Tasty new blog!!

You know how some things never change and some things do? That was one of the greatest lines in the Matrix, absolutely. Well, on Frieda’s blog you can find a number of amazing recipes and herbal remedies that haven’t really changed very much over the past few centuries. Then again, Frieda seems to have her own interpretation of things so there is a little bit of change after all…or creative adaptation? Anyway, a really good blog and just to prove it, here’s a picture of Frieda’s Lemon Meringue Pie:

There are many more recipes and great food photos where this one came from!

The impossible goal: Going to a GP in Germany

You would think that going to a GP is a case of paying (for the medical service being rendered) privately or having the health insurance pay for it and that therefore, when you don’t have health insurance, you just cough up the money. But that would be too easy, as I am finding out bit by bit.

1. Problems for former ex-pats: All health insurance companies hesitate to take someone on who has lived outside Germany for 2+ years. Private companies will take you on but you need to prove that you earn in excess of 53.ooo or so Euros (70.000$ or 45.000 GBP). State insurers don’t take on private individuals, they only act on behalf of an institution.
2. Which institution is best? Normally, you’d go to get a job. The employer will pay half of your health insurance, you pay the other half. Since I am a PhD-student finishing up I can’t really get a full-time job (because I already have one, I just don’t get paid for it). Someone like me would go to the Federal Employment Agency and apply for unemployment benefit. They will give you some money and insure you. Here’s the twist: Being a student, I know full well that I won’t be getting any money (because you can’t actually work when you’re a student, you’re not really unemployed) and therefore you won’t be getting any health insurance from the Federal Employment Agency. Since this is the first port of call though you really have to go there.
3. Preparations for the entire process: Register as someone living in Germany. This requires that you present a lease or tenancy agreement. Then get a bank account. All this will take a few days. Talk to some of the health insurance companies and see who would take you on again. Keep in mind, German GPs won’t treat you unless you’re insured, so even if the insurance brokers you talk to are reluctant and cold, persist, be nice and get as much information as you can. Mind-numbing and seemingly hopeless though this seems, just do it anyway (I am saying to myself).
4. Go and get the rejection letter. Go to the Federal Employment Agency, hand in all the information and get your rejection letter. Don’t take it to heart, this is just one step in a long chain of health insurance causality. It looks like the last step but it isn’t. There is another agency that temporarily supports people that cannot find support anywhere else, and they even support poor students. But anywhere else needs you to present the rejection letter or they won’t even lift a finger for you. Everywhere else needs to see that you’ve been to the Federal Employment Agency already.

Sausage = reward

So my plan is to jump through all these hoops (I’m going to open a bank account tomorrow) and to try my hardest to get health insurance with the help of the German state. I will have to sit in a lot of waiting rooms in civil service offices and I will get things wrong all the time – because the way I think it works might not be the way it actually does work after all – and maybe one or two civil servants will be unkind to me but that’s just part of the process of being assimilated into the German collective again.I’m not even ill at the moment, I’m really well, so none of this is very urgent…The only other way though to get back into the system is to have a full-time job and that’s not going to happen for me for at least another year. It’s a stupid situation. It’s also stupid that you have to go to all these places and collect documents to hand in at the Federal Employment Agency even though you know already that you don’t have a case at all. Maybe you just need to prove that you don’t mind running errands all the time, I don’t know. That’s how I feel. It’s a cool effective way to get me acclimatised to being back in Germany, that’s for sure.

All I know to do for now is where to go to open my bank account. I’ve been given an appointment for that, which is pretty fancy for my small town. No one will really tell me what I have to do after that. The only sources I have for that kind of information are other persons that I know who have gone through similar situations (read: my mother; she knows things).