it is still valid, or not having your ID card (the same procedure applies for renewing those) is simply unthinkable) and the following timeline ensues:

1. I send my passport off, using tracked and signed-for delivery, on Monday afternoon
2. The German post office tracking service tells me "you posted it on Monday at 15:16"
   • even the UK post office tracking service already knows this, on the Monday
3. Nothing happens until Thursday 00:47, when the status changes to "leaving Germany"
   • what the hell have they done with it on Tuesday and Wednesday!?
4. It then gets marked as "arrived at Heathrow" at 16:26 on Saturday
   • that is an extremely slow flight
5. It then leaves the Langley (some little place near Heathrow, not the headquarters of the CIA in Virginia, USA, fortunately) international processing centre at 13:30 on Sunday
6. It arrives at South Midlands MC (whatever that stands for) at 00:55 on Tuesday
   • that's 35 hours 25 minutes later
   • so, it probably went by an extremely slow bicycle, or on foot - according to Google Maps, you can cycle from Langley to the South Midlands MC in Northampton (73 miles) in 6 hours and 18 minutes, and you can walk it in 22 hours 36 minutes.
     • you could take it on foot and then cycle back to Langley (or vice versa, if you prefer) in less time than it took the Post Office to get it there.
   • oh, and if anybody says "it wasn't being transported for that amount of time", why do they show a departure time from Langley and an arrival time at Northampton? What else are they doing in between those two times other than transporting it?
7. It gets delivered and signed for (by someone whose signature reads "DWS" and whose name is "HMPO") at the passport office at 10:17 on that Tuesday

Hurrah! you might think - it's arrived!

Well, no: according to the passport office it was delivered to at 10:17 on Tuesday, they received it at 18:24 on Thursday.

I had thought that posting something tracked and signed for (at a cost of €7.20 for a small envelope - it only contained the passport) in Germany on Monday afternoon had a good chance of arriving in England by Thursday afternoon.

I certainly didn't expect it to be the Thursday 10 days later.

Update the following Monday: "your application has been approved. Your passport is being printed and we'll let you know when it's ready to dispatch."

Update on the Tuesday (at 3:40am BST!): "Your passport has been printed and we’ve sent it by secure delivery." (Although they don't give a tracking number, so you have no idea how it's being sent or where it is, until it arrives.)

Update one week later - I start getting delivery tracking emails from DHL telling me that something is due to be delivered soon. It turns out to be the old passport being returned to me. I do wonder why they provide a tracking service for the old one but not for the new one…

So, once the UK passport office acknowledged that they'd received the old one, I'd say they were pretty efficient at printing and sending the new one. I just hope whatever "secure delivery" method they've chosen works better than Deutsche Post and the British Post Office who took 10 days to deliver the original.

Observation whilst checking that Langley Virginia really is the headquarters of the CIA and not some other sinister American organisation: it turns out that the CIA headquarters are officially known as the "George Bush Center for Intelligence", which sounds rather demeaning to the CIA, to me.

The official German translation of my driving licence states that I am allowed to drive 8 different types of vehicles, in the German classification system.

The licence they gave me shows only four of these.

This appears to be because in Germany, the licence for the additional classes of vehicles is only valid for five years after getting the licence, however I'm challenging this, because (since the Germans took away my British licence) my German licence is now also my permit to drive in the UK, so if the types of vehicles it says I can drive do not match what I'm actually allowed to drive according to the DVLA, I can no longer prove what I am allowed to drive in Britain.

Final update: two weeks after getting my German licence, I've persuaded the Germans to give me my British licence back and I now have it again (as well as the German one). A sensible outcome in my opinion; I just wish they'd listened to me from the start when I said that that's what I wanted them to do.

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