Brockman

We haven't received post in about a month. We called the central post line, but they say we are indeed receiving it (?!?) and that they would look into the matter further. I googled it and there were some recent articles and of course the post was blaming corona. I am really not sure what else we can do, we are currently about to move into a new flat and since we were receiving several notifications from the 'Grundbuch Amt' we notified them and the Finanzamt just in case. I had to recently cancel 2 magazine subscriptions as those just stopped showing up in July. If anyone else is experiencing this issue, what have you done about it? I wouldn't normally care, but since every bit of important communication is done via post in this country, I worry that some rando 'Mahnung' could show up.

We applied for permission to take our son out of school on the last week (2.5 days in July) and our reason was so that he could attend summer camp in the US. It was accepted without issue but we did have to fill in an official looking form from the school and get the school director to sign off on it (Berlin). We know several people that did this and it did not seem to be an issue for anyone. We were also told to keep the school permission letter on hand in case we would be asked for it at the airport, but this did not happen (in fact, the Berlin airport has so many issues it's hard to imagine them checking for kids being taken out of school a few days early - they can barely check people's basic documents).

Hello Team Toytown,   Does anyone know of a lawyer who specializes in real estate contract law in Berlin? Our new building construction is delayed, and the builder doesn't want to pay us. Thanks in advance!   Best,   Brockman

What a happy ending! Glad it worked out for you.

Do you think going to the press will help? It seems you live in a small town, how do you think other Kitas will react when the 'lady who complains to the press' applies for a spot in their Kita? Your best bet is probably to continue searching and look into other options. Best of luck, many of us have been there and know it's frustrating! I know parents in Berlin who need to drive their kid to a Kita 1 hour each way for a 6 hour stay.

Integrated enough, I guess. I've been here since 2015, I am married to a German, and I have 2 German-American children who were born here. I work for the local office of a large US multinational company and speak both English and German at work, I have a equal mix of German and non-German friends, and I can speak German fluently. I would score my integration 8 out of 10. I could probably improve my German a bit better, and do a bit more to integrate further, I suppose. I think I will probably live here for the rest of my life.