Want To Watch TV? Pay The Man.

I've taken a lot more dynamic photos to be sure, but here is a basic part of life in Germany: the quarterly GEZ bill. GEZ, short for the tongue annihilating Gebühreneinzugszentrale is the National agency tasked with collecting a broadcast fee from all households in the country. As you can see, we pay a princely €53.94 ($74.20 at today's rates) 4 times a year for the honor of, ahem, "free" TV, radio and internet. Over the years, GEZ has cast the net in ever-wider circles so that if you now own or use a "broadcasting device" you have to pay the fee. So people who don't have a TV but listen to the car radio, or have a computer or own a cell phone-- anything that can broadcast music or programming content-- have to pay the fee or face the consequences regardless if you have ever used it or not for that purpose. Some brave souls have done the civil disobedience route and refused to pay, but that sort of thing tends to result in the GEZ fuzz visiting with a search warrant or peering in your windows looking for TVs, radios (clock radios also count) or computer monitors and whacking you with a hefty fine and threats of greater punishment. Like I said, anybody not living in a cave has one broadcasting device or another in their daily life, and GEZ has sewn up the loopholes airtight-- even GPS devices in cars are considered broadcasting devices. So much for free radio and TV.