Travel Blog

German bureaucracy, part 2 …where is that loophole?

We are on the hunt for insurance. Sounds easy, but it comes with a catch! After being told that our insurance is not good enough to apply for a permission to stay in Germany, we head out to the local government-run insurance office. We talk to the person behind the desk who is responsible for handling voluntary, self-paid health insurance. We tell him our situation and he looks us up in his computer. To our surprise, we are still in the system from when we had coverage 16 years ago, when we lived and worked here. It's actually a little scary to be reminded how much information is being kept on file! There's still our old German address, our old work addresses etc. We tell him our new address, and our new situation. He hands us an application and since there are a few confusing questions, he helps us fill it out.

Bureaucracy…applying for a German visa, part 1

For a while now, we have talked about getting a year long visa in Germany. This visa would allow us to travel within Europe and the Schengen zone, without having to worry about the 90 day visa rule. So it only made sense to work on it, while visiting friends and family in my