As a foreigner, getting married in Germany – an in particular to a German national – means preparing and presenting specific paperwork.
Translations of certificates and other documents need to be produced by authorised agencies.
Finally, the marriage needs to be approved by the relevant court.
Listen to the podcast to find out more:
(Press the “play” button to listen to the podcast)
Here’s a fun sport to try out: Speedcabling.
The idea is that you try to untangle a jumbled up mix of computer wires, and do this against the clock. The first competition of this kind has been held in Los Angles, the article reports.
It’s the sort of thing that I often do for my customers – labelling all the cables and them removing them all, only to replace them with a much neater arrangement, preferably using new, colour-coded cables.
But once I remember doing this in the server room of a company with about 50 employees. I spent an entire Saturday morning re-wiring all the patch fields to make the system more presentable and understandable.
Another time I had to remove old network cable out of the ducts in the wall, and back then this was so-called BNC-cabling, where everything was joined to one big circuit – not like the structured cabling used today.
Again, I spent several hours trying to rescue as much cable as possible to be able to re-use it later. But sometimes there was not other way than to cut through it, especially where the plugs had been attached after the cable had been put through specially-made holes in the wall.
So how would I fare in a speedcabling challenge? I think I’d be pretty good. When the sport makes it Europe, maybe I’ll have a got!
An interesting piece of news caught my eye this week – tourists are being warned of tough drug laws in the United Arab Emirates.
This is the only country that I have ever been to in the Middle East, and even then I only saw the airport as I was in transit between Singapore and London. I can remember how the cabin crew told us to leave our hand luggage on the plane to avoid any problems when re-boarding.
Maybe now I understand why – the article describes how people have been sentenced for having minute amounts of cannabis stuck to their shoes. Other had prescription medicines with them.
The one that really makes me shudder is the man traveller who had poppy seeds on his clothes from a bread role that he had eaten and was sentenced to four years in jail!
It all makes me want to stay away from that country. But wait – only today I read that Germany has a similar situation. Apparently eating three pieces of poppy seed cake is sufficient to fail a roadside drugs test, resulting in the loss of your driving license.
I think I’ll stick to cheese cake!
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