I am (nearly), you (might be), we (possibly) are Australian

The long running saga of my Australian citizenship is finally drawing to a close *touch wood*.

This has been going on for so long, it's hard to remember when it started. Early 2008 according to this blog, when a change to the rules in Germany allowed on to apply for the permission to keep ones German citizenship while applying for a citizenship of another country,  known simply in German as a Beibehaltungsgenehmigung. My application for this document was true bureaucratic torture at its finest. Before being allowed to keep my German citizenship, I had to prove that I had German citizenship. A G|erman passport and birth certificate are not sufficient proof. Rather the following elaborate method was followed:

• For me to be German, one of my parents had to be German at the time of my birth. But...
• For my mother to be German, her father had to be German at the time of her birth, but...
• For that to work his father at the time of his birth
• and so on! For a total of 4 or 5 generations.

After some haggling, pointing out there was a small war or three in this time frame which may have caused some records to be lost, I was allowed to cut it back to just up to my grandfather. Then you had to supply all of the addresses where they lived and a raft of other things.

So after all of that, my application for a Beibehaltungsgenehmigung from within Germany was denied by the Ministry of Sport and Other Irrelevant Topics, where one must send the application. But they did give me a nice certificate saying that I most definitely am German. Thanks for the fish!

Disheartened by the whole process I gave it up again until we were in Australia, where I handed basically the same application in via the German embassy in Melbourne. They were quite happy with my passport and birth certificate as proof that I was German, sent my application to a central processing point in Köln where they deal exclusively with these applications only to have it approved a couple around the middle of 2011.

With the clock ticking, as the Beibehaltungsgenehmigung is only valid fo two years, I did what every good Australian would do - ignored the whole thing for a while again.

With my Australian PR Visa expiring in April 2012 I finally got a move on with the application for Australian citizenship in Oct. 2011.

Several months of waiting, plus a lot of backwards and forwards with documents *thanks mum! goes by. 

A few weeks ago I was invited to the Australian embassy in Berlin to do the citizenship test. Upon arrival I met with two very Australian ladies, whom one would never do the disservice of mistaking for a diplomat - even though one of them was apparently. They both looked more like someone's mum. I was the first to do the test in it's computerised form at the embassy, so they showed me how to use the mouse and forced me to to the tutorial *grumbles*. Then they left the room with strict instructions to get them if there were any problems, or once I had finished, as they wanted to see what happened when someone submitted the results.

4 minutes later I knock on the window and say I'm done, they're a bit confused and it takes another few minutes for me to explain that no there is no problem and that yes I've done all 20 multiple choice questions. I've checked the answers twice and would they like me to sing the 2nd but cancelled verse of the Australian national anthem where Britannia rules the waves? At that point I finally got the message across, they proceeded to let me click submit, they took a quick printout of my 100% score (the answers were all 'B' as always) and send me on my way - just as the power went out in the embassy *sigh*.

Turns out the test results made it out before the power failure and yesterday I received a notice confirming that my application has been approved, but that I'll need to wait to be contacted by the Australian Embassy in Berlin to arrange a day for the oath* and ceremony.

So please keep your fingers crossed that this will be over soon, and that I can finally call myself an Australian!

Update: Recently I attended my citizenship ceremony at the Australian Embassy in Berlin. It was a low key affair with only one other person taking the pledge. Afterwards we had tea and biscuits in the conference room. We got to look at a book with old photos of the Embassy - like much of the rest of Berlin, this building was at one point in time a Naziparty office and later on a Communistparty office. The cool bit - you can still see the marks where they've pried the swastikas from the walls. I'll try and put up some photos when I feel more inspired.

A nice lady from the Embassy called the other day and I got to go down there and collect my certificate and a voter registration form.

As of the 1st of June 2012 I am official an Australian citizen. 

I've let the German officials know too, so its all hunky dory and official.
All I have to do now is fork out some more cash for an Australian passport, but I think I'll put that off while my PR Visa is still valid and / or we have no immediate trip plans.

How to motivate your employees

My boss is a bit notorious for not having great interpersonal skills with his employees. He likes to go off at them whenever he feels like it and blame is usually more important than a solution. So with that background information on to the story.

We have a major project due (actually it's nearly over now, again, and again... *sigh will it ever die). On the day before one of the final meetings with the customers my boss calls me into his office to discuss a few things that are still open. The conversation is fine until we get to the point where he says "You look a bit stressed today Jack". Quite frankly I was stunned - he'd just shown that he was capable of empathy. Thankfully before I could say much he followed it up with "So I'm worried that you wont do everything properly for tomorrow". pow A perfect knockout - this naturally didn't make me feel any better but it did confirm that the world was still spinning correctly on its axis.

A small Tim update

Tim is really excited about boats right now.  Every time we go past the river or one of the canals, he keeps looking if there are any boats that are going past and if there is there's usually a loud excited screaming of "кабаблики" (rus. for 'boats'), followed by a questioning "ещё?!" (rus. for 'more?!').  He's never satisfied with just one boat - there has to be more, and more and more.

This morning he also said 'peebubutter' (peanut butter) and 'pubella', which is Timish for polar bear.  So yeah - talking is very much happening.  Stubbornness is also happening.  And also the infamous toddler rules of possession definitely apply to our little man :)

Here are some snaps from the last few weeks...

Tim - our little cool dude!

Spring Update

We've been really busy and neglected the blog. Sorry about that. Life has just been a bit crazy over the last few weeks/months and has involved a lot of juggling. Jack is finishing a big project at work, which is taking up a lot of his time, but which we're really proud of him doing and juggling that with looking after Tim, doing stuff around the flat and the new flat (read below) and organising various things. I am trying to juggle uni and looking after Timmy and also doing stuff around the flat and organising various things. Timmy is juggling his stressed parents so that they do exactly what he wants, going to kindergarten and trying to learn to do things on his own.

For those of you who don't know, in the end of last year we bought a 2 room flat that's adjacent to our one. Our idea is to put our two flats together so that we have more space. We're now in the process of trying to work out an action plan, a budget and just in general agree on what we want and how we want it. This is our next big family project that's taking up a lot of time and effort... but which we're all looking forward to and so far have enjoyed the journey (or at least most parts of it). So once it's all done there will be a room for each of us and for those of you who'll come to visit a guest room :)

Uni has been going well.  This semester we're doing heaps of really interesting stuff, same as last semester.  I signed up for a bunch of conferences that I'll be going to in summer. And I got a work experience place in our big Berlin hospital Charite - in their psychosomatic ward.  I'll be doing that over winter, and really looking forward to working with real patients (I might be singing a different tune, once it actually starts...).

Tim's vocabulary has exploded and he uses lots of different words and also repeats a lot of words after us.  Last week we were at the regular check-up and found out that he's doing very well developmentally (not that we didn't know that already!). But we were very happy to find out that he has really well developed fine motor skills. He also has really well developed stubbornness skills and wants things his way pretty much all the time. Most of the time Jack and I react with humour, but sometimes it gets really annoying. Like this week... most of the time he wants us to help him put on his shoes, even though we encourage him to try by himself... but one morning this week when we were running late he insisted on putting on his gumboots himself - obviously on the wrong foot, etc and when I tried to help him had the biggest hissy fit that lasted all the way to Kita.  Ahhh... these twos can really be terrible sometimes!  But then they're really awesome at other times!  It's really cool to see that he is now his own little person with his own opinions and desires. Favourite two books right now are 'Mr McGee goes to Sea' where he loves the 'umella' (umbrella) and Маленький Мук (a story by Wilhelm Gauf about a midget). Oh - and Tim is now dummy free... it wasn't a really easy transition but now he has a favourite soft toy cat that seems to have served as a good replacement and gives him comfort.

Such is our life in Berlin right now :)

Tim is two!

Our little man is two years old now. Tuesday was a warm and sunny day, so we spent the morning opening some of the presents and trying out Tim's new bike (that didn't work so well yet, because Timmy only just reaches the ground with his feet... but we'll get there) and then on the playground. In the afternoon we had guests with more presents and good company. Tim got to eat everything he wanted and was really happy playing with everybody. We all had a wonderful time and despite the cooking and preparations involved had a really nice relaxing day!  Thank you to everyone who came, wrote, emailed, sent presents and called!!!  :)))