Someone in my family turns 80 soon, and they got this email:
Guten Tag xxx
Da Sie bald Geburtstag haben, würde eine kleine Delegation des Gemeinderats Ihnen zur Feier des Tages einen kleinen Besuch abstatten.
Der Besuch ist für den xxx um xxx Uhr geplant. Würde Ihnen dieser Termin passen?
Vielen Dank im Voraus für Ihre rasche Rückmeldung.
Freundliche Grüsse
Me being me, my first reaction was “this is phishing of some sort”… but despite analysing the headers, it really does look like it’s legit.
Is this a thing for 80? I mean, I get it when someone turns 100… but 80?!
Seems a bit suss, to be fair. Both of my parents in law have turned 80 in the last year or so but they never got any sort of official invitation from the local Gemeinde.
Maybe give them a quick call and find out?
When I was 80 I got a bouquet from the Gemeinde and the local brass band came and played
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Clearly we live in a cheapskate gemeinde…
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Some Gemeinde’s are a bit weird like that.
We were renting a flat in one and a whole delegation of suits came round to inspect the flat (we had been randomly chosen).
I wouldn’t have minded so much but one female delegate didn’t remove her stiletto heels and walked all over our wooden floors.
I guess some people enjoy Stasi cosplay.
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I got a box of chocolates in my mailbox. No note, no indication of where it came from. My wife found out from the local hairdresser that she had put it there at the behest of the commune. My wife enjoyed the chocolates.
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They mark big events like this in our commune. Birthdays starting from 80 and wedding anniversaries from 50 years onwards.
Sometimes there are photos of people at the dinners organised at the local restaurant for the wedding anniversaries and others of elderly people receiving flowers etc at their home on their birthday.
I’m not sure that it’s a whole delegation that rocks up there for their birthday but the do certainly mark the occasion.
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The brass band turned up for my birthday party and said they would only play for twenty minutes
I had organized beer and wine and bbq so they stayed for three hours
We danced…
No video as they are a pain to post
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the inlaws received both a bouquet of flowers, a very nice note with it, and a personal visit of the Gemeinde at their place when they turned 90. Basically they invited themselves for coffee & cake (with a previous notice through a phone call from the secretary of the Gemeinderat).
It is a relatively small village, where everybody knows everybody, and even if they were much younger…half of them were children of their friends 
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That is probably the key point.
When I moved into this village around 30 years ago there were around 2,000 inhabitants and now 6,000.
I don’t claim to know everybody but I cerainly know all the “movers and shakers”.
A lot of the new people just treat us like a dormitory so are difficult to get to know.
On the North facing hillside opposite us there is a new estate of apartments since a couple of years.
There are no lights in the evening after 9 to 10pm, even at weekends, and when I get up in the morning it is a ghost town.
That is an existence not a life.
They do that for 3 municipalities where I live. Starting at 40 years of war (marriage) and 80 years of age everybody is invited all 5 years to a concert with snacks and some gifts. I think after 50 years of war or 90 years of age it is every year. They can bring people, have to reserve. Was there with my parents and my godmother and soon I’ll go for myself for the war thingy…
Yes, it is a thing, but probably only in smaller places.
They used to do a pre-Christmas concert here for us oldies but not for a long time, probably a victim of Covid.
They still do that here.
It’s the ubiquitous fondue chinoise and some entertainment.
During Covid they sent the old folks hampers instead.
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