Tonight I logged into my German bank account and discovered that a portion of my scholarship had been transferred from the course organizers in the Netherlands to me. This is excellent news, as my first few weeks in Germany have been expensive. However, I was a bit surprised at how much money had been transferred to me. It seemed like too much, too soon. Then I noticed that they had transferred two equal amounts of money to me on the same day. Looking at the memo lines, I noticed that one transaction had my last name on it, but that the other had another last name on it: my Georgian classmate's.
Just a few days ago I let my classmate borrow my laptop to send his bank account information to our organizers in the Netherlands. I teased him that he could provide my information, if he wished! Little did I know that this was exactly what he would end up doing, though by mistake.
We thought that IBAN numbers for the same bank branch were identical. Not so, it turns out (at least in our case). He provided the same IBAN number as mine, which resulted in his scholarship money being deposited directly into my bank account.
My classmate's reaction to this situation? "You are joking." No, sadly, I was not (but we did get a good laugh out of it, a little later). We determined the correct IBAN number for him and he sent it to the Netherlands. Tomorrow we'll go to the bank to transfer the extra money from my account to his.
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