The 15th of each month remains a special day for me, as it's the day I arrived in the UK. Most funny to me last week in going to Germany...when I deregistered at the Rathaus, I expected them to mark something in my German permanent residency in my passport, like 'good until 6 months from Feb 15'. (I had the 'old' residency sticker which was supposed to be good for return for up to 6 months.)
The first time I flew back to Germany was withing six months of leaving; I had carried my deregistering papers in case of difficulty. However, they waved me through and refused to stamp my passport. When I questioned it, they said that they could not as I had the permanent residency sticker. OK.
Now that it's more than six months, upon arrival I expected that their computer would beep and they would ask me if I live there and would note that I'd been gone for months and would stamp my passport. Nope, not at all. I handed the guy the passport, not on the permanent residency page. He then proceeds to flip through it, to find it, and then hands it back and waves me through. Huh.
Upon leaving, the guy asks me for my destination. 'The UK, Stansted'. Alles klar, and back comes the passport, no more questions, and no stamp. Granted I have only three more years left on this passport and I'll need to get a new one, but otherwise it seems that I could come and go willy nilly to and from Germany, with them always referencing the permanent residency even though it's no longer valid.
Odd.
On the Stansted side they continue to question me upon arrival. Their basic minimum question is 'has anything changed in your circumstances since you received this permit?' Um, no. Some of them continue the line of questioning: where do you work, what do you do, how long have you done this, and on and on. When I had the German sticker, the agents in Germany tended not to ask anything, so this is a bit of a surprise, the difference in questioning...
No worries, the next trip out should be back to the US for the December hols.
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