Quest for a German Drivers' License

Patiently posing in front of our rental

I meet a Canadian at the rental car desk. While he filled out my reservation, we exchanged stories about ending up in Germany. His hometown was up the road from mine, Kitchener-Waterloo. Like many folks from there, he's of German descent, so it wasn't too hard for him to get a work visa and come over during a gap year that turned into a few years.

While we talked about life in Germany as a Canadian, he asked me about my address. Like every time I rent a car in Germany, there was a pause as I reminded myself to provide my Canadian address instead of my German one. He understood right away.

As a permanent resident, German authorities would prefer if I got a German drivers' license. When I rent a car I let them believe I'm visiting from Canada. It's not illegal, since my license is valid, but I should have a German drivers' license if I live in Germany. My new Canadian acquaintance had recently done this, and understood the patience and strength it takes to drive through that part of the German Kafka-cracy.

If Germany decides your country is on its level of driving excellence, you simply exchange your foreign license for a German license. Of course, you need the right papers.

A First Aid Course in German

German drivers must pull over to help someone in distress, rather than the traditional North American Let's-Slow-Down-And-Rubber-Neck as you pass by. This means, you need a first aid certificate.

The course I found was in a hotel basement, where they also threw in an eye test, which is also needed for a license exchange. The course was in German, so it was a first aid lesson, an eye test, and a German lesson all rolled into one. Good deal. The only other non-German speaker was an IT worker from India. He was also taking a driving course because Germany doesn't look as favourably on Indian licenses as my Canadian license and wouldn't exchange it. He had to earn his German drivers license from scratch, so this was one stop on a longer journey for him. The two of us muddled through the German details of the course together and followed along with the demonstrations.

I apologize in advance if I pull over to help you on a German roadside.

The 1st Government Appointment

Like my other bureaucratic adventure in Germany, the rule of thumb for a foreigner is that you won't get it done in one appointment. There is always some paper you're missing. I find this frustrating, but friends who grew up in East Bloc communist dictatorships find this comfortingly familiar.

Of course, I forgot about this rule. I strutted into the office. I spoke my crappy German and proudly laid out my documents. The man looked it over and asked me for a driver history. Why? I have all my papers! Nope, I did not. I had gotten my Canadian drivers' license renewed after I arrived in Germany, which suggests to the German Powers-That-Be that I only recently earned my drivers' license. I needed a driving history from my home province to prove that I've been driving for 20 years.

Oh, and the translation of my Canadian drivers license wasn't acceptable either. It must be translated by someone certified by the government. The only place for that is the ADAC, Germany's version of CAA, which  shares the building with the government's transport office that I was in. How convenient!

Playing the Waiting Game

To get a complete driving history I wrote a letter asking for my drivers' license history, not the history of all my vehicular brushes with death or maiming. I signed the letter and mailed it, like my forefathers. It's a bureaucracy, so they don't accept Visa. I wrote a cheque, also like my forefathers and I waited… And waited…

Over a month later, I received my reply. My request required a different kind of request because I was in foreign country, so the amount in the cheque was not sufficient. Could I send another cheque? I wrote another polite, formal letter. Signed another cheque. Did my walk of shame to the post office, and then I waited again for the Ontario government to open my letter, walk to the bank, cash my cheque, chat idly with the bank teller about the weather, then return to the office to write my official drivers' with ink and quill.

The Waiting Game Continues…

Months later, the drivers' history finally arrived. I went to the ADAC with all my papers and said it my crappy German, "Frau! I would like a translation, please." She copied all the important driving papers and I got a receipt.

Like so many times, I'm my own worst enemy. I was so accustomed to waiting months for important papers that I didn't read the German fine print on my receipt. I waited two months and started muttering about the awful ADAC. I had a mind to call and vent, so I dug up my receipt looking for some contact information and discovered the pick-up date for my drivers' license translation was a month ago. Yep! I'm a genius.

I picked up my papers and marched into the drivers' license government office. Triumphantly laying out all my papers. Speaking my still-crappy German. When I laid out my first aid stuff, the lady waved it away. She did carefully examine my drivers' history, so that wait was worth it. When everything was signed and stamped, I was told the drivers' license would arrive in two weeks. And wouldn't you know it, it arrived in two weeks. The rusty cogs of German bureaucracy certainly get moving when you have all your papers.

See you on the Autobahn!

Visiting Eltz Castle

If you don't have access to a car, it isn't easy to reach Eltz Castle. There's no train access, since it's a castle up in the hills. Bus service is intermittent because it's partway between Koblenz and Trier – which means it's not near anywhere. For a normal plebs like us, visiting the castle at Eltz was a distant goal. Until the Hungarian family arrived in a car for a visit and were easily convinced to take on a road trip to Eltz Castle.

It's a two-and-a-half drive from the Dorf to the entrance of gravel parking lot on the Eltz estate where you pay the old man a couple of euros to park. If you roll past him, as we saw a Dutch family do, he will shake his fist at you until you return to his booth and pay him.

Then you walk into a nature reserve and hike a half kilometer along a forest trail that goes around a hill, edging a deep ravine. Eventually, you turn an outcropping of basalt and there's the castle, standing on a rocky crag in a valley.

It's then that you appreciate the difficulty to reaching this place. As a veteran of Neuschwanstein Castle, I was half-expecting crowds of people, sausage vendors, pretzel pushers, and kiosks serving frosty glasses of Weissbier. There's none of that tourist nonsense near Eltz castle. It's just a castle surrounded by nature.

Appreciating the Bigger Things

It doesn't take long for a´commuter to develop a mental cruise control. They could walk to the train station, catch their train, and get off at the right stop in Aachen blindfolded or, more likely, asleep. Occasionally the commuter gets to shake things up, like working in the Cologne office.

Cologne! That place with the tasty beer and the pretty cathedral and where people speak their own version of German. It's my second office. Once or twice a week, I can shake up my commute and get off in the Big City. I can ride a tram along the river into the city's industrial southeast, where I sit in a quiet office and tap away at marketing words.

The commuter's curse is developing a tunnel vision, if they're not sleepwalking to work. They get so used to their ride to and from work, and are so wrapped up in getting to where they're going that they develop blinders that block out the things that make a commute bearable.

I'm a big believer in appreciating the little things – like trains with a bar that serves frosty pints of beer (even if they don't call them pints here) – and the big things we take for granted so easily that they become little things in our minds. Like the Dom:

There's not a day where I step out of the Köln's main station and I look up and think "Holy shit! I'm walking past this architectual wonder again." Of course, as I slow down a gawk, an irritable commuter bumps into me and mumbles, "Sheiße!"