Essential German phrases

What Aachen people call themselves, and Öcher Platt is the dialect. The city's own name for itself sounds nothing like 'Aachen' — which is a fair warning about how much of local life is conducted in a register the standard-German coursebook does not cover.

The raised little finger, Aachen's own greeting sign, said to come from the needle industry where children picked defective needles out with that finger. You will see it at football matches, on shop signs and in the logo of half the local institutions.

The carnival cry here as in Cologne — never Helau, which belongs to Düsseldorf. The Rhineland carnival season is a real interruption to the working year and Aachen takes its part in it seriously.

The Charlemagne Prize, awarded in the town hall each Ascension Day for service to European unification. It is the reason a city of 260,000 hosts a head-of-state motorcade every spring, and it tells you how Aachen sees itself.

Aachen's hard spiced biscuit, sold everywhere and made properly by a handful of bakeries. Kräuterprinten are the traditional dry kind; the chocolate-coated soft ones are the tourist version. It is the city's edible identity and a standard leaving gift.

The three-country corner where Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands meet on the Vaalserberg, twenty minutes from the cathedral. It is a Sunday walk and it is also the reason half the practical questions in this city are cross-border ones.

The StädteRegion Aachen — the tier of government above the city, covering Aachen and nine surrounding municipalities. It runs the Ausländeramt and the Führerscheinstelle, so it, not the city, is where your residence permit and your driving licence come from.

Registering your address, legally required within two weeks of moving in, and the gate to your tax ID, bank account, health insurance and residence permit. In Aachen it is the city's Bürgerservice that does it — and only this step.

Cold rent versus warm rent — base rent against rent plus heating and service charges. Listings quote cold; your standing order is warm.

The credit scoring agency. Landlords, phone operators and instalment sellers all check it, and a newcomer's file is empty — which bites in a city where 44,000 students compete for the same flats every September.

A cross-border worker — someone who lives in one country and works in another. In Aachen it is an ordinary job description rather than an exotic status, and it is the single word that changes which tax and social-security rules apply to you.

112 for ambulance and fire, 110 for police. 112 works across the EU — including on the Dutch and Belgian side of a border you can walk to.