Life in Germany – September 2024 (Month 126)

A quiet month

September has been a very quiet month for us – although not for Gudula (more below).

After a very hot first two weeks in September it then turned cooler and more autumnal and my cycle rides to work started to be more picturesque (and colder!)

Gudula has a bike accident

I have always been a believer in the safety of three-wheeled bicycles and this was confirmed by Gudula, my landlady, whose bike slipped away from under her whilst she was cycling between clients at work. When a passer-by came to help her she realised she had broken her arm.

If you are going to have an accident it is better to do it at work as there is something called the Berufsgenossenschaft which looks after employees and tries to give them the best medical care so they can get back to work ASAP (it’s more like private healthcare than the standard public healthcare in Germany). So Gudula was transported to the special BG Klinikum in Duisburg where they are used to fixing up such accidents. If she had had the accident in her own time she would have received different treatment at the local hospital, probably.

First of all her arm was so swollen that they had to wait for the swelling to go down, so she had a external fixator added to stop the bones moving in the meantime.

I went to visit her a couple of days after this first operation and she was in good cheer – we went down for a cup of tea and some surprisingly good cake in the hospital café.

She was in a room with one other person and this lady (who had also broken her arm and had a fixator) had also had a bicycle accident, as had several others on the ward. This information was slightly off-putting with regards to cycling!

I went to visit her every two days (Nils went the other days, Frank was away on a long-planned cycling holiday with friends). One day I also took Poppy so Gudula could meet me outside and we all went for a walk. Gudula was SO happy to see Poppy but Poppy found all the new smells much more interesting.

Gudula had unfortunately not only broken her humerus but also her elbow had been shattered. She had to wait two weeks before they were able to operate (she kept getting bumped off the operation list due to traumas coming in), and the operation was more complex than they expected and took five hours. She has three metal plates and nine screws now, which will be taken out in a year’s time. This was her the day after the operation.

She was allowed out the following day and was told it was unlikely she would be back at work this year. She is having physio and the wound is being regularly dressed and it seems to be going OK so far.

What is interesting is that the hospital didn’t seem that special to me, as it is supposed to be one of the really good ones. They checked her blood pressure once per day, didn’t seem to have that many nurses on duty, and her neighbour’s operation and hers were both postponed during to traumas (no slack in the operating lists). She said the food was really good but I was a little underwhelmed by the rest of the care. I wouldn’t say it was any different to the care that I have received from the NHS and that my Mum received earlier this year.

Anyway, she is so glad to be home and Poppy is doing an excellent job of looking after her. Their holiday plans for November are probably going to have to be changed, and Gudula says she can’t imagine at the moment getting back on the bike as it was such an out-of-the-blue accident and she wasn’t going too fast and it wasn’t wet and she didn’t slip on leaves… it just happened, bang, on a road in Kempen. Nasty.

Work Changes

We were lucky to have a new colleague join us this month, Petra, who is a replacement for a colleague who actually left more than a year ago. Petra is full time and the former colleague was part time so the plan is that Petra takes some of the work of my colleague Lucia and Lucia will take over my “Einkauf” (purchasing) work when I leave. Lucia did it for six months before I started so she already knows quite a lot about it and I am training her over the next few months.

This month I handed in my resignation after discussion with my bosses. We agreed I will stay on until the end of December – which, with holidays to be taken, means my last day will probably be 19th December. Which (at the time of writing) is only about another 53 working days. What will I do afterwards? Not work! I shall become a lady of leisure and maybe do voluntary work but will spend a lot of time in the UK getting ready for us to move over in June.

Petra and I now sit together in the office I used to share with Janita and Lucia, who have moved to the new offices in our other building which has become the main production facility. My old desk in the room was cramped with a lot of problems with reflected light from outside so I have now taken over Janita’s desk which has better lighting.

This month I had increased my working hours to 4 per day from the previous 3 per day as it looked like things were becoming busier. This turned out to be not really the case so for October I am back down to 3 hours per day – which I much prefer!

More Visa preparations

Last month I wrote a little about preparing for Klaus to move to the UK. It’s quite complicated, getting a Spouse Visa.

What became more complicated is that I realised I had been miscalculating the amount of savings I needed in order for Klaus to be allowed to come and join me in the UK. The Visa information says “an income of £29,000” but that you can also use savings. I was very happy to use savings – but they have to be in a current or instant-access account and have to be available for 6 months. And you have to have bank statements (real paper ones) to prove the money has been there for the full six months. Bank statements from foreign countries also need to be bank-printed paper ones, they need to be translated and the Exchange Rate on the day you apply for the Visa has to be used. Anyway, I had some money in a German account that I hadn’t touched all year and it was enough to cover this £29,000.

And then… I read that if you are relying on Savings, not Income, you have to have a lot more. Because your savings are not income but will reduce as you use them, you actually need a minimum of £88,500 in your bank account for six months before you can apply. Cue manic shifting of money from Germany to the UK and into my UK Current Account (which produces paper bank statements as required), plus taking part of my inheritance from my Mum before the date we had originally planned to do the distribution, and I hit the magic amount on 6th September, which means we can first apply for the Visa on 7th March 2024.

Another option is to use some of my rental income because I can prove this (and it is “income”) so it would significantly reduce the savings I need to hold, but I have to show my name is on the Title Deed at the Land Registry. For one of my properties this is OK (this is a fairly small income) but the other one which pays more rent is still in the process of being registered at the Land Registry (I have been doing this for nearly two years). So… if the Land Registry update their records and send me the Title Deeds then the financial thing is covered easily, but if they don’t I have to faff about with bank statements and translations of bank statements and more. Applying for the Visa in March would mean we need to pay the extra £500 for the Express option which takes a month, as the normal Visa time is 3 months and that would be past the 1st June “Move to England” date.

There is also the extra issue that the previous Conservative Government said that the required income amount would increase in early 2025 which would mean I would have to rely on some of my German savings accounts too as the required savings would be £125,000, but it seems that the new Labour Government have said they are not planning on doing this increase at the moment. Phew.

So we now have a six month wait to see what happens with the Land Registry and I have a lot of money sitting in a UK current account, waiting for the monthly bank statements to arrive and show I can support Klaus when he moves over. Although he will of course get a job! Discussions about the job are still underway. We will report more when we know more!

Cakes this month

While Gudula was in hospital Frank had a lot of time alone at home and his displacement activity seems to be baking Pflaumenkuchen, of which we were often beneficiaries!

Klaus and I walked into St Hubert for me to get cash out from the bank and stopped for a cuppa and a slice of cake on the way back as it was nice weather.

I am writing this on the 2nd October and am about to head to the UK with Klaus for a couple of days which include visiting my sister and bringing my niece Gwen and her husband Harley back to Germany with us for a few days’ holiday. They will then head to Amsterdam for a couple of days and fly home. We expect October to be less of a quiet month! It’s certainly getting colder in Germany – the heating is on, I have fished out my winter clothes from the storage box under the bed and the electric blanket is doing its thing when I go to bed.

Till. next month!