Expat Frustration (Also Known As: Germany Makes Things Hard).

With only 24 days to USA, we’ve been dealing with various problems that tend to accompany an international move.  However, one situation has been particularly difficult.  Let me start at the beginning.

One year ago we were brand new expats, being picked up by our relocation agent to go get German drivers licenses just a few days into our first week in Germany.  I remember walking into the foreign waiting area and later being ushered into a surprisingly private office where we handed over our paperwork, recently withdrawn euros, and US driver’s licenses.  The process was surprisingly smooth and we were given German licenses with no hassle thanks to the reciprocation agreement that South Carolina has with Germany.  We pointed out that the licenses were due to expire on the same day as our residence visa (September 31^st, 2016) and the German woman across the desk instructed us to come back and hand them in next year and we’d be given back our US licenses.

Pressing forward on our lives to nearly two months ago, in July, we contacted our relocation agency once again as we prepared to go back home.  When our agent inquired about turning in our German licenses before our departure she was told it wasn’t necessary since they would expire before we left.  That sounded great, it was one less thing we had to worry about.  Then we asked when we’d receive our US licenses.

You won’t.  They’ve been destroyed.

WHAT?  What are we supposed to do about driving when we get home?

You can use your German drivers’ licenses for the first six months; simply exchange them for US licenses before that time period is up.

We can’t do that.  Our German licenses expire before we return to the US.

That’s not our problem.

Thank you very much German bureau – crazy.  It’s one thing to deal with the reams of paperwork and never ending rules that come with living in Germany – it’s another thing to be put into a bad situation even when you did everything correctly.

By destroying our US drivers licenses Germany caused us to have two big problems:

1) We can’t drive ourselves to the airport because our German drivers licenses expire on September 31^st and our flight is the next day, on October 1^st.

2) We would both be unable to drive upon return to the USA and Mr. Meena has to report to work by October 5^th.  It’s also impossible for him to take public transportation to work.

We’ve cycled through various solutions to the first problem over the past few weeks.  Take the train to the airport?  Nope, too much luggage (not to mention our pet bird).  Drive there the day before our flight, on Friday?  No can do, Mr. Meena is coming back from a business trip to Romania late the night before and we won’t be ready.  Plus, in order to do that we’d have to sacrifice one of his two moving days allowed by the company (not enough for an international move if you ask me) and we really need to use both of them once we’re stateside.  We finally solved the problem by insisting that his company provide us with a transportation service like they did when we arrived.

Moving on to the second problem.  We solved this one by reporting our US licenses as lost/stolen and having replacements sent to our US address, which is Mr. Meena’s parents’ house.  His parents kindly mailed them to us.  We, like many other expats, basically lied and worked the system because the system refused to work with us.

My frustration stems from the fact that Germany did not do what they said they would.  Think about all the problems this could have caused or has caused for others that didn’t have the same resources as we did.  This would have been much harder for someone who:

• no longer had a US address.
• didn’t have family or friends at home who could quickly mail replacement licenses.
• had a US license but it expired while they were living in Germany.

Would we, or this hypothetical person, have had to go home and find someone drive us to the DMV to beg for another immediate or temporary copy of our license so that we could function?  How inconvenient would that be, by the way, when we have a million things to take care of during an international move and this should not be a problem.  We should either be returning home with our original licenses or with German licenses that still have one to six months remaining before they expire.  In my opinion, we should not have had to spend time and money to fix this on our own.

Many expats move to Germany for only 1-3 years.  Our ability to drive should not be put in danger just because we became expats.

Furthermore, I sincerely commiserate with people who move here without company support or relocation service assistance.  We’ve been fortunate to bypass many of the frustrating parts of getting settled in Germany and preparing to leave the country because we have a relocation agent.  She’s the one who advised us not to tell the people at the town hall our religious affiliation (because we could have been taxed for it without being clearly informed), she’s the one that will close our bank accounts six months after we leave, and she’s the one who makes all the calls and emails when things go wrong.

This example is just one of many that we’ve dealt with since moving here.  While I tend to avoid sharing overly negative posts about Germany – because we happily accepted the offer to move here and there are lots of things that are great about living here – negativity is sometimes necessary in order to accurately share what expat life here is truly like.  I’ll be sharing a few more examples like this over the coming months.  I want future expats to know what they are getting into – but don’t worry, I’ll balance it out with reminders of why moving here can be worth it.

For now, I’ll leave you with another frustrated expat: a blogger that I follow who is dealing with her permit status in Germany.

Expat frustration aside, I’m going to be relieved to step foot on American soil and be able to legally drive again.  I’ll probably head straight for Chik-fil-a.

Featured photo by Camilo licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.