Registration At The Burgeramt

Today we took the first step towards living legally- registration. Loving the paperwork as they do, the Germans have a law that states both foreigners who want to live in Germany and stay longer than 3 months have to register with the local authorities within 7 days of arriving. Registration basically just means telling the foreign authorities that you’re in town, and that you intend to stay here at least a bit beyond the 90 day tourist mark. We registered on our 7th day here, and so just made the cut off (although I’ve heard that although they may yell at you a bit for being late in registering, it isn’t that big of a deal). The most confusing thing I think was that after looking around on the net everyone seems to suggest that you should go to the ausbelandhorder- of which there is one in all Berlin and it’s not anywhere close to where we live. After researching it a bit more we found out that we’re actually supposed to go to the bugeramt, which is a lot easier- there are 3 in Kreuzberg alone and plenty more all over Berlin. Also, on the net many people seemed to think we should print out a form and bring it with us. Not true- you do that once you get there. All we had to bring was our rental contract for our boarding house and our passports.


Behold the burgeramt!

Apparently, the graffiti in Kreuzberg extends even to government buildings. Cute recycling bins though (;

We went in, took a number, waited for minutes and hours and days to pass, finally our numbers were called, we went in, we talked to a nice rotund German lady with polar bear kitsche scattered around her office, she took our passports, entered the information, returned our passports, gave us a piece of paper with a stamp on it, and that was it! I was amazed, after hearing from various sources on the internet about the stuffy nature of German officials- how they will refuse to speak English with you even though they are required to know some in order to hold government office, how they love to turn you away & make you cry salty expat tears, how long everything takes (okay, that part is true), I was prepared for trauma! Luckily, we left, legal and happy with the paperwork to prove our ambitions.


Schnitzel watches his life slowly pass as he waits to speak with the German officials about his residency. Luckily, there is a soda machine to keep him company.


Another shot inside the registration office in kreuzberg. To keep you from killing yourself from boredom, they include a flat screen TV which displays questions about world geography. I can't think of a better way to keep foreigners entertained than by quizzing them on the population of Lithuania, can you?


On the way home from the Burgeramt we found the euro equivalent of a quarter machine selling what they called "heavy rings." Here's Schnitzel looking totally metal:



A cold, happily registered Vegi Schnitzel on her way back from the Burgeramt.