Smart Postal Service

When we went to the District Administrative Department to obtain my permanent residency here last Friday, we were taken aback to discover that I was de-registered in their system.  In order to obtain my PR, we had to first register ourselves in the Citizen’s Office and some 2 weeks after we had arrived in Munich, we were pleased to check this item off the to-do list.

To register in the Citizen’s Office is a mandatory step we have to comply when one is staying beyond the expiration of the social visit pass (in this case, me) or when one is returning from abroad (in this case, Christophe and our sons, who hold the german passports).  In simple terms, we are staying put and we are required to inform the country.  A few days after our registration, we would each have received a confirmation from the office and a tax number.  All the men in the family received theirs, less I, the foreigner.  We thought nothing of it, why would I need to have a tax number anyway?

After being told we couldn’t complete the PR application process on Friday, we were puzzled how I had been de-registered while the rest of the family were left untouched (which was a good thing, of course)!  Upon reaching home, Christophe did a check online in an attempt to find out the possible reasons how one could get de-registered without doing so.  The conclusion minutes later was that our letterbox did not bear the name TOH, my maiden name, the name that was used to register me in their system.  Therefore, when the postman brought the letter to our address but couldn’t find TOH on the letterbox, it was his duty to return the mail as “no such person living in the stated address”.

Today, we went back to the Administrative Department to re-register me.  The lady confirmed the letter was sent out to our address twice and were both returned to them.  Hence, with the returned mails, it was an indication to them that I, the TOH, wasn’t living or had never stayed in that address.  As a result, they de-registered me.

When the re-registration was done, we proceeded to do what we had intended to do since last Friday.  With everything all set right, the process of obtaining my PR went quickly without any hiccups.  Germany added one more PR to their system and we were home within 2 hours.

Once home, I took out a marker and wrote a big TOH on a small piece of paper and inserted it on our letterbox, just so to prevent any mails that are addressed to me in my maiden name to be returned to the sender in the future.