Phones, Banking, and Birmingham

The saga of trying to open a bank account concludes.

To refresh, I tried to open an account at NatWest already, and was told that I needed more documentation (specifically, proof of UK address). Apparently, the British government is terribly concerned about money laundering, and insists on having detailed records of everything related to banking. This is all well and good, until the records go missing, as UK government records have been known to do.

After trying several banks (NatWest, Alliance & Leicester, Abbey’s, Barclays, etc), I finally managed to open an account at Lloyds TSB. It was a mercifully simple process, once they agreed to let me open an account. Meanwhile, Amanda visited every cell phone provider in town (Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, and O2) and collected information about getting cell phones. After we had both completed our tasks for the morning, we had lunch at Bella Italia (mostly because it was on the way back to the train station), and took a train from Exeter Central to Exeter St. Davids (where we had left our bags this morning), and got on the train to head to Birmingham (the one in England, not Alabama, pronounced "bur-ming-um") for Link Weekend.

We don't have our new cell phones yet (I suppose I should be properly British and refer to them as "mobiles," pronounced with a hard "i"), but we plan to get them either in Birmingham this weekend, or at the beginning of next week.