Riddles that have no answers

Alice was touched by the well wishes following her retelling of the citizenship saga. But also a little concerned that she must have come across as a right whinger – the health issues were included for comic effect and to drive forward the narrative; they were only significant in that, without them, Alice would probably still be floating in Brexit-induced limbo.

That said, Alice, preferring to have a plan rather than just wait around until something magical occurs, has decided to sign up for what is called 'rehabilitative sport' whereby, rather than waiting until her back gets sore again, Alice will join a group of geriatrics once a week for a back health course to strengthen her core muscles and increase her flexibility. This preventive measure is covered by Alice's public health insurance.

So Alice went to her GP, who had suggested the option in the first place, and asked for a referral. “Of course!” replied the doctor, delighted to be able to prescribe something that would be of great potential benefit to a patient but that at the same time would have no effect on her practice treatment budget. Alice does not fully understand the German healthcare system*, but knows that the magic words are 'budget neutral'. “All you have to do is find a spot in a suitable exercise group,” continued the doctor, “and I'll write you a prescription.”

“That sounds straightforward enough,” thought Alice. A short burst of internet research revealed three potential options. Alice looked at the FAQs for each of them. On each site, under “How do I sign up?” stood clearly, in black and white, “Simply go to your doctor and ask for a prescription. As soon as we are holding that magical piece of paper in our little paws, you can join any back health group that has spaces available.”

“Of course,” sighed Alice, wearily.

* The system is very complicated, to be fair to Alice, with a mixture of public and private insurance, but also very good. It is, however, as many things are, difficult to navigate.

When Alice and the White Rabbit first arrived in Germany, they were told that, as both foreign and freelance, there was not a chance that they would be admitted to public healthcare, which would have been their first choice. “Oh, but private is much cheaper!” was the mantra chanted breezily by every insurance advisor they saw, leaving out the essential caveat “...at the moment, while you're still young and healthy. But just you wait until age catches up with you and you start to disintegrate, when your premiums will rise to astronomical levels just as you grow too infirm to cover them....and of course once you have joined the private health insurance system, there is no way out, unless you leave the world of freelance work and get yourself taken on as a company employee.” Which is easier said than done when one's career is in an industry that is increasingly run on gig economy lines, as is the case for the White Rabbit.

Plus, Alice and the White Rabbit are strong supporters of a redistributive system of public healthcare. Bring on compulsory state health insurance for all. Having said that, Alice has recently seen numerous think pieces about the way that the current system fosters research and innovation in medicine in a way that would not be the case in a system based purely on public insurance. Alice is unsure what to think. Well, on that particular issue. Overall, she is strongly in favour of access to healthcare for all, in combination with research and innovation in medicine. And is rendered all but speechless by the stupidity that allowed measles to be exported recently from Germany to Guatemala, where the disease had been eradicated, as a direct result of parental foolishness.

Vaccinate your kids, people. And register as stem cell donors. And give blood. Unless they won't take your blood because you lived in the UK in the 1980s since, to paraphrase, “Of course you've got mad cow disease. They've all got mad cow disease there.” And now vaccinate your kids again, because these things need to be kept up to date.

Alice now has a job, and was therefore admitted to the privileged circle of the publicly insured. Which means she can compare the two systems. Several years ago, with a suspected detached retina (it turned out to be nothing except some residual dodginess after a minor infection! No need for sympathy!) she was packed off to the eye clinic. As a private patient, Alice was ushered through the linoleum-floored waiting room, up to a carpeted area with fancier magazines and subtler lighting. Where she waited for four hours, because instead of a nurse administering her atropine eye drops, as a private patient she was 'entitled' to have a doctor do it. Which meant she had to wait until the doctor had finished treating the patients in the linoleum waiting room, whose eye drops had been administered, much more quickly, by a nurse.

Alice is very happy to have found her way into the linoleum waiting room. Now she just needs to work out how to get that prescription that will unlock access to a back health course, when said prescription cannot be issued unless the would-be recipient of the prescription has already been granted access to the course.

Would the bureaucracy never come to an end? "I wonder how many forms I've filled in by this time?" she said aloud.

Alice got German citizenship. As did Tweedledum and Tweedledee – there was a bulk discount. They didn’t really need it, it’s not like they only had a passport from a country soon to be known as formerly a member of the European Union. It involved paperwork. Lots of paperwork. It involved having to prove ownership of the ‘property’ in which Alice & family have made their home. Amazingly, not complicated. A visit to an office, ten euros paid through a window, all disquietingly easy. It involved submitting school reports for Tweedledum and Tweedledee, born in Germany 7 years ago, to prove they can speak German. It involved passports, degree certificates, tax returns, employment contracts, health insurance. Birth certificates, marriage certificate, a promise never to mow the lawn on a Sunday, and probably Lidl receipts from the last 11 years.

All easy.

All too easy. This is Germany, after all. A country where you need a license to play golf. So when the eagerly-awaited invitation to the relevant office arrived, it was with little surprise but a slight sinking feeling that Alice read that it was necessary not only for Tweedledee and Tweedledum to be in possession of a passport from their country of nationality, but that it also had to be correctly entered in the registry in their district of residence. Said registration was, according to the letter, currently “unclear.” Alice required a certificate stating that this lack of clarity had been clarified, otherwise German citizenship could not be awarded.

Alice rang the number provided on the letter. “Well, of course we can't help you,” blustered the voice on the other end. “That's a matter for the Citizens' Registration Office where the children in question are registered. We're the Registrar's Office. Which is an entirely different thing!”

Fair enough, thought Alice. I'll ring the Citizens' Registration Office. So she did. And the number was engaged. And engaged again. And again. Determined not to be discouraged, Alice looked at booking an appointment online. Nothing until about September, with the date set for the award of citizenship in May. Alice is nothing if not tenacious. Right, she thought, I'll book a slot at Spandau (“Is that the same Spandau as in Ballet?” she thought, for the umpteenth time, and for the umpteenth time promptly forgot to bother checking*). It's a centralized computer system, they're sure to be able to sort it out.

But then the doubts set in. Was it a centralized system? Alice would have been more than ready to believe that it was, in fact, not. That each district operated its own strange, isolated digital repository to which the other districts had no access. But when else to sort it out? Alice has, after all, a job. 

What to do?

Then, fortuitously, Alice slipped a disc and needed a very glamorous varicose vein removal, both in the same week. Three weeks written off work, doctor's orders to walk or lie down but nothing in between. So a walk to the Citizen's Registration Office would be a lovely way to fill an empty Thursday afternoon until it was time to pick Tweedledum and Tweedledee up from school.

Off she toddles.

The queue stretches out the door. Alice takes a deep breath, sticks her elbows out, makes sure her recently de-veined leg is turned very much away from the restless masses, and walks past them to the reception desk. Two people in front of her. She waits. And, relatively quickly, her turn comes. She approaches the hostile civil servant, brandishing the letter, and starts, politely (always a mistake. No matter how long she is here, she cannot shake the conviction that being pleasant to the person to whom one speaks is more likely to elicit a pleasant response. Wrong! It's clearly a sign of a. weakness and b. foreignness) to explain the situation. And immediately, the civil servant is at level three hostility, which is admittedly a high level for a first interaction. “They're always doing this!” half-shouts the lady behind the desk. “This is clearly a matter for the Registrar's Office!”

But Alice is not to be swayed. “I called them and was told in no uncertain terms I had to come here.”

A different tack from behind the desk. “No, wait, look, you'll clearly receive the certificate on receipt of your German citizenship!”

Alice reads the relevant sentence, in German, to the German lady behind the counter. Then she reads it again, applying vocal italics, underlining and bold to the words that quite clearly (if you've a degree in German law, possibly accompanied by one in German linguistics) explain why she needs that certificate right now.

The lady stabs at her keyboard a few times then heaves a deep sigh. “I can't help you.” Alice draws breath to protest, but before she can utter a word, the lady continues, “But I've made you an appointment with a colleague who might be able to sort it out. Come back at 4.15.”

Why she couldn't start with that bit, Alice doesn't know. But she goes away, walks until she has blisters, organizes an alternative pick-up solution for Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and returns at 4:10.

She is called through pleasantly quickly. Alice limps into the room, enjoying the fact that the pain from her blisters is detracting both from her dodgy back and her bruised post-operative leg.

She launches into her explanation to the civil servant with the purple hair. The civil servant looks at her with a mixture of blank incomprehension, anger and disgust that it is quite simply impossible to replicate outside of Berlin. Her response is “Häääää?!” an expression the rudeness of which cannot be conveyed on paper.

She looks down at the bit of paper in her hand. Alice decides to keep quiet. She looks at her computer. Alice stays quiet.

“Their nationality is registered exactly as it should be in our system!” explains purple-hair lady. “I have no idea what they want from you. I don't understand this at all!”

She pauses for a moment.

“Do you know what, though? We don't need to understand it, we just need to do it.”

And with that she prints out an official-looking certificate, bangs her stamp on it in the relevant places and hands it over to Alice.

Alice limps home, wondering how people manage if they don't have nothing better to do than fight their way through the system.

But at least she has learned something. She doesn't need to understand it, she just needs to do it.

* Obviously Alice wasn't going to not check, having forced accountability on herself in such a way. And the answer is, sort of but only very indirectly. Alice kind of wishes she hadn't checked.