Being in Ireland for the past couple of months has of course given me a new perspective about Germany and its many benefits. Every expat in Germany has some painful dealings with bureaucracy and at least one or two stories to tell that make others cringe and nod in mutual consternation. We lament the amount of stamps required and the lack of opening times. But I may have moved backward in time when I moved to Ireland. Bureaucracy is live and well, but things are most definitely not as efficient.

Like in Germany, I have gone to various offices looking for various stamps and certifications and bits of paper here in Ireland. But several times I have turned up at these offices during what should be opening times and found a piece of paper on the door proclaiming the office to be closed. I was used to being able to look up opening hours and train times and all in the Internet. The Deutsche Bahn, the regional tram schedules, the opening hours of my town’s Rathaus. Here I am lucky to find a PDF bus schedule from 2009 in the Internet, and the buses run twice a day to the town that is still 5 miles away from where I actually live! In Germany you can get a bus to just about anywhere, no matter how small. There are no guarantees that the buses will run past 10pm on a weeknight, or that they run more than once an hour on Sundays, but they DO exist! READ MORE »