A veritable heat wave

UK temps have been clearing 30 with a few days of this weather planned.
Even my jalapeno pepper plant is wilting today, but I'm not complaining one iota, it's true summer weather. :-)

Thankfully, the new cat has enough sense to hide underneath the bed, in the coolest room in the house. I was a little afraid that I'd come home to roasted cat today if she chose to be in the sun. I'm under the roof, so the heat rises up.

For the first time in the UK

I turned on the airconditioning in the car. I didn't realize it even had AC. The weather here in my corner of Essex has been hot, sticky, and humid--think Philly in mid-August.

I don't feel the supreme guilt here like in DE to turn on the AC. I remember one of my (American) work colleagues--his wife had bad allergies so he started the car a few minutes in advance of her coming outside, so that it would be cooled off. A German promptly walked over to his car after one minute and knocked on the window and said something in German. My colleague spoke almost no German, so the fellow then translated it to English for him--
'Thank you for taking care for my environment and turning off your car when you are not driving." Different mentality I guess.

In the DE office of benevolent company J, we had no AC, even though it was company HQ. We had some kind of 'air cooling system', my colleagues explained that it kept the building 6 degrees cooler than the outside temp. Here in Essex we have 'real' AC for a building 1/20th of the size, both in people and perhaps area. It gets turned on most sunny days at this point because the building gets full sun from 10 AM until 6 PM ish if the sun is out. Closer to the US way of thinking perhaps...

The answer-->it's a girl!

The question-->
Make up your best guess....bragging rights go to the most creative or most correct answer. :-)
*The 'real' answer will be revealed later this week. ;-)

**I'm still using the computer at the library after work once per day, so I'm slow to repond to comments, but still here and reading them each day...

On the agenda for today...

A home visit from the cat rescue people, now that I own my own place, I think I'd like to have a cat. I'm thinking about an older one which sleeps a lot and won't mind me being at the office for 7.5 hours each day. Stay tuned...

English breakfast for lunch

I don't yet have a routine of shopping as I have only really been here a week in the new place. In addition, the new place has a tiny kitchen, so I don't have so much storage space so I'm still trying to figure out how to use it best. In coming back from Germany the other week, I was a bit stuck...I had nothing fresh due to being gone, I don't have frozen meals, as it's summer I don't even have soup, just a mishmash of things which came along with me on the move...gravy, mushrooms, and lots of dried pasta. The only ingredients that could make a proper meal...fixings for an English breakfast: veg sausages, baked beans, an egg, and mushrooms. No bread, was out. And there was enough to make two lunches.

I really need to figure out how I can get shopping into my schedule now that it's not on the way between the home and office and in addition since I'm on foot is becomes more difficult or more frequest--or to get clever and start the online veg delivery as was previously suggested.

In the meantime, breakfast it is!

A glorious, sunny day

In England. One would expect that to be a bit of an oxymoron perhaps. I'm enjoying immesely the roof terrace and mentally contemplating future garden enhancements. I'm chalking this year up to a learning year. So far the real winners have been the strawberries so I'm considering more of those next year. The potatos have been brilliant in leaf action, but some of them went to close to the top and reached sunlight so they turned green. I think I need some larger containers next year if they are going to be so impressive again.

I'm adjusting to life in the city, having spent the past few months in the suburb about 35 minute from here on foot. I don't have parking so this takes a bit of getting used to, as there is plenty of free parking withing 15-20 minutes by foot. And really, the 30 min walk each way to and from the office is probably much better than driving in any event.

The bathroom closet shelf and hallway mirror and a mattress were finally purchased last night. Putting the shelving together (an industrial grey metal unit) took the remainder of last night's free time as a team effort, so tonight will be devoted to putting the things on the shelves. I probably won't stockpile as much of my 'US medical goods' here as I did in Germany, mainly because there are a few more items more readily available here, that I don't need to cart them in from America. Although, with the prices of things, it may behoove me to do so.

Overall, things are shaping up into a good summer...

Missing the internet...

slumming it at the library every other day instead. :-(

on the positive side, i've been plowing through books and continuing to slowly get the flat in order.

the food importer

Other people transport drugs or other nefarious products across international waters, I transport basic foodstuffs across the pond.

From the UK to Germany-->Proper looseleaf English breakfast tea. My work colleague is primarily a tea drinker and claims there is a huge difference in what you can buy in DE vs. in the UK. Thus a few boxes came over.

From Germany to the UK-->Miracoli kaese pasta and German chocolate. The Miracoli is for me, I came back with 9 of the 4-5 portion boxes. Add some spinach or broccoli to it and you have a super meal.

What else should have come along? Two more German pillows to complete the ensemble are still to be purchased. I'm thinking about maybe driving the next go round in September so that I can bring back some bulky items such as that. And a case of regular miracoli in addition... :-)

Pleasantly surprised

Granted, I've only been gone from Germany for four months...however, I was expecting to see a marked decrease in my (albeit limited) German. Granted, I have almost daily exposure to it still by phone or email or (shudder) a random German speaker in the UK office, or some connection to Germans speaking English to keep me in the mood, or to a bit of German music. And granted, as the Germans would be quick to point out, I shouldn't be so proud of a B1 level after so long here... :-/

However--have previously gone through the ups and downs of learning Spanish and that painful transition after summer break. Here, I notice absolutely no difference in skill from the moment I left until now. I imagine if I would have had a true break and no connection to Germany I may have lost a bit.

Go figure.

Apparently new habits die hard too

It's my last night in DE for this trip. I escaped having to drive too much as my work colleague drove each day but the one where I had after hours plans and I drove myself. I didn't mind to rent a car from the airport--I wasn't sure if my colleague wanted a car pool buddy, and I like to drive in Germany. I like the order of the autobahn and the driving is on the 'right' side.

Before coming back, I was figuring that driving on the 'right' side (both literally and figuratively), would be like putting on an old pair of shoes, something that I would ease right back into.

I love being proven blatantly and obviously wrong!

I was a little tired on Thursday, but ok. I was in the office all day and then had a meet-up with a colleage after work, and then with my English student after that. Coming back from beyond Leverkusen to Cologne, I was able to follow the signs back to the A3, where I know my way back to my colleague's.

I was in unfamiliar territory, beyond following the markers to the A3. As I approached a traffic circle, I slowed down to think through--which way should I be going into it?
(Yikes)
Fortunately, there are blue signs with arrows showing the flow (something I've never noticed before.)
This one was a little odd I think, because:
1. I didn't go through so many traffic circles when I lived in Germany; there was one I went though perhaps every two weeks or so when I went to the train station. As opposed to the UK where I must go through multiple traffic circles to get into the office each day.

2. I was not in a familiar area, so I had no autopilot on which way to go into the circle.

Then, the icing on the cake--I whacked the door twice with my left hand, going to shift gears.
OK, so it's less than when I 'converted' to driving on the left...

I find this interesting because I was not expecting to have any issue whatsovever. I figured that I would revert easily to that which I have always known.
Hmm...

Night 4 in DE

There's something to be said for people who know you from way back...say, March 2003.

Life is a whole lot easier now that I don't live here!
At the same time, I've managed to gain some level of acceptability.

Last night we got our stuff together and managed to produce a team dinner. We were not fully attended, nor was anyone over the edge, like previously...

Our big boss left, and colleague 1 lit up a cigarette.
Colleague 2: I thought you did not smoke indoors? Or that you did not smoke because of Heather in Europe? (I am staying at the flat of Colleague 1) Or of course because of big boss instead? (Big boss had just left).
Colleague 1: I do not smoke when people are eating food.

and then everyone (excluding me), lit up a cigarette, now that non-Euro boss had left.
No one asked me. I did not expect them to. They knew I wouldn't mind...

It was a mishmash night of mixed languages. I drifted in and out of conversations...
This is why I live here!

It is no stress, only 'to be'. This is what keeps me here...

What's growing on the roof terrace so far?

Cucumbers
Tomatos
Peppers
Potatos
Onions
Garlic
Spaghetti squash
Zuchinni
Strawberries

Still to come...
Lettuce
Basil

Still to be decided--what can I get away with planting for the winter?

Hopefully everything survives the week without me. Once I'm set up with home internet I'll post some photos. It's more space than I ever imagined and a lot of sun (as much as the UK can muster), so it should prove fun.

4 months

It's been exactly four months to the day since I left DE. Oh the irony of being back here today.

How did I celebrate it? I went shopping at Lidl (walking distance to my colleague's flat) for breakfast cereal and lunch provisions. The one thing I cannot knock Germany for is their musli. The office mainly works through lunch at one's desk and I'm still a fan of the hot lunch. So on the menu for lunch the rest of the week for me:

Cheese tortellini with a side of salad and mixed veg, arrabiata pasta sauce, and some bread
all packed up in a tupperware container and good to go!

I'm spoiled here a bit on travel having access to a nice kitchen and all the dishes I need, along with containers for the leftovers to take for lunch. :-)

On the flight back to DE

More pre-posting from the library as my day will be messed up from the travel to DE. Pleasantly, I'm on AirBerlin to D'dorf. Ryanair to Krakow last week was OK for vacation, but for business travel I'm not so fond of them. In particular, the 06.15 flight time from Stansted required us to leave the house by 03.45. Did you know that the sky is vaguely light at 0415 in my corner of Essex? I certainly did not.

Coming back was the opposite--it took off at 21.50, getting us back at 23.20. Then with the passport controls, the shuttle to long-term parking and driving back, it was 00.30 before we were at home again. But then again, at a total cost of 100 GBP for everything, I'd say that was worth it. Krakow itself was a very nice city and I would recommend a visit. It was the first time I've been to Southern Poland. The Poles say that the Southerners are nicer than the Northerners. Not sure if that is true, but I cannot imagine that people could be any nicer than they were.

Home furnishing on the cheap

I hate shopping. While I've been off for work, the idea of spending the week in the stores is painful. Not so much from the 'spending money' aspect (although that's probably part of it), but more for the idea of the effort of having to schlep around, look at things, find things, buy things, and carry them up four flights of stairs.

(Do I sound like a German here-->why do we need to many choices? why do the stores need to be so big?)

For the basics, I've resorted to Poundland just to get up and running, and because I can get there without the car.

One more thing to love about my corner of Essex

One hour of free internet usage per day with my library card. Yes, my 'free' library card--as opposed to the 'pay' library card in Germany. It's probably better that I don't have the internet at home as it's easier to stay focused on getting unpacked and the flat in order. :-)

So far this morning (my last day of holiday in this round), I made coffee, planted strawberries, harvested the first item from the garden--a spring onion--and made it outdoors and down the street to the library on my day out and about.

It's absolutely roasting here today, so I figured a mid-day break out of the sun is in order.

I'm slowly becoming accustomed to the idea that I own a flat, but I'm not quite there yet. There still remains quite a bit to do to get it in order...

Still here...

but no internet in the new flat yet.
off to work in Germany starting Sunday, so offline for another week.
back with you after June 21.

Different climate, different culture?

The past weekend when we went to Maldon was hot as heck--it reminded me of Philly weather for this time of year. Everyone was out and about enjoying it. One big difference to me--in Phillyland, the public pools open on Memorial day weekend (at the end of May) until Labor day (first week of Sept).

Here in the UK is not quite warm enough in the summer to justify public outdoor pools like in my corner of America, so instead they have these 'water parks' or whatever one calls them:

Although--I do recall freezing my *** off in the early morning summer swimming lessons in the summers growing up. I'm not sure the climate is so much cooler here or if it's more a matter of culture...

The backpack is packed - Poland!

To Poland we go! It's off to Stansted at the crack of 'hella early o'thirty' because it's ryanair. but i cannot complain, you get what you pay for, and the flight was cheap. Because it's ryanair, we had to go on the cheap and stuff everything into the (limited) carry-on allotment. If you're wondering at home, it looks like this:

So for a four day trip we're looking at:
-1 pair jeans (worn from day 1 to 4)
-3 t-shirts (1 worn day 1)
-3 sweaters, of varying weights, useful for layering. it's supposed to rain two entire days
rain/wind jacket
-1 sweatshirt with hood
-4 days socks/underwear (usually i'd take half and then launder)
-the poland dictionary/phrasebook and the lonely plant guide, for all the polish words i've forgotten
-the 1 quart ziploc bag of toiletries 100 ml or under
-wallet
-passport
-file of important papers - guesthouse reservation, maps, ryanair checked in flight, etc. including the heather created 'currency cheatsheet' of GBP to PLN to EUR cross-currency triangulation, sorted by GBP and then PLN.

i have some pre-posting going on the next few days while i'm away...

Fascinating politics

The election is coming up June 4, so we're getting deluged with various leaflets and propaganda in the letter box, on TV and generally everywhere. Here was yours truly over the weekend in Maldon. In particular this party fascinates me.

They have an overview guide on their website. From page 5:
"Our government doesn't even know how many immigrants are in the UK, thanks to no border controls."

I'm not sure what non-existant border controls they could be referencing, unless it's the land border to Scotland or the shoreline if one were to sneak over from France.

In applying for my work visa, I had to list all travel in the past 10 years. Thankfully I track this detail for tax purposes and was able to cross-reference against my passport. I have been into the UK and transiting through it 20+ times, through various water entry ports and airports. I have never entered the UK without seeing border controls. Granted, I didn't float across in a dingy though. Although I am more of an 'expat' than an 'immigrant', so maybe not their target population.

I do recall entering other EU nations without passing through passport controls. Once I waltzed into Brussels from the UK--no one blinked twice as I stumbled through. Germany also didn't seem to care so much on those intra-Europe flights...

Even when coming from Northern Ireland, I was questioned by UK passport controls. (I am the person in front of you, EU person, clogging up the line when they only open one or two windows and fail to designate one of them for non-EU nationals.)

Sidenote: I was always amused on a Sunday night in Duesseldorf when they would open three and allow them to co-mingle on a flight from say, Estonia. Without fail you ended up with someone from Africa in one, someone with a German work visa but from a red flag country in the Middle East, and enough dumb Americans and Canadians to slow down the third. Big sighs from the Germans all around as everything ground to a halt...

So we'll see how everything pans out on Thursday. D has offered to take me with as he goes to vote, just so that I could see the activities and atmosphere around it and the last minute campaigning, so I may tag along to see...

The new flat

When I first arrived in Essex in February I was fortunate that I could stay with a work colleague so I was able to check out the area and take my time in finding a place to live. A six month lease is standard, so I decided to try to find a furnished flat in the area from the office for six months and then to give further thought to the topic after that, once I had a better idea of where I wanted to live.

When I lived in Germany, renting a flat was easy. In the tiny town of B one looks in the newspaper or on the bulletin board at the office; to accept a flat one signs a contract and puts down a deposit of first and last month's rent. Perhaps because it was a small town, it was rather uncomplicated. I had no credit, reference or employment check. I signed on the dotted line and moved in.

Upon arriving in the UK I found out that it was a little harder to rent a flat.
1. I needed a landlord reference. My very nice landlady spoke absolutely no English, at all.
2. Because I had no credit history in the UK, I would be forced to pay the entire six month lease up front.

The other option would have been to try to find a sublet or a room in a private house that would perhaps be less stringent about the above standards. I found an interesting place in the center of town, furnished and with parking and all utilities excluding television and internet, which would have come to the princely sum of 5000 GBP. I had decided to move forward with it, but we ran into a bit of a snafu in that they needed to independently collect the reference of my German landlady but no one on staff spoke German. (sigh.)

Around this the amazing thought of 'something is easier in Germany than in the UK' crossed my head. While I was waiting for them to find a German speaker, I became curious and looked at how much it would cost to buy a place in the building where I would be renting. (too much!) I looked up how much the flat I would be renting had been purchased for (over 200k, ouch!). On a whim, I started to look through the real estate ads online to see what I would be able to afford when the time came.

My requirements are not necessarily many, but they are very specific and non-negotiable. I've had the same ones for about five years or so:
1. Must not be on the ground floor.
2. Must get a lot of light-->even more important with the UK rainy days :-(
3. Must have a balcony or somewhere for me to grow things.

I don't think it's so much to ask for. ;-) One particular flat caught my eye, so I decided to pop over and see it while I was waiting on the rental option. It was 2,5 years old, in a 're-developing' part of downtown, about 10 minutes walk from the main train and bus stations.

What really caught my eye was that it was:
1. Top floor (4th floor of a four story building, three flats per floor)

2. Complete floor to ceiling glass wall in the bedroom and living room, facing West, glass door on the other side of the living room facing East. In essence, my living room will be bathed in sunlight (as sunny as my corner of Essex gets!) the entire day.

3. The absolute selling point: the glass toward the West is actually a roof terrace which is larger than the bedroom. There is a door from the bedroom and the living room leading onto the back terrace. The glass door toward the East is to the front roof terrace. I will have two roof terraces which will be perfect environments for growing all my outdoor veg. Lord knows there's so little sunny and short summers in the UK so I need every bit of help I can get. The architecture here isn't really given to large balconies or roof terraces for that matter. Perhaps it's the weather or maybe just the style. Where would you like your coffee when you visit—on the morning terrace or the evening terrace? ;-)

The place had been on the market for nine months and dropped twice in price. I could see why it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Specifically:

1. There is no parking included with the place. That's the biggest negative I can come up with, but there is free parking hidden around town, or parking is free in front from 6 PM – 8 AM, or I can leave the car at the office during the week. It's 2.03 miles to the office, a perfect 'Heather length' walk twice a day.
Sidenote: I'm not sure why the town approves flats to be built without parking as the parking situation in downtown is tight, or why they don't get their act together and put in more lots to make more revenue for the town.

2. It's four flights up, without an elevator.

3. The ground floor is under the application process to be a restaurant serving alcohol. I can see if you were in the second floor flats, this would be an annoyance, especially when the bars and restaurants have gone smoke-free and everyone must go outside, i.e. below your balcony, to smoke. At the 4th floor level, I'm not expecting a problem, especially as I expect to be more toward the back terrace in the evenings as that will be the sunny side. In addition, the front terrace is slightly recessed from the 3 beneath it, not straight in line with them (I think this is for the overall building look.) It means that there is another noise buffer in that the noise must go up and then inward to reach here, not just straight up. Plus I see the convenience factor of having a restaurant below. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point on that one...

4. It is a flat in a building with maintenance etc charges as opposed to a house which has less charges.

5. The space is small and a little quirky. I instantly fell in love with it, but I could see how it would not resonate well with a lot of people. Specifically, the roof terraces are a large part of the area, and therefore mainly 'unusable' space during the colder months. I'm guessing that my living space is decreased by about one-third during the cold and wet months. Personally I prefer small living space as it's easier to keep in order and less expensive to heat.

A few things played in my favor here which told me this was the right thing to do.

I asked to be allowed to visit again, but at an evening instead of during the day when nearby offices were open. I wanted to see how the place felt then. For perspective, I brought along a work colleague who tends to have very different opinions than me, to hear what he would see in it--nothing negative.

I was coming to the table as a cash buyer. In a backhanded way, I was blessed in that I came of working age in an IT job during the late 90's, although it didn't seem so at the time. I did consulting for a while living in hotel rooms and visiting friends on company paid tickets home on the weekends. The job market was on its way up as I came into the system but I arrived with a poor student mentality and student loans. When I took a permanent job I took a room in a shared house and saved my pennies for a few years. After a few years, into the 2000's when I could have qualified for a mortgage based on having a solid income and some work history and a little savings, I was living in the San Francisco Bay area where I was completely priced out of the market as the bubble had yet to burst.

I didn't want to be tied down anyway to California and jumped when I had the chance to come to Europe. For three years I lived the expat life in company paid (although taxable to me) housing. Later, when I finally got dumped off the expat gravy train I took the smallest solo place I could find in the tiny town of B and furnished it with trash-picked furniture. Was the goal to save money and live as cheaply as possible? No, the goal was to avoid having to 1. go to Ikea in DE, the place was a madhouse, and 2. I never liked having to put together the flat pack stuff in any event and 3. I knew DE was a launchpad to another area, so I saw no reason to really invest in anything which probably couldn't come along (financially or emotionally).

As a US citizen with no UK credit history, I wouldn't have qualified for a mortgage, so I could only buy something which fell within my cash payable means. Heck, the bank won't even give me a checkbook under my piddling 'passport' account. I must prove my financial worthiness for one year before I am allowed a checkbook or an interest bearing account. I'm rather not impressed with those rules, but it's all part of the expat game.

The other benefit of this flat is that my corner of Essex is considered an affordable commuter city into London. If I ever need to get a new job and want to stay with my current profession, I'll need to do it in the city—there just aren't similar jobs here in Essex. So if I had to, I could live without a car, being within walking distance to the main station which goes into London. In addition, that serves to make the flat rentable should I ever want to leave it.

So I put in a bid on the flat. I realized they had dropped the price twice, but I went under the asking price anyway. We hemmed and hawed back and forth as I could see online their original purchase price 2,5 years ago, so I knew they were losing money. They had a price floor they didn't want to go below, their psychological breaking point. Having recently left Germany and gone through the hassle of selling off all of my furniture and remembering what it was like to have to buy all of that stuff, I agreed to their number, if they would leave all major pieces of furniture such as the bed, sofas, wardrobe, patio furniture etc. There was no way I want to live through another Ikea shopping trip, schlepping up the four flights of stairs and then assembly session. They accepted.

Good thing as getting the German reference was still not progressing after two weeks, so I dropped out of that one and long term onto my colleague's sofa for the duration of this adventure. As we were heading into summer I knew I could pitch the tent as needed, as well as that some business travel would be squeezed in. (Memo to self: I'm almost too old to be slumming it for 100 days on someone's sofa. Almost. ;-))

So through the stages of house surveying, reviewing, etc. we went. I got annoyed as the process was taking too long and ended up pulling out of the process late in the game. An intentional bluff? No, just annoyance. They invited me to make a lower bid as it was the 11th hour and they didn't want to start over. Unintentionally I picked up a small discount there and was back in the game.
I transferred the first 40% of the purchase price on Tuesday. The last 60% was winging over (or does it go under?) the Atlantic Thursday night, where it arrived on Friday. It will be sent over to the sellers tomorrow for the keys to come over to me on Friday.

After 30 some years of life, I finally became a flat owner for the first time, yet not in the US. Go figure. Curious for a quick view? These are the photos I took when I was seeing it for the first time, so it's their decor. Better ones will come once I am there and unpacked...

only the sofa in this photo stays. will take better photos of the view from the terrace once there. this side faces the downtown rooftops.


not my tv either ;-)

where the vegetarian magic will happen:

not sure i like the white bedding look they had, although it does add to the brightness factor. My Dark blue German bedding did come along fortunately. :-)