Lohnsteuerkarte

OK, so far things have gone reasonably smoothly with paperwork associated with living in Germany, at least from the German side, for the record US-NIH gave me a lot of trouble however. Today I went to the Rathaus (town hall) to register my wife so I can get a new tax card (Lohnsteuerkarte) with a lower tax bracket. I took a registered copy of our marriage certificate, our passports and our Anmeldung (registering our residence). The woman at the Rathaus said that I need a translation of the marriage certificate first and that I get this from the Amtsgericht (courthouse). I walked to the courthouse, asking directions along the way in German (I was a bit proud of this). Everyone there was very polite, but first of all it took a long time to find someone to understand what I wanted, then a woman explained to me that the courthouse does not do translations and she didn't know why the Rathaus sent me there. Apparently translators are private and I have to find one and pay them to "officially" translate the marriage certificate. Then she got someone else to come talk to me, who spoke English very well, and he explained that the translator needs a certificate to show that the marriage certificate is accurately translated and a further certificate for the certificate (no kidding) that the first certificate and the original marriage certificate are not fake. (Why you can't make a fake certificate of the certificate I'm not sure.) Then, if only he had stopped there, he went on to say that unlike in my situation, some "isles in the Atlantic that are part of America have a fire that people dance around and then the chief says that they are married" and that "this is not acceptable in Germany." And something about how many judges in America are not really acceptable as judges in Germany and that how did they know who this judge was that married us. (He pointed to the clerk of courts stamped signature...?) I was very surprised and uneasy at his arrogance, but kept quiet. He went on to say, but since I was married in a courthouse (apparently he thought the record I showed him said this somehow) this was not a problem for me. I said "what if I wasn't married in a courthouse?" He said that a church was also acceptable. I knew to keep my mouth shut at that point; he was no one to me. (We were married outside by a *Unitarian* of all things.) So apparently the state of Germany will charge me higher taxes if I can't prove an "acceptable" marriage ... indoors ??? I will try to fly low under the radar with the translation and take that back to the Rathaus, but if in fact American law is not good enough and my marriage of 11+ years turns out to be a sham we may have to jump over the border to Denmark some weekend to get officially married according to the local culture. I'll keep you posted. G (male) has already offered to be V's bridesmaid and we can release fruitflies at the wedding! --unless this somehow nullifies the marriage under German law, who knows?

By the way, while walking form the Rathaus to the courthouse I overheard some more Plautdeutsch. "Alles Clour" rather than "alles clair" in "high" German. Like the kids, I am slowly accumulating some local dialect, another post about that later.