German bureaucracy at its finest

Any official government office just loves paperwork and documents. Germany being no exception. Knowing this and knowing the approaching of our little baby, I put together a list of forms that we'll have to file when he is born (eg. passport applications, application for child assistance, etc.), and the relevant documents that are required for submission of each one. The list is most impressive, counting 59 documents in total (some of these are doubles though, like the passport, which is required for many of the applications).

Last week at our birthing class we found out that in order for the baby to get a birth certificate we have to provide: both of our passports, our marriage certificate (translated and certified), and both of our birth certificates. Why I ask?! Why do we need to provide our own birth certificates to certify that our child is born?! What sense does it make if we can already prove who we are with our passports? The problem is also that Jack doesn't have his and mine is in Russian, so I have to get it translated and certified. This list of documents was contrary to what we have so far been able to find out from one of our registry offices (which requires only the two passports and our marriage certificate). Another registry office, however, requires all five. Confused? So are we! I have since also got conflicting information from people who went through this - some people seem to have had to provide their birth certificates, and others didn't. To clear this up Jack has been trying to get in touch with our registry office and find out "the truth". To no avail... the office, which is open at only odd hours on three weekdays, and has about 20 different phone numbers is unreachable. They simply don't pick up! A little like the Russian embassies here and in Sydney. So we're still in the dark... and most likely on the day we'll get to find out that even these five documents are insufficient and we'll have to provide yet another obscure document :(

As a side note - we have since worked out that Jack can order his birth certificate through the registry office at the town of his birth. The amusing thing is that one can just ring up, tell them their name and DOB, pay 10 EUR, and viola - they send you the birth certificate per post. They don't even ask you to send them a copy of your ID. So in theory - anyone can order birth, marriage and death certificates for anyone without any privacy issues! Gotta love bureaucracy and its workings!