Ok, so today marks 6 months of living in Germany. One thing about moving (let alone living over seas) is that you have to make all those changes like making sure everyone has your new address and all that stuff. One of things you also have to do is update/get your driver’s license. Well, when you move to Germany, you have six months to get your German driver’s license or there’s a nice fine and a black spot on your record if you are caught.

The process for getting a German licenses is supposedly straight forward depending upon which state’s license you have. Luckily for us, the state that issued us our driver’s licenses had full reciprocosity with Germany which meant we didn’t have to take any of the tests (driving or written). So the process for getting a German license should be easy right - hand in your old and get your new one right? Nope. Even though we didn’t have to take a driver’s test (which we hear no Americans pass and so they have to go to driving school which costs mucho Euros), we still had to provide a lot of paperwork (like showing that we had had driver’s licenses for more than two years since our current licenses had been issued last year.) and we had to get paperwork signed at other places and return them to the Fuehrerschein Buero. Like one saying that we really did live where we said we did and that we weren’t criminals. Of course, this was also a great exercise in speaking German and using vocabulary we had never used before.

In the end, we received notification on Friday that our licenses were ready and we picked them up Monday. Whew, one day before we wouldn’t have been able to drive.

One of the cool things about German driver’s licenses (except for all the cool holograms they use to deter counterfits) is that they don’t expire. They are yours for life (unless you do something really bad while driving like not yeilding to a pedestrian crossing the road or driving in the left lane when not passing someone. Speeding tickets aren’t really a problem though)

PS - Oh, and I know my photo looks like I’m mad or out to hurt someone, but that is the official way photos are suppose to be taken for goverment documents here. They have a lot of rules here for just such things.