Day One

Bureaucracy is alive and well in Germany. We spent our first full day on the ground being carted around by The Company's contracted relocation expert and fixer. Things in Germany have to be done in a very specific way, and in a very specific sequence, or it all goes to hell, and you don't have a prayer of getting your new handy... er cell phone. Did I mention we were out of our minds jet lagged and drugged up with residual bits of the previous night's Ambien? First, we had to register our arrival  with the city. Except... our apartment isn't ready yet and you're not allowed to use a hotel as an address, so we declared that we were living in our relocation person's office in a totally different city. There was an election in Bavaria over the weekend, and for whatever reason, the city office was therefore closed on Monday-- election hangover, I guess. Whoops, that blew a hole in our plans, and completely set back chances of getting cell phones for another 48 hours (not sure why, but that's just how it works over here). Then it was off to a series of meetings related to B's employment: banking, health insurance and a meeting with the tax preparer. Banking was quick, painless, and we got ourselves a cordless phone for the effort. As far as health insurance is concerned, Germany subscribes to socialized medicine, which is a nice way of saying everybody pays a lot of money to get the same level of sub-par treatment and spotty coverage. By the way, this is compulsory-- if you are working, you HAVE to have it, no exceptions.  Well-to-do folks can opt out and get private insurance, which costs only a little less, yet has far better coverage. They changed the law last year (too many folks were going private and the public system was getting underfunded, no doubt) and upped the salary threshold-- so now to get the private insurance, you have to prove a salary of 46,000 Euros (nearly USA $64,000)/year for the last 3 years. Whoopsie, somebody in HR kind of forgot to mention that-- looks like we're going public, and paying 8x more for considerably less health care than we were getting back home. Mental note: don't get sick or hurt. Tax preparation was painless and boring, but neither of us were all that coherent at this point-- dead tired, and it was, like, 6 hours since we last ate. Hopefully, we didn't miss much there. It's only taxes, right? By the by, due the the fact that we're married, we enjoy the low, low rate of 42% taxation on B's paycheck. If you think that's draconian, try being single: 51% of your paycheck goes to The Man. After that, off to The Company's motor pool to pick up some temporary wheels. We got the last car available: a diesel minivan. Made in France. Now, I'm a car guy so the idea of having a Citroen (last exported to the the USA in 1973) seemed exotic and cool enough... except that this thing was a beast. Remember that small cars rule the roost in Europe-- most folks drive something the size of a Mini or VW Golf/Rabbit, and the parking spaces reflect that... so when we got this C4 Picasso, it was like being handed the keys to a delivery truck. You've read B's tale of parking garage hell below-- this vehicle barely fit in the spot provided, and you couldn't open the driver's door. This was all sorted out the next day when a diesel C3 came available, and it's been a lot easier to get out and around. I should hasten to add this: the relocation company has this all wired-- there are plenty of new arrivals working for far larger companies (including engineering colossus Siemens, a $100 Billion dollar company with nearly 500,000 employees in 190 countries) who have had to fend for themselves and figure out this maze without any guidance, from getting a work visa to registering with city hall. We're quite lucky that we had somebody who knew the lay of the land and drove us around 3 different cities in one day to get (almost) everything done in one shot.