Das Standesamt

July 30, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Das Standesamt is an office, usually located in the town hall, where births, marriages and deaths are registered.  The office also issues the relevant certificates for these occasions.

The civil part of the marriage ceremony takes place at the Standesamt itself, often in a room specially decorated and set aside for this purpose.

Some towns have rooms, dedicated as a Standesamt in other buildings, such as the Kaiser-Friedrich-Bad in Bad Homburg or the Brauhaus in Oberursel.

If either the wife or husband is not a German national, or if one of the parents are not German, then the application to marry or to register the name of a child can get very complicated.  The non-German half may be required to sign away their right to use their national laws, eg. in naming their child, in order to simplify the situation.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)

Download a transcript

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Filed Under: German Words Explained, Podcasts Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Smuggling the Amazon

July 29, 2008 By Leave a Comment

If I was to write about smuggling something out of Bolivia, you would probably expect me to write about problems with illegal drugs leaving the country.  Of course, I could also write about more trivial things that, although not illegal in Bolivia, would be considered “smuggled” when the arrive in other countries – such as coca leaves.

But instead I want to link to an item that I read this evening about a different type of smuggling: timber!

Yes, it seems that away from the places usually associated with smuggling, such as ports and airports, smuggling of a different kind is taking place.  Trees in the Amazon rainforest are being cut down and taken down the Amazon river to Peru and Brazil.

I have to ask the question: why?

I thought, that those countries had enough of the Amazon rainforest for themselves.  In fact, most of the criticism that I read about cutting down the rainforest is aimed at Brazil.

Have the loggers there given up and are fetching their timber from across the border instead?  I wonder just how effective the border patrols will be…

Filed Under: Bolivia, News Tagged With: ,

Buying a flat

July 28, 2008 By 4 Comments

Today in the Monday Podcast I talk about our latest adventure: buying a flat.

A few months ago we saw a flat for sale a few streets away, and after going to see it we did not take long to reach a decision – we wanted to buy it.

But buying a flat in Germany is a complex process, which includes not only the seller and the buyer (and the estate agent), but also a lawyer called a Notar as well as various German offices that deal wish issues such as land rights. The Finanzamt also sends you a bill for so-called Grunderwerbsteuer.

Of course, that’s the official side of the business. There is also the financial side so we had to present our case to the bank for a mortgage – not an easy task being self-employed.

The bank and the Notar both presented us with a list of things that we needed to supply, mainly documentation such as proof of building insurance. We spent several weeks getting all of these together, until finally the flat changed hands at the beginning of this month.

Now we are in the process of moving from one flat to another. More about that next month.

To find out more, listen to the podcast:

(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)

Download the MP3 file | Subscribe to the podcast

Filed Under: Monday Podcasts, Podcasts Tagged With: , , ,

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