Or as they call them over here FolksWagon. While another Mercedes would have been nice (and there are plenty of affordable ones) we just couldn’t manage to find one that would fit the family and the budget. The overall price wasn’t so important — since we think the vehicle will have little or no capital depreciation in the time we expect to own it — but running costs were. So a diesel engine for running costs since it has an intrinsically higher efficiency and the fuel is cheaper[1].

After a fair bit of searching, I found a 1994 7-seater VW Caravelle (‘VW’ is pronounced ‘fou-vee’ here). It’s white and a previous owner had been a heavy smoker. When I first saw it at the car yard, it was quite, well filthy is the best word for it. So I managed to negotiate the trader down a couple of hundred euro (I am traditionally pretty hopeless at bargaining) and got professional cleaning and a one year guarantee thrown in. While it wasn’t an absolute bargain, I think it was a pretty fair price, especially considering it has only 154,000km on the odometer (which frankly I have a hard time believing). The cleaning, which took a couple of days, made a vast improvement and though the smell of smoke still lingers, it is greatly reduced. I’m amazed at how sensitive the nose of a non-smoker can be to residual tobacco fumes. In fact, I had my suit coat hung on the back of the front passenger seat for about 20-30 minutes and after putting it back on and away from the vehicle I there was the distinct smell of smoke on it. Anyway, here are some pictures of an identical vehicle.

I paid a sizeable deposit when the contract was drawn up and this enabled me to take the ‘Fahrzeugbrief’ (registration papers) with me. So armed with this, a ‘Doppelkarte’ (literally translated as ‘double card’, like an insurance cover note) and Gaynor’s residence registration papers we headed by train to Düren — about 10-15 minutes away and is the main town of the local shire, Kreis Düren — and to the ‘Strassenverkehrsamt’ (‘Street traffic office’. Oh how they love their compound words!)

Registration consisted of waiting in line for a clerk (unfortunately for us ours was non-English speaking), having them check through the papers and assign a licence plate number. She asked if we wanted a particular sequence of characters but we declined since I wanted to have the car driven that day, knowing how long custom plates can take to make up. She then hands us a ‘smart card’ which we take to an automatic payment machine (the card contains your payment details) and then cough up the cash (about 30€). We then head back to her, but she looks confused and asks where our licence plates are. We beat her at her own game by looking even more confused. Across the language divide it eventually comes that we need to go to one of two shops in the building complex to collect the plates. Having seen these shops on the way in and wondering what they were for, it suddenly clicked. At the shop, they look at the character sequence you’ve been assigned, pull out a blank plate, arrange the characters on the press and make your plate right there! So much for waiting for a custom plate. We could have ordered something more exciting than ‘XQ 928’! We paid another 30€ to the lady at the plate pressing store who, speaking excellent English, helped explain the whole process that we had just about finished! We took the plates back to the clerk who placed some official stickers on them and that was it. I kept expecting to have to pay the ‘real’ registration costs which I estimate will be about 350€ per year, excluding insurance — which is taken out privately anyway (this is the purpose of the ‘Doppelkarte’ mentioned above). However, she didn’t ask for the registration money and so I expect they will send me a bill.

She also didn’t ask to see our fervently sought residency permit! I even presented it as part of the paperwork, but she declined it. Quick conclusion: We didn’t need one. Gaynor’s passport was sufficient. Quick emotional response: Arrrrgggghh!

So the short of it is, we are once again independently mobile. The past couple of months have been an excellent time to think about what a valuable and convenient resource a car is, but I’m glad the pontificating is over.

[1] The price of diesel is currently about 1,05€ per litre compared to petrol/gas/benzine of 1,15€ — convert to your currency of preference here. Based on ~20Mm per year, the difference between an 11l/100km petrol van and an 8,5-9l/100km diesel van is about 50-65€ per month.

Well finally Gaynor’s long suffering (as a British-born lass) has brought us a boon. After pressing the point with my employer — and seeking a second and third opinion — I was told that it would be no problem for Gaynor and the children, as EU citizens, to register their residency in Germany. Actually this has been our feeling for a while but my employer (and the second opinion also) wasn’t keen on the idea of them registering without me. It might even have disrupted the residency-obtaining process in the Netherlands. But in the end we found enough of the right people (or convinced the unbelievers) that we should go ahead with it. So we did and now six sevenths of the family are officially resident here. My own residency is still in-the-process of becoming Dutch and then will be in-the-process of becoming German (which should be a lot quicker!). As a Ukrainian colleague here put it, “The Dutch officials will smile and be very nice to you, but they don’t know the rules, might even give you incorrect advice and will take a long time to do anything. The Germans, on the other hand, may be a bit rough and unpleasant to you, but they know the rules exactly and will take care of it immediately if you are within them.” Personally, I haven’t come across many gruff Germans though, of course, one cannot rule out my considerable charm.

“So why was this whole residency-registering caper so important?” I hear you asking (after some prompting from me). The single most important reason was so that we’d be able to hire DVDs. As side benefits, we could also register a car and have our household goods from Australia clear customs (in Gaynor’s name). And so we are now the proud owners of a ‘people truck’ and in fact our household effects will effectively be affected here next Tuesday (26th April). More on these soon. I’m still applying for the video store membership.

Growing up in Brisbane I didn’t understand a lot of things. I didn’t understand why Christmas decorations and some traditions centred on snow and winter. Oh I accepted it — most children do when it comes with perverse amounts of sugar and receiving free toys — but I never really understood it. Similarly, I never understood what the whole fuss about winter was. The longing you would hear from our northern hemisphere neighbours about when warmer weather would arrive, the excitement of spring and all the things they were going to do in the summer. Sure winter was a couple of inconvenient weeks in the middle of the year, but I honestly didn’t get the big deal.

Then we moved to Canberra. Turns out some places can measure four distinct seasons by the changes around them and not just by checking the calendar month. The colours in autumn were gorgeous instead of a couple of trees that looked like they had gone off a bit. And, after living through six and a half Canberran winters, I finally understood what the longing for the warmer weather meant.

But not until the last few days have I ever seen such an abrupt arrival to spring. Last week was snow and temperatures hovering around zero (or further below!) and this week, wow! Small birds flittering everywhere with some kind of happy chirping and chittering going on. The sun is shining, the grass seems greener and the air is warm. I mean I haven’t actually seen Bambi gently grazing in the forest yet, but I FULLY EXPECT TO any day now. I know that the last weeks have had an almost unprecedented late winter cold snap but, seriously, the warmer weather (and the attendant Disney atmosphere) has come on faster than you could say “Frühling”. Well faster than I could say it anyway.

We received a fax the other day from the German moving company who will be taking our household goods from the port in Hamburg (where the ship arrives about the 2nd of April) to the house in Jülich. A standard sort of letter asking for documents that will be required for our things to clear customs. Documents such as a copy of my passport, signed declaration that we aren’t bringing in anything illegal etc. Of course they also require a copy of my German residence permit. Can’t be sending stuff to people who aren’t supposed to be there right?

The problem being that, officially, we aren’t here yet. Even though my work and the house we are living in is in Germany, I am employed by a Dutch organisation, F.O.M. (which in English stands for Fundamental Research on Matter. More on them here and about the division I am employed in here). So before we can be German we have to be Dutch. Technically, it is only me who has to be Dutch then German. Gaynor and the children are all EU citizens (they entered Amsterdam on their British (EU) passports) by virtue of Gaynor’s English birth. So they are pretty much free to wander as they please but if they intend to reside somewhere they have to show valid health insurance and income support.

So I am almost Dutch now. That is, I’m waiting for my Dutch residence permit to be finalised. Of course, applying for that wasn’t straight forward either. I had an appointment with the immigration authorities at the local town hall, a week after we arrived, only to find out my birth and marriage certificates weren’t acceptable. Turns out my marriage certificate (which had been accepted by a number of Australian bodies previously) wasn’t more than a commemorative one anyway! Naturally, I’d been warned to this fact by Gaynor some years earlier but it seems that piece of information had been filed in my mind with “Things I May Need to Know One Day”, right next to “Things to Recall If I’m Ever on a Quiz Show”. For the documents to be legally recognised they need to have an Apostille afixed to them. This is an extra stamp ($60 per document) which essentially authorises the document as legit (it is issued by DFAT) and makes it recognisable under a 1969 Hague Convention to which Australia became a party in 1991. I can hear that last filing drawer opening as I type …

Anyway, so the procedure now is to get my Dutch residence permit approved (within two months), then to go with the family to the German embassy in Amsterdam to get official stamps in our passports to say we can go and live (and I, work) in Germany. Then, we go to the local town hall here and register with the immigration police. This then gives us a German residence permit. Exhales slowly. Which brings us back to our stuff arriving in a few weeks in Hamburg. The best we can hope for is a fluke of bureaucracy where our German residence permit are finalised by then. More than likely though, we’ll need to pay for storage of our things until the rest of the paperwork has lined up.

Not that this has been a rant (well not exactly), but this is the price of staying together as a family, the way we chose to do it. Oh, as a happy side benefit of obtaining our German residence we’ll be able to register a car.

The first weekend we were here was Karneval, one of the bigger festivals in this part of the world. They had parades in different cities on different days, so you could go on a parade-crawl if you wanted, though not many seemed to do this. There was even a parade which came through our small village (Selgersdorf, about 5km out of Jülich) on Monday (which was a holiday). A lot of people tend to get dressed up as if they were going to a fancy-dress party. Then you line the streets — almost one deep in the case our of village — and wait to enjoy the parade as it passes by. The parade throws out plenty of lollies and treats (including small toys) and so it very popular with the local children, who scramble around frenetically collect all and sundry. The neighbours had already advised the children to take large bags with which to collect the bounty. Needless to say, this was a good way for the children to help feel welcomed to their new home! In fact, for the couple of days we were here, the children were handed sweets by almost everyone we met, including a public servant at the local city utilities office. Perhaps they decided a place where they treat children in such a way isn’t all that bad.

The day after the lolly-throwing parade we witnessed another tradition that goes along with Karneval. A number of townsfolk dressed up in, I suppose, traditional outfits which consisted of a fez (truncated conical hat with a tassel) and a matching brightly coloured silken shirt (bit like a jockey’s colours). They go around the village carrying a circular sheet and an effigy and stop at pre-arranged locations. Oh they also have a small band as part of the entourage. Several of the people carry stick brooms, just like you would expect a stereotypical witch would have. So anyway, the band plays some cheery type music as they march around the streets stopping, eventually (actually, its sooner rather than later) at the locations they have already arranged. And when they stop, the following ritual happens.

A head broom carrier says something official for a minute or so and then the non-broom carriers who are holding the circular sheet with the effigy on it count to three and then launch the straw man as high as their co-operation, strength and the laws of physics allow. The other broom holders stand around the outside of the launching circle with their brooms up (sweeping end high) and help guide the effigy back to the sheet if he happens to become a bit wayward. Of course, as he’s launched the crowd gives a cheer and after he’s landed the band gives a quick ba-bom. They repeat the official spiel and launching another two times after which they break up with some satisfaction and cheeriness and have something to drink. The adults, of course, consume some alcohol (we’d seen both beer and probably schnapps going around) and everyone stands around chatting in a congratulatory and happy manner.

After they have consumed a small sufficiency, they gather up their things, the band strikes up again and they march onto their next location, which for the two of these that I witnessed — one in our village and one in Jülich itself — was another 20-50 meters further on. Don’t need to overexert yourself I guess.

For our village run, they stopped between our house and the next, though this was due to our neighbours being long-time residents of the village. They had a few children and grandchildren involved in the parade and they brought out some of the alcohol for consumption. Our neighbour, Herr Nieveller(sp?), was most surprised to find I didn’t drink. Also, they had two sheets and effigies, one for the adults and a ‘competing’ one for older children with some good natured rivalry going on between the two. We were invited to the church yard later that evening for the burning of the effigies and some fireworks. The whole tradition is designed to sweep out (with the brooms) the winter spirits (represented by the straw man) and welcome in the spring (probably represented by the alcohol :)). It’s a good thing they have kept it up all these years since it seems to work.