My wife and I went to the bank yesterday. I had to get money for the plumber. He finished all the work, and that's good. My wife, on the other hand, had to verify that she was still alive. She gets a German pension, so every year they send her a letter to check if she is still with us. Heaven forbid that I would just keep the money.
She just has to go to a teller, gets a couple of papers signed, and they send it away. How difficult that depends on the teller. Yesterday was fairly easy. There was one occasion when she was sent to a notary. I got my money faster than she got her signature.
