Moving here

Moving here has really just begun - despite of the fact that we have been back for over a month now. Let's not talk about the suitcases that wait to be packed again as soon as we have found our permanent apartment.

I'd rather talk about the container that is sitting in Bremerhaven right now, waiting to get through customs. If you thought that our stories concerning immigration in the US were hilarious, read this: To start with, the container arrived about a week before it was supposed to arrive - usually people look forward to that - not us, really, especially now that we are still looking for the ideal permanent place! However, there must have been some strong winds blowing eastwards - in any case, the container is already here. So I got an email last week from the moving company, that they need a confirmation that we are registered in Munich and another confirmation from the US employer, stating how long Werner had been working for UT. If we could not prove that we had been gone for more than a year, we would have to pay taxes for that container - I don't know how logical that sounds to you - it doesn't to me?

Anyway, we passed on all these letters, in order to get another email that customs is wondering why we have been registered in Munich since June 1, officially applying for this registration in mid May, but Werner's contract with UT does not end before July 16? I did write an email back, explaining details and telling the moving company what I thought of German customs...

The next day - still being quite pleased with myself for having been so outspoken - the lady from the moving company told me that she completely agreed, but she could not pass on such a letter because she did not think that it would help our case if customs read that I thought they were being rather silly.

Well, Werner wrote a letter 'that he declared under penalty of perjury that the following was true...' We have not heard back from them since.

It seems that there are free countries anywhere ;-)

By the way, the topic of 'containers' seems to follow us right now - we saw 'Don Giovanni' in the opera last Saturday, and the stage setting consisted of several containers stacked on top of and next to each other - if putting our container into storage is too expensive, we have a new place for it now!