Meld an, Meld ab

The hardest part about writing is doing it, is making yourself sit down on a regular basis and produce, no matter what you feel like, no matter how bad it is, because the discipline helps clear the blockage so that one day, once you get past all the shit that's locked in your head, you will get to the gold that you know lies beneath, even if it's "just" a pebble. A pebble a day adds up eventually to a treasure trove. At least, that's what I'm going to keep telling myself. What did we say in the 80s/90s? Fake it till you make it? Fine.

Now that I'm done with the second installment of the translation, I have time to catch up on all sorts of other things, like paying bills, having the power in the apartment switched over to my name, registering at the local Einwohnermeldeamt. You see, in Germany and Austria--and I imagine Switzerland, since they're such stickler for detail--you have to do something called anmelden. This means that you go to the local resident office and officially announce that you now live in the city or town that you moved to. The civil servant behind the desk then looks at you as though you are a waste of oxygen and deigns to type a few things into a database. Then you are officially registered. Then you receive notices about the TV tax that you need to pay, whether you have a TV or not.  They've actually added computers to the list, so that once again everyone pays the TV tax.

And if you ever move, which many Germans are loathe to do--it probably has something to do with the fact that when you move out of an apartment, you typically take everything with you. I mean everything, including the kitchen, the mirror in the bathroom, the ceiling lights, everything. There are no closets, so you take the wardrobes you installed as well.  Sometimes you take the carpet or the flooring. It depends on how attached you are, whether you had it installed, whether there's a full moon--then you have to abmelden, go back to the same office and announce that you are now leaving, upon which the civil servant once again looks at you as though his or her life was going so well until you showed up, then punches a couple of words into a database and you are free to register at the next Einwohnermeldeamt.

This process is daunting at best when you are native. No one wants to go there, no one wants to deal with Beamte, the civil servants, because as a rule they are the most ill-tempered, rude, power-hungry little fucks on the face of the planet. Did I use my outside voice? Oh dear. They are rude to Germans, so you can imagine how they are to foreigners, whether you speak the language or not.  And I get the sneaking suspicion that they are particularly unwelcoming to people of my complexion.

A friend of mine swore that I was being hyper-sensitive about this the last time I lived in Germany, when I couldn't get an Aufenthaltserlaubnis, a resident permit, for love or money.  The case worker I had, an absolutely charming Beamtin named Frau Bellingrath, obviously enjoyed my company, because she kept finding excuse after excuse to not grant me the permit, to make me return every three months to turn in some other cockamamie piece of paper or proof of something.  At one time, she linked the next round of necessary documentation to student loans. Student loans? I graduated from school in 1998. This was 2006. When I showed up at home, foaming at the mouth and ready to turn Frau Bellingrath into the worm farm she should have become years before, complaining bitterly about the racism I had to endure, my friend and housemate told me that could not possibly be the case, that this woman couldn't have something personal against me, and that I was over-reacting.  She would come with me to the next appointment and we'd get it straightened out.

And we did go together, and my friend, who is very good at schmoozing, had a lovely chat with Frau Bellingrath, talked about the Aachen of their childhood, really identified with each other.  I thought they were going to burst into a round of Kumbaya or something.

Then, the bitch turned to me and said, "And now...," reached behind her for Volume 2 of the Ausländergesetz, the immigration laws, and casually flipped through until she found something, said, "aha!" (I'm not kidding) and then told me, with a self-satisfied smile, that I would have to come back in another month with proof that I could ride a kangaroo bareback.

After we walked out, my friend whispered in total shock, "I think you might actually be right. I think she might have something against you."  I almost fell out right then and there, because admitting that someone else is right is not necessarily written into German DNA, especially my friend's.

You can imagine that I might be a little apprehensive and wound up when I go to the Ausländeramt. And I go again this afternoon. Oh joy. Hopefully, I will have nothing to report.

And our time is up.