Wotsits, Queues and the Sunday Times

If “living” means “visiting” then I’ve “lived” in more than 15 countries in the last 15 years. But living doesn’t mean that to me. To “live” somewhere in my mind means a long term stay, at least a month but usually more, for purposes other than tourism – for studying or working for example. With this definition, I’ve “lived” in 4 countries outside the UK – Italy, Spain, Austria and Germany (twice). My school or uni summer holidays are usually involved - I haven’t spent an August 1st in the UK for as long as I can remember – but now I’m here for the long haul. I never moved around much in the UK – the only move I remember was from my home town to Manchester for uni, so most of my “moving” experience is abroad.

My next job was in Italy, and not as successful as the first. Language barriers, something that were much less of a problem the summer before, suddenly reared their ugly head. I couldn’t strike up random conversations with people at the pool (unless they looked like the type to be captivated by my well-learned sentence “I am from England and I like bread”), but while I missed my friends in the UK, I didn’t really miss the country itself. Again, Italy had better weather, fantastic food and friendly people even if you couldn’t understand them. Some of the religious rules were a bit strict for my liking, but you could live with them.

Let’s talk about that. Being a foreigner employed abroad by a foreign company can be annoying. They don’t care that you are below the UK tax paying limit, or that as a student you don’t normally pay NI, they just want your money. And so they take it out of your salary and it looks like you earn half of what you do. You get cross. And then even crosser when you realized it’s NI that they’re taking more than anything. And you can’t claim that back. Can you? You write a begging letter to the tax office 3 months after getting home and sit back and wait. Out of the blue, 4 months later, a random payment for a few hundred pounds appears in your account. You ring the bank and they tell you it was “Wine, maybe?” Wien. << Veen >>. But you’ll let them off their bad German, because you’ve suddenly been given the equivalent of an extra couple of months’ rent that you weren’t expecting. Hurray for random taxation and deduction laws in other countries.

Germany, again. My current place of abode, chosen due to the fact I didn’t want to go back to Vienna just yet, and there aren’t that many software companies out there in German speaking countries, willing to take on interns. Except this one of course. The 3rd largest in the world, beaten only by Microsoft and Oracle. Not bad, huh? And what a place to come on placement. I have friends in the UK who are on placements too. Very few are paid more than minimal “pocket money”. I’m not going into my salary details here, but let’s just say it’s more than 10K of your British money. As an un-qualified student, I’m more than a little chuffed with that. German companies, it seems, like to pay their students lots in the hope they’ll come back after graduation. I probably won’t, but they don’t know that.

Another thing? The weather. It was –7C at 3.30pm last Sunday, which is a bit too cold in my book. We’re currently in the middle of the longest *cold* cold winter Germany’s seen for decades according to the infinite wisdom of the Pro 7 Nachrichten (news), but trust me, it’s nothing to shout to about. I’ve spent summers in south Germany before, and I can only hope we get a nice warm one this year too to compensate for the winter.

Germany’s the first country I’ve ever needed to register myself in, so I have nothing to compare it with, even from home, but boy, was it a hassle. It seems to have escaped their notice that EU citizens are supposed to be able to live anywhere within the union problem free. My first day here was spent in the town hall. I had to register myself as a new person, register where I was living as now being “mine” and register the job I would be undertaking. I had to provide proof of identity, proof of funds, proof of address in the UK and more passport photos than I ever could have imagined. I needed a living permit, a work permit and a tax card before I could start work. The afternoon of that day was spent in my HR dept here, handing over those permits, plus my contract, my data protection agreement and various other bits and pieces, all of which were needed before they’d let me know my oh-so-vital D number (system log on, needed for everything from checking your mail to gaining access to the work Xmas party).

I miss vegetarian bacon, proper sliced bread, butter that tastes like butter, TV without adverts, being able to communicate anything I want, whenever I want, without resorting to over emphasized gestures and actions. This can be fun – last night we were explaining “bollocks” on 2 separate occasions – but sometimes it’s frustration. The German word I use the most? “Ding” – thing. “Can I have one of those things over there next to the other thingy please?” I miss regular meal times – I spent my first 19 years having breakfast at 7.30, lunch at 12.30 and tea at 6pm or thereabouts pretty much every day. Now it’s more a breakfast at 6am, lunch at 11.30 and tea at 8.30pm. Needless to say barely a day goes by when we don’t have a mid-afternoon trip to the canteen for snacks. I miss proper take aways – the type you walk into, ask for something and get it, then either sit and eat it there, or take it away. These seem to be few and far between here. It’s easy to get things delivered, but if you go in they look at you as if you’ve got lost. “Sorry luv, you’re after the pub, right? Next door but one”.

********