Spring is here, so naturally I picked up a bout of man-flu but I need to keep working on the very smallholding. One urgent item on the jobs list is to find out exactly what we are (and are not) allowed to do with the land, which meant calling the local government office.
Why I thought that trying to talk coherently to people in my second language was a good idea when my head was working like a bowl of damp spaghetti I don’t know. I probably should have given up after dialing the wrong number and nearly booking the town hall for a conference, but by the time I realised the nice lady had connected me to another nice lady who connected me to the secretary of the planning authority (Baurechtsamt) who told me to call back that afternoon.
That afternoon I called again, this time without any long discussions with the booking secretary, and spoke to one Herr Schmidt who couldn’t help. Apparently each piece of land has a number and without that number they don’t know where it is, and if they don’t know where it is, they don’t know what they have decreed we are allowed to do. Or not do.
Which raises the question: if they don’t know where the land is, will they notice what we’re doing?
Anyway, I emailed the Landowners son, M, who fortunately speaks fluent English so I was at least spared the trauma of writing German.
It took me three attempts to write an coherent email in English.
At this point I decided to go back to bed.
4 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 10, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Tony
Oh Man! Man Flu, thats serious! And as for the paperwork/smallholding numbers game, tell me about it! But in a foriegn language, nightmare! When we tried to get our cow a passport and ended up talking to the welsh office, mu only welsh translated to my submarine has a flat tyre:) so many jobsworth paperpushers:) but hey, who’s living the dream, you or them?
May 11, 2011 at 7:23 am
Andy in Germany
I hear you Tony: I’m not sure what animals I can keep on site, cows and goats are very unlikely. I think chickens should be okay but I’m deliberately not going to ask.
Trouble is, local government jobs attract pen pushers and jobsworths who think having a secure job with benefits is the most important thing in life and then spend their working time trying to justify their paycheck.
This if course makes then entirely the wrong people to deal with people living their dream.
May 11, 2011 at 3:51 am
annalee
Getting a cow a passport??……………admit defeat and go get a beer, even in one’s native tongue it is going to be a struggle. Then again here in the states our experience with that would be having a steak while on vacation then getting on a plane to fly home. Slim chance it would be up for discussion.
The quicker way to get the number is to start doing what ever you want, be told it’s the wrong thing at which point they will provide the number to you.
Or you could build a submarine, paint it to look like a cow, mount it onto a bike, ride around town long enough that they consider you that crazy foreigner and try to avoid your property altogether.
Always enjoy your blog-thanks
May 11, 2011 at 7:27 am
Andy in Germany
Thanks for the nice comment annalee…
The ‘do what we want’ approach has its merits, especially as just by not owning a car we’re already Crazy Furriners To Be Avoided.
Actually, I expect less trouble from the local council than the neighbours (both retired) grassing us up whenever we do something they don’t like, just because we’re different, which is why the composting toilet will be well out of sight from the property boundaries. I won’t be asking for permission to make that either…