Registering at the Gemeente

Aweh, guys!

As you know, we have just moved to Woerden, a beautiful cheese loving town in Utrecht. As we have moved it means that we would need to reregister at Woerden’s gemeente. This is basic practice every time you move somewhere new in the Netherlands so they can keep track of your most current address and for emergency instances…. like a zombie apocalypse.

To be honest, I already registered on the 27th of May separately as I wanted to get my DigiID for the restafval pas. Fortunately my landlord sorted this out, but it’s good to get one as soon as possible so that you can access government entities like parking and taxes.

But it was very straightforward. I made my appointment online with my gemeente and was given the date and time. Since I don’t have any transport apart from my two hogs, I let Google Maps guide me assuring me that it was only a 2 kilometre walk… that’s if you want to get crushed by the freeway. I had to double back, and I was worried I was going to be late, but luckily, I left with plenty of time to spare.

I spoke to the lovely lady at reception (leading with “Spreekt u Engels?”) who printed a slip off for me with a number and told me to take a seat. They even have a cute robot greeter who waved back and said hello when I waved. Since I was early, I thought I’d be waiting a while, but my number flashed instantly on the TV.

I sat with a gent, gave him my passport and told him that I needed to register with the gemeente as I had just moved there. He thought that I had newly arrived and started the process I underwent at the expat centre. I corrected him, and he saw I already had my BSN and he gave me the correct paperwork that was basically change of address. All I needed was my passport and they didn’t even need to see the lease for the new apartment.

Once I received my confirmation in the mail, I was able to claim my DigiID. I sent them my information and they were to send me a letter in the mail with a password to register. Not a problem! That is until I received my letter and I couldn’t remember my username and password I established. Whoops! I had to start the process from scratch but it only took two days for the letter to show up and I was able to register…

Flashforward to today. Hubby had his appointment at the gemeente and since I finally had my birth certificate, I decided to go with him to see if they could capture the details so that our marriage would finally be recognised.

It turns out that since I registered first, I would need to acknowledge that he was living with me and that he wasn’t taking a chance. At first, I was like, “who are you?” but the Dutch get sarcasm. I filled in the paperwork and they were able to process him as my live in partner. It’s a good thing I decided to join him.

We then asked if we could possibly have my birth certificate and marriage certificate captured as we were waiting for one of them from South Africa and they said they would need to send it to Utrecht to have that done… at no cost to us! We would need to phone to set an appointment as they did not have the option of collecting foreign documents on their website. They will send us a letter to confirm when they are back.

So yeah… Hubby and I are no longer living in sin.