A quick stop in Poland – car registration.

I wish everything was easy. Grab important stuff and go. Search for a new house and move in. But life is not a fairytale. One can quickly discover that reality is often quite different from what we presumed.

We considered a few ways of moving. We could fly and send baggage with a courier. My dog has never flown but he is generally ok with traveling. The other option was that only me and our son would fly, and Jurek with a dog would go by land, by train, blablacar, or in a personal car. And this was most appealing. The dog wouldn’t need to get on the plane, the baggage would be packed in the trunk, and we would have the car to use in Spain. It would be perfect if everything went as we planned. Instead, we spent a month in Poland, not a week. How we ended up in Poland? Well, we thought this is a good time for a visit because we will be busy later on, so we cannot say when we’ll have time for a visit again. Second, it’s cheap in Poland and we have our trusted mechanic so we can fix the new car. Third, in this precise time, my father organized pension party. 😀

Buying a car

In practice

You go to the dealer, pick the car and wait a week or two. They make all the paperwork and technical examination as well. This is good. What is not good is that they don’t provide an exact date when your car will be ready to go. And this is a problem because the best way to drive to Poland is by a Gedser – Rostock ferry, but only if you book the cheapest tickets, which are on sale two weeks prior the departure. That leaves you with two options: to count on your luck or to buy a flexible ticket with permission to change the time of the trip. This is what Jurek had done. And naturally, the flight tickets are also in the best prices when booked in advance. I would love to join Jurek on this journey but it would be too much for a kid. Besides, there wouldn’t be enough space for the luggage with all of us onboard. So we shared responsibilities: the mother took a child, the father took the dog.
Another issue in this race with time was the validity of the registration plates or registration stickers, to be precise. SKAT (Danish tax office, although “skat” means a treasure or darling as well) decides about their length and you get this piece of information when you go to pick the car. So, you sit tight at home, waiting for the message from the cars’ dealer. You get the call, the plates stickers are valid three days, so you better hurry to collect the car, fill it with your baggage and drive through the border.

Registration

Denmark

As I mentioned above, in place of your registration plates you receive stickers with an expiration date. For us, that meant 4 days (included weekend). We’ve read that some countries don’t accept those stickers as valid registration plates. Someone described his story when the police stopped him, forbade to use a car and he lost a month before straightened this one out. So theoretically, it should be all right. There’s no other option to drive a car from Denmark Anyway, we preferred not to check our luck and as fast as possible to make some regular plates, which would allow us to move to Spain.

Germany

The fastest meant Germany. It is possible to make temporary, red plates there. They are valid for 30 days. Ideal for us. I called in advance to know what we need. There was even no problem to talk in English. I left Denmark on Wednesday, our car was ready on Thursday, Jurek had tickets for a ferry on Friday. Perfect… would be if he received all the documentation! But no. In Engrosbiler they failed to issue !!original!! registration certificate. The lady, who led the transaction assured, that a copy would be enough to proceed and the original would be sent asap. There was not much we could do. So Jurek drove to Germany and… he would be able to register a car if he had an original document. But he did not.

Poland

Plan B – to register a car in Poland. Honda was in Poland on Friday, late evening. Then we had a weekend during which there’s not a lot you can manage. Then Monday came. We drove the car to the mechanic and that was it. The stickers’ validity was over so the car couldn’t be used on the roads anymore. I want to underline, that without original registration we could do nothing. Even translations should be from the original. Otherwise, it is written on them that they are made from a copy, and the Department of transportation could not approve that. Our hands were tied. So we waited for a post from Denmark.

We considered a temporary registration for 30 days. We’ve read on the Internet that they can be made, among others, for the purpose of driving to a diagnostic inspection or export of the car. So we understood that the inspection is not necessary for receiving the plates and that you get valid document at the spot and don’t need to wait for a permanent vehicle registration certificate. I did not read anywhere, that the procedure is different depending on the case. After visiting the Department of transportation twice, we knew that we need to make an inspection before we get documents, moreover we will wait for the permanent certificate anyway. With this knowledge, we decided to register the car permanently so we won’t worry if 30 days are enough to get on with formalities in Spain. We also got to know that the translation of the registration certificate is not a must! It depends on the clerk’s goodwill…

What kind of documents did we need?

• filled in an application available in the Department of transportation
• original registration certificate
• translation of the proof of purchase
• paid excise duty
• technical inspection

After a too long time, our original registration certificate had arrived. The salesperson from the office assured she had sent it on Thursday, but the date on the stamp indicated next Tuesday and we received it on Friday. We rushed to do a certified translation. It was Friday. On Sunday there was National Independence Day and our government has ordered a holiday on Monday. All it meant we would have to wait till Tuesday if we didn’t make it on Friday. We search the Internet in order to find a translator. We found tolk.pl in Legionowo, which wasn’t far from us. Nobody answered the phone so we got into a car and drove to the office. On the door, we found a note that they moved across the street (the address on the website is still incorrect). We went to the new office but nobody opened the door. And we came during working hours, according to the Internet. Maybe they began a long weekend earlier. We were so upset and powerless. But it turned out to be a good thing. On Friday we would make two translations, and after the weekend we knew, we needed only one. And we got it in Warsaw on Strumykowa street at Arigato translations office. We waited for two days and paid 16 euros.

Excise duty application can be completed online on the website puesc.gov.pl. However, it cannot be paid online if you are not the owner of a Polish bank account. We had to do it at the post office. The amount one has to pay is the percentage of the value of the car. We paid 110 euros.

The guy at a test center wasn’t very happy to assist us. He complained that we did not have a translation of registration and he cursed a lot. We told him, that at the Department of transportation they didn’t require a translation. He replied that this is because he is the first who has to somehow read it and put data in the system and they will have everything ready. For a moment we had doubts if we got the things done. But the guy grumbled a lot but did what supposed to be done. We paid 23 euros and satisfied left to the Department of transportation.

This is not the end, though. At some point, we booked plane tickets for me and Tomek for 1. of December. It seemed such a distant date. Distant enough for Jurek to arrive in Spain before us and first flight at the good price. The registration plates were made on 19.11 on Monday and Jurek was ready to go until someone enlightened us, that we should give back a temporary registration in order to obtain a permanent one. It is possible to declare the document loss under criminal liability. The probability of discovering the truth was minimal, but not worth risking as well. So we decided to wait a bit more especially that the clerk in the Department of transportation put our case on a fast track and it should be done within a week. We hoped it would be ready on Friday. But it wasn’t. I called on Monday. Still nothing. Well, a week means 7 working days. I called on Tuesday. Nothing. Wonder if they already recognized me. Had to be on Wednesday. And it finally was.