gaijin

Hold on, there are two completely independent issues being mixed here: 1) Is the damage to the floor covered by wear and tear or is there some damage that the landlord does not have to accept? Sounds like the latter to me. 2) Does your insurance cover the damage that you caused? I believe the answer should be yes, because gross negligence - in my humble opinion - would be to place the sofa on some sharp metal contraption to raise the height or something like this. Just placing an unmodified sofa on the floor should be just negligence. Chances are, though, that the insurance will initially refuse and you have to fight for your right.

I never had kids and my taxes still pay for Kindergartens and schools, and this is good, because this is exactly what taxes are for. The only reason that public television is not financed via the usual tax system is to make it explicit that they are not controlled by the state. But TV is just like opera - whether you use it or not, you pay for it.

I think the point is that most people never actually "step into" the church, their parents have them baptised at an age where they cannot decide for themselves. In my opinion it is scandalous that people have to actively "leave" the church, thereby confirming that they were a member before. There should be something like a confirmation (not in the church's sense but in the legal sense) when you turn 18 where you sign that you actually want to be a legal member of the church. Collecting church tax based on baptism should not be legal.

Very sorry to hear this. The exact same thing happened to a friend of mine and she ended up paying for her ex' loan in full. Surely not what you want to hear right now, but when you sign as a guarantor for a loan, you really should expect to get stuck with it in the end. Why would her ex even need a guarantor for a loan of 10k? The bank can basically choose from whom to collect the money, so they will collect it from your girlfriend, but she could try to get it back from him. If he needs a guarantor to borrow 10k and is currently in a non-EU country, my hopes in that direction would not be too great...