Hello Bürgeramt

I recently witnessed a rare instance of  German bureaucracy working more or less efficiently.

Let me tell you, folks, German "efficiency" is a myth. Germany is very orderly, yes, and also loooooves paperwork (especially if it has a nice official-looking stamp on it! Germany loves nothing more than a good official-looking stamp), but nothing about anything here is quick or easy.

In this case, I had a new passport, as astute readers of this blog will know, and needed to transfer my German residency permit from the old one to the new one.

Just in case it turned out to be the only way to get this done, I did make an appointment at the Ausländerbehörde (the "Foreigners' Registration Office," that gray bastion of drab rooms and endless paperwork, where they not-so-subtly remind you that Germany is less than thrilled you're here), though the first appointment I was able to get there was for June. Seriously, folks?

Luckily, I had another trick up my sleeve.

When I got this latest residency permit, in September, they'd told me it would also be possible to transfer it into my soon-to-be new passport at my local Bürgeramt, which is sort of like a city hall but at the level of smaller sections of the city. This seemed almost too good to be true, especially since my Bürgeramt is literally three blocks from my house. And doesn't require making an appointment that's not until June!

(Prenzlauer Berg's Bürgeramt, actually quite a nice old yellow brick building.)

So I went to the Bürgeramt and it was true, I could get my residency permit transferred right there. All I had to do was take a number.

The take-a-number machine did show 53 people already waiting before me, but it also helpfully told me my expected waiting time (50 minutes) and even offered to send a text message notification when my number was up, which let me go away and do errands in the meantime.

Where this system broke down was that when I came back 50 minutes later, of course they were nowhere near my number. In fact, they were still about 35 numbers away from it. So I went away again to get some food – and then of course as soon as I ordered, I got the you're-up-in-10-minutes notification, and had to sprint back to the Bürgeramt, deathly determined NOT to miss my slot and have to start all over again.

But I made it, and turned over my old and new passports and a photo and €10, and waited while the woman printed out my new permit, and then did it all over again because she wasn't happy with how the first go turned out. All in all, it was about a three-hour exercise, but in the end I got my residency permit in my new passport, just like it was supposed to go. Always seems like a minor miracle when that happens, with no hidden catches.

(Waiting at the Bürgeramt.)

(Not pictured here, but my favorite sight there was a guy walking past with his car's license plate nonchalantly under his arm.)

Other thoughts:

• Unsurprisingly, the Bürgeramt (i.e., the place that serves Bürger, or citizens) is a friendlier and just generally nicer place than the Ausländerbehörde (for Ausländer, or foreigners). Sigh. But not surprised.

• While waiting, I looked at (and giggled a little over) a flyer advertising the new Personalausweis (an ID card that all Germans have along with a passport, and are supposed to carry with them at all times). The flyer described this ID as being in "Scheckkartenformat," or "check card format."

I just think that sums up everything, that German would still even use a word like "check card" instead of "credit card." (See previous thoughts on Germany as a cash society and the US as a credit society in "Adventures in Americaland" and "Cash.")

• Also mentioned in the flyer, as another example of a card in the same format one might be familiar with, was the new "Kartenführerschein," or card-format driver's license. Yes, Germany finally has introduced actual driver's licenses that are durable, plastic cards.

(Flyer promoting the new EU-compatible, card-format driver's license.)

What on Earth did they use before, you ask?

Until now, the German driver's license was a small piece of paper – somewhat sturdier than a standard sheet of paper, maybe more like an index card? – which was issued when you first passed your driving test, generally at 18, and then never expired. So their entire lives, Germans carried around this delicate, worn slip of paper with a picture on it of them as a kid. And with the incorrect name on it, if they happened to be a woman who married and changed her last name, because the license never expired, and thus also never got updated.

And if I've understood right, if you did lose your license at any point, then the new one you were issued was forever afterward known as a "replacement" license, because the real license could only ever be the first one you got.

Have we talked about how sometimes Germany is kinda weird?

• And a last thing: I've written before about bagels, or the lack of real bagels, in Germany, but how I'll sometimes order a "bagel" anyway, even knowing it won't be an authentic one. And how I always kind of giggle about the different things the servers will try to put on my bagel (mustard??) and how no one here understands the concept of a bagel with cream cheese.

The snack I dashed off to get during my wait at the Bürgeramt happened to also be a bagel from a nearby café, and as usual I ordered it with cream cheese, and as usual the server looked at me in confusion. "Just cream cheese?" he asked. "Don't you want anything else? Some lettuce?"

Because in Germany, (what passes for) bagels are treated as any other bread roll, always to be made into an entire sandwich if they're made into anything at all.