Editor Bob

You're safe. Just ignore the letters. Make sure you keep them, don't throw them away, but don't answer them either.   They definitely won't catch up with you in six months.   Make sure you "abmelden" properly when you leave Germany. I don't mean deregister from the TV license, but do deregister from the general Meldeamt. This will "stop the clock ticking" on your license fees. Otherwise, if you don't deregister, the TV people will think you're still here, and 20 years later if you return to Germany they will demand 20 years worth of payments. Even if that does happen, it's not serious. It's not like they won't let you into the country. It's just that after you move here, and live here again, they'll start sending you letters again, this time with 20 years of backpayment demands.   TL;DR Ignore and don't worry.

  Today's your lucky day.  

  There's actually no legal obligation to react. There's no law of the land that says "thou shallt pay a TV license fee".   It's a subtlety, but the only legality involved is that the government has given permission for the Beitragservice to issue demands.   The government has not ordained that citizens must pay. Rather, they've ordained that the Beitragservice has permission to ask the citizens to pay.   And if you don't pay, the Beitragservice is cleared to use standard debt collection measures to attempt payment enforcement.   As I say, it's a very subtle distinction, and the difference is lost on most people. Which is partly what makes the system so insidious.   So you're free to not pay. You're free to ignore the letters. Neither way are you committing a crime.   I also moved recently. And I have also received the letters to my new address without me directly informing them. My residence Ummelden data was forwarded by the Meldeamt, the same as it is with everyone. But I'm still not paying.   I've been in Germany 19 years now, and I've never paid a cent (or a pfennig) and have never been arrested or jailed or fined or lost credit rating or anything else because of it.

https://i.imgur.com/IG16M3q_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high   The lightened area under the bed stand is very strange. To me it does not at all look like a reaction to light. The pattern of the edges looks more like a liquid was applied to the floor, but not under the nightstand.   Are you absolutely sure this was not there when you moved in?   If so, then you must have mopped the floor at some stage, or spilt a liquid. Have you tried simply cleaning the floor with a small amount of water, a light detergent, and a cloth or brush?   There's also special detergent you can buy at any Drogeriemarkt for cleaning floors.   https://i.imgur.com/tutQzXM_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high   As for the scratches, they are more visible when they contain dirt. Try cleaning them with Schimmelentferner and a brush. Do a very small section to start with to check it doesn't bleach the wood more than you need.   I'm pretty sure that with some thorough cleaning, and with the right materials, the floor look reasonably good again. Beyond that, I wouldn't worry. A few Gebrauchsspuren are to be expected. I doubt you'll be charged at all, or if you are, it'll be minimal.   Either way, don't panic. Mark it down as a small life lesson. Wooden floors are delicate, so take care in future. And next time get insurance in advance, it's very cheap.

Ettaler-Manndl (1636m, 1000hm, 13km)Hauptbahnhof Platform 29 at 8.15am on Sunday 27th August 2017.  01) CandyQuackenbush 02) Lena 03) Sashp 04) JZ 05) Elena 06) Maria Antonietta 07) EB 08) 09) 10) --Max--

If you think Kraken can take better care of your coins than you can yourself then yes, you can store them there. Be sure to switch on two-factor authentication.

If you've only got small amounts, it's easiest to keep them on your phone in a multi-currency wallet like Coinomi.   If you have larger amounts, hardware wallets are the safest. It doesn't matter how many viruses your computer is infected with, you can still plug in a hardware wallet and your coins will be safe. Just make sure you understand how it works before transferring a large amount. Always move small amounts at first, and practice doing a factory reset on the device so you can be sure you can recover the coins if you lose it. The coins are on the device, but password protected. And if you lose the device you re-initialize from a seed (a list of 24 random words) that you write down and store safely. The best hardware wallets are Trezor, Ledger, and KeepKey.

https://www.kraken.com/help/fees   Although, whether fees are 0.1% or 0.3% is largely irrelevant when the currency itself varies by 10% in a day.

I think Kraken is currently best for residents in Germany.   They're the exchange with the highest liquidity for trading in Euros.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken_(bitcoin_exchange)   Their Euro transfers go through Fidor, which is a Munich-based bank.   They carry Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ripple, Monero, Zcash, and many others.

Web.de and GMX are part of the same company, so yes, makes sense.   I'll add a note about this to the registration page.

GMX fails to deliver all emails from the TT server. They don't even make it to the spam folder. This has been happening for a couple of years now. Using Gmail or another high-quality mail provider should work though.   Additionally, we have a spam filter that prevents automated registrations as well as registrations from known spammer networks. Occasionally this throws up false positives. If the confirmation email never arrives, you can try mailing me at bob@toytowngermany.com and I'll check.

Overnight Hike up Zugspitze (2962m, medium, 2300hm) München Hbf, Platform 32, 06:50am on Saturday 16.Sep.2017   01) CandyQuackenbush (DAV member) 02) Light Walker 03) Light Walker's +1 04) Newinmunichberlin (Non DAV member) 05) EB (non-DAV member) 06) ... 10) --- Max ---

Unfortunately, due to predicted thunderstorms, I've decided not to hike this weekend. Sorry about that. :-(

It's my turn to organise this week. Next hike will be Sunday 23rd July. I'll post details here tomorrow (Wednesday 19th July).

Thanks to Night Sakura for leading the way today. Great hike up Hohe Fricken today. Here's the summit selfie: