Posting has been a little lax recently, sorry about that. I had a last minute trip to Germany for work last week. I must admit, the weather could not have been more glorious--decadently spring-like in the Koeln/D'dorf region.
Coming into DE, I can choose between low budget flights to Cologne via German Wings or D'dorf via Air Berlin under benevolent company J's travel policy. I loathe Wings to the very core of my being; I put them into the same category as Ryan Air, mainly because of the lingering memories of when they did not assign seats and I had no desire to join the scrum that involves unassigned plane seating and Germans...as well their 'Happy Snack' concept and charging for luggage just irritates me...so Air Berlin with their assigned seating and one free bag is my choice.
Coming into passport control at D'dorf, I still travel under my DE permanent residency permit. Two years back, I tried to get them to stamp me in, but they refused. Apparently, according to the passport guy, they are not allowed to stamp me as long as the permit is in effect. It is the rules! Ja, ok. So every time since I've just shown the residency page and I've been in 12-15 times and no one blinked twice.
This time, I was in the foreigner queue with a real stickler. I counted 30 EU'ites passing in the EU queue while I was #3 in the Auslander queue. The passport guy was questioning the American in position #1 about what he was doing on this trip to Germany and where he was travelling to onward, and why was he not stamped out of Germany on his last visit (he left from Germany to Belgium by car), and on and on...
The main queue finally ran out of EU people so that guy took person #2, and I got the stickler. I hand him the passport and he scans it and then looks at his screen. I imagine my German travel history now looks questionable at best:
-2003-2009 - a variety of trips in and out, with Germany obviously as a base
-2009 - permanent residency, and then a lot of time out of Germany, once I moved to the UK.
I see him scan and then squint at the screen.
He looks through the passport, page by page, passing all of the expired DE permits and the current UK one.
He looks up at me, and I give him an appropriate German scowl.
He looks once again at the screen.
Apparently he decides that I'm not an easy enough target as he hands back my passport through the slot with a 'Danke schoen'.
At the end of the year I need to renew my passport early in order to be able to get my new UK work permit sticker in Feb 2012 as my pass expires in early 2014 and the new sticker needs the passport to be valid for six months beyond the next permit expiration. So the work permit will go to Feb 2014, therefore the passport needs to be valid until Aug 2014, else they will limit the work permit and charge exorbitant fees to extend it again. My cheapest option is to renew my passport early and not be limited by the UK then.
As a result, as of Nov of this year, I will lose my free access into Germany, until I can claim UK citizenship in Feb 2014, right after getting permanent residency here (assuming that all laws remain as they all now.)
How much do I dread that gap year of 2013 and travelling to DE??
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Puttering around the rooftop garden
Weather in my corner of Essex today was 'white clouds' and a high of 12. I would have never understood that forecast prior to coming here. It was a bright, but not sunny morning, and vaguely warm, when one had on long sleeves and garden gloves. Fortuneately I worked from 8-12 AM on the balkon, because 'grey clouds' rolled in around lunchtime, and brought rain along.
My camera bit the dust on the recent trip to Spain, so no photos, however, here is what I was up to today:
-I bought a giant planter at poundland a few weeks back. (no really, 1 GBP for a reinforced plastic woven square shaped bag that will probably do for a year or two, with 100 litre capacity, so quite large). I think it will suit a few chilli pepper plants. I cleared out some of the 'compost bags' that have been in place since the fall. It's always an education to me, to see what goes on in such a little ecosystem. I had a lot of worms due to the decaying veg scraps as well as the dead potatos that I had lost due to the early fall snow.
In addition, I always like to see what is growing from the compost. In this case, I had some ivy that I had clipped from Ian's in the fall; I had thought it was done and threw it into the compost, and here it comes back with a vegence and strong root system. I did remove that and put it into a smaller pot as ivy is so invasive. It will be a good candidate for ebay. :-)
-I moved the garlic mini-plants from the sprouting containers to the large pots that I won't need for the peppers. ;-) Slocombe the cat loves(!), loves(!), loves(!), garlic, and I enjoy it as well, so I felt it appropriate for us to have 20 some cloves to plant. :-)
-I spun off more of my 'seed sown' oregano to its own pots. I was not sure that oregano would really take up here, but in a garden surprise, it has flourished! I have it in one long planter, about 18 inches long, so as it spawns off in an increasing manner, I separate it out into smaller pots. If only oregano would be as big an ebay seller as strawberries. (smile)
-I re-jiggered the wall area that leads to dear A's balkon, to block it with a foraged log. The log came from the park, in the hope that Slocombe would appreciate it as a scratching post, but alas not. Slocombe has been increasingly curious and once managed to slip between the posts that support the glass that separate my balkon from A's. I like A a lot and would not want her to be offended when someone's furry behind decides it appropriate to investigate her balkon, complete with sitting on her patio table(!). Slocombe the cat doesn't recognize boundaries on her own, they need to be erected for her, so now they have been.
-And work on round 2 of the seedlings has commenced. Now that I made it through 'strawberry season' on ebay, next up will be the small plant auctions, mainly I have tomatoes and peppers, but I have a few others as well such catnip and eggplant.
No idea why eggplant seems to be a losing battle up here. Most things will sprout easily, but eggplant is the lowest percentage for me, for seeds.
I hope you are enjoying your Sunday, wherever you are? :-)
My camera bit the dust on the recent trip to Spain, so no photos, however, here is what I was up to today:
-I bought a giant planter at poundland a few weeks back. (no really, 1 GBP for a reinforced plastic woven square shaped bag that will probably do for a year or two, with 100 litre capacity, so quite large). I think it will suit a few chilli pepper plants. I cleared out some of the 'compost bags' that have been in place since the fall. It's always an education to me, to see what goes on in such a little ecosystem. I had a lot of worms due to the decaying veg scraps as well as the dead potatos that I had lost due to the early fall snow.
In addition, I always like to see what is growing from the compost. In this case, I had some ivy that I had clipped from Ian's in the fall; I had thought it was done and threw it into the compost, and here it comes back with a vegence and strong root system. I did remove that and put it into a smaller pot as ivy is so invasive. It will be a good candidate for ebay. :-)
-I moved the garlic mini-plants from the sprouting containers to the large pots that I won't need for the peppers. ;-) Slocombe the cat loves(!), loves(!), loves(!), garlic, and I enjoy it as well, so I felt it appropriate for us to have 20 some cloves to plant. :-)
-I spun off more of my 'seed sown' oregano to its own pots. I was not sure that oregano would really take up here, but in a garden surprise, it has flourished! I have it in one long planter, about 18 inches long, so as it spawns off in an increasing manner, I separate it out into smaller pots. If only oregano would be as big an ebay seller as strawberries. (smile)
-I re-jiggered the wall area that leads to dear A's balkon, to block it with a foraged log. The log came from the park, in the hope that Slocombe would appreciate it as a scratching post, but alas not. Slocombe has been increasingly curious and once managed to slip between the posts that support the glass that separate my balkon from A's. I like A a lot and would not want her to be offended when someone's furry behind decides it appropriate to investigate her balkon, complete with sitting on her patio table(!). Slocombe the cat doesn't recognize boundaries on her own, they need to be erected for her, so now they have been.
-And work on round 2 of the seedlings has commenced. Now that I made it through 'strawberry season' on ebay, next up will be the small plant auctions, mainly I have tomatoes and peppers, but I have a few others as well such catnip and eggplant.
No idea why eggplant seems to be a losing battle up here. Most things will sprout easily, but eggplant is the lowest percentage for me, for seeds.
I hope you are enjoying your Sunday, wherever you are? :-)
Monday, March 07, 2011
Back from Spain
from overnight lows of 7 in Malaga to -2 in Essex. brr. i did get a few days of sunshine however, to get me through this last ditch Essex cold snap.
my plants survived me being away. in addition to my usual ones, i currently have seedlings started for basil, tomatoes, eggplant, hot peppers, and cat nip.
i had a week of speaking spanish, which is always good for the soul. the amusing part was that occasionally some germans would be nearby, and if it would be for an extended period, such as the evening next to them at dinner, then the sounds of german would suddenly infitrate my brain, and an entire sentence would pop out in german, something like this:
Si, yo vivo en inglaterra pero yo soy americana. bla bla in spanish--where did you learn spanish? Estudie la literatura en la universidad; parece que ich habe nicht vergessen. Pero hace muchos anos que no hablaba mucho la lengua, bla bla.
I find as a foreigner, you become quite good at reading people, to make sure that they are understanding you. I'd get a quizzical look, then I'd ponder back and realise what I just slapped together and instantly re-calculate. It would only be when we were near Germans or Dutch, somehow the cadence crept in and attempted to take over part of the conversation. Odd.
my plants survived me being away. in addition to my usual ones, i currently have seedlings started for basil, tomatoes, eggplant, hot peppers, and cat nip.
i had a week of speaking spanish, which is always good for the soul. the amusing part was that occasionally some germans would be nearby, and if it would be for an extended period, such as the evening next to them at dinner, then the sounds of german would suddenly infitrate my brain, and an entire sentence would pop out in german, something like this:
Si, yo vivo en inglaterra pero yo soy americana. bla bla in spanish--where did you learn spanish? Estudie la literatura en la universidad; parece que ich habe nicht vergessen. Pero hace muchos anos que no hablaba mucho la lengua, bla bla.
I find as a foreigner, you become quite good at reading people, to make sure that they are understanding you. I'd get a quizzical look, then I'd ponder back and realise what I just slapped together and instantly re-calculate. It would only be when we were near Germans or Dutch, somehow the cadence crept in and attempted to take over part of the conversation. Odd.
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