Banking by Phone

We have an account at a German bank and they don't have their on-line system in English.  But the employee that I opened my account with speaks English and I call him for everything.  He showed me how to use the on-line system and for a while it worked great.  There are no checks here so everything is set up so you can pay directly from your account.  When I get a parking ticket (I've gotten three so far) they give me their bank account number, bank code (like a routing number) and a reference number and I just transfer money from my bank to their bank.  When I have to pay a fee at the school or dues for Cub Scouts or even when I pay tithing I just go online and transfer money from my bank to their bank.  I have an access number and a PIN and when I make a transfer the system asks me for a TAN number.  I have a paper at home that looks like this:

It tells me to give it the TAN-005 so I put in 632131.  The next time I make a transfer it may ask me for TAN-049 so I put in 595214.  It's sort of a pain because I always have to have this paper with me.  But I do feel good that probably nobody could do anything in my account with security measures like this.

Then one time I had to make a large transfer and it wouldn't let me do it online.  I called my bank guy and he said you have to set it up through your mobile phone.  I was thinking I was supposed to call a number and talk to someone to do it and I was thinking that was ridiculous.  It turns out that you register your mobile phone on the bank web site and then whenever you want to make a transfer they text the Mobile-TAN number to your phone.  So I don't need this paper anymore.  Whenever I make a transfer I wait about 2 seconds and I get a number as a text message on my phone and then I can complete my transfer.  It's really cool.

One time Miles was asking me for something and I was doing something else so I told him to hold on to his shorts.  Now whenever I say "Just a minute Miles" he says "Hold on my shorts mama?"

Also, as a PS to the Templefahrt story.  Whenever I pick Eric up at the airport I get a ticket when I enter the parking lot and then I have to pay it at the machine so that when I leave I can insert it and it opens the gate.  Just like at home.  But when I put my ticket in the machine and pay, it gives me back the ticket and says "Gute Fahrt".  So whenever you go anywhere, just imagine that I'm wishing you a "Gute Fahrt".