Next Sunday Fresh and I will leave Berlin for spending christmas with my family in Holland. Since it’s hard to find someone to take care of our pets at this time of the year, we will take Shanny, our dog with us.
Just like every time we are visiting Holland we are short in time since so many things have to be done before leaving Berlin :s At the beginning of this week I thought I had everything concerning the housekeeping under control. I really hate it coming home in a chaos, so the appartment had to be cleaned, all laundry had to be washed (I am kind of lazy in washing laundry * blush *), christmas shopping had to be done. But now it’s Friday, and when I am looking around I see I must clean again, I am washing the last laundry, need to doo the dishes and after it I need to clean the kitchen, need to buy the last grocaries so I can make some sandwiches for Sunday, we are still wrtiting the last bills for the business so they can be sent to our customers before the end of the year, tonight we have to go to the other side of Berlin so we can give the housekey to someone who will drop by to feed Pugsley, our cat, because we cannot take him with us.
I know, we’ve got tomorrow as well, but we planned to go see Fresh’s family since we’re spending christmas in Holland. So tomorrow is gone as well.  It’s a bit stressy right now, but I think somehow we will manage everything…

Written by Liekie @ 04:29:53 pm
Tags: cat, christmas, dog, Family, housekeeping, Work

So tomorrow evening at 9 pm local time I am living in Berlin for exactly a year. And I think I am going deeper and deeper in the German sysytem. It started a day after my arrival with calling in at the “Bürgeramt” (the office for citizen) and a day later calling in at the jobcenter.
Then finally in June I managed to arrange my healthcare insurance, that was quite difficult, because I don’t have a job here so that means I needed to get some kind of private healthcare insurance. But since I got operated on my knee October 2005 they won’t accept me as a customer. Since I receive some kind of small early pension from Holland I actually have the right on a healthcare insurance in Germany, paid with the money i received from Holland. At the time I left Holland nothing was known about this because the dutch government changed the healthcare insurance system at january 1st 2006. No- one was able to tell me what to do at that time.
Then somewhere in July I received a letter from the city of Berlin, they told me I was allowed to vote for the city council.  Unfortunately we were in Holland when the city council elections took place and we forgot to request to send our votes by mail .
And last and worst thing; last week i received a letter from the “Deutsche Rentenversicherung” (the german pension insurance). I need to call in there for a total health checkup because I requested a pension there??? I don’t get it… The only thing I could think about it’s an order to the german insurancecompany from the dutch insurance company wich provides me the very small early pension. I think they want to re-approve my healthcondition in order to take away my early pension.

Written by Liekie @ 03:57:44 pm
Tags: Berlin, Germany, health, insurance

 

Bruno got shot today

Written by Liekie @ 12:54:35 am
Tags: Bruno, Germany

The other day Rico and I went to the biggest footballfanparty in Germany (the fanmiles between the Siegesseule and the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin) to watch the game Netherlands vs. Ivory Coast. Silvio (Ricos brother) works there as a security guard so we brought him sandwiches and watched the game at his tower.
Unfortunately due to very bad weather predictions (a summer thunder storm) we had to go home before the end of the game, because it could get dangerous. The big videoscreens were turned of and the organisation feared the towers of the videoscreens could come down in the storm.
We managed to get home at the same time as the storm started. We will try again next Wednesday as Holland plays vs. Argentina…

         

Written by Liekie @ 06:23:43 pm
Tags: Berlin, Holland, Pics, soccer, storm, weather, Worldchamion

Last Saturday Rico and I visited my 2 granddaddies in Berlin: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels.

Written by Liekie @ 10:58:37 pm
Tags: Berlin, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Pics