T̶w̶o̶ One p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ immigrant settling into home country number five.
Given that there’s a big American TV event coming up, now seems as good a time as any to share this fun little morsel. Last Thanksgiving Julie was hoping to watch the Macy’s parade, but we were surprised at how difficult it was to find it live online. I did some poking around and came … Read more
Happy New Year! Where did you ring in 2014? We seem to start out each year somewhere different (in our five years in Munich, I think we were only there for its warzone-like Sylvester once). This year we had the pleasure of being invited to join some friends at their log cabin on a lake in a remote part of Finland. We’d lapped up their stories of snowy snowy New Year’s Eves past and could not wait to experience it ourselves.
From Banff we spent an afternoon driving along Scotland’s northeastern coast, enjoying the views and popping in and out of a string of tiny fishing villages.
Read moreEastern Scotland: lighthouses and small coastal towns
We hadn’t specifically set out to visit any distilleries on this last trip to the Highlands, but somehow we managed to find ourselves driving the Malt Whisky Trail through Speyside one afternoon. Clearly we were meant to tour a distillery right then. We were spoiled for choice with such a large cluster of distilleries at our feet; not knowing which to choose, we trusted our guidebook’s recommendation of Glenfiddich.
On our last morning in Nairn, we couldn’t resist taking one more stroll along the beach.
Read moreEastern Scotland: from Nairn to Speyside (or beaches to casks)
I’ve gone back and forth about whether to write this post. It was tempting to leave it out, to keep this website as some kind of imaginary version of our adventures as travel-happy expats, where life was going on as usual. But for the past seven years this blog has been a chronicle of our actual lives, and omitting something so significant seems strange. We’ve been weighing the discomfort of sharing this story publicly against the discomfort of leaving it out; looks like the scales have tipped towards telling it. Here goes.
Back in May we were finally starting to settle into life in Edinburgh after a long, drawn-out move from Munich (a move which involved detours to Italy, the US, and Japan). We were excited about our new city in a new country. We were figuring out which neighborhood grocery stores we like best (Waitrose for the win) and trying very hard to remove the word “pants” from our vocabulary. We were just starting to meet people, taking the first steps towards having a local social circle.
Also in May, Scott’s foot started to hurt a little.
Because moving to a new country isn’t complicated enough, we decided to spice it up a little. OK, not decided exactly; things are just working out that way. While Scott is home in Munich watching the contents of our apartment get packed up, I’m in Assisi experiencing my first stint as an artist in residence.
Read moreMoving from Germany to Scotland via Italy and Japan
One of the first things you learn living in Munich is that the city has six big important breweries (Hofbräu, Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, and Spaten). These breweries own most of the beer gardens and beer halls, their beer is served in most local restaurants, and they are the only breweries allowed to sell beer at Oktoberfest. All this local beer pride seems a little silly once you realize
“Scotland? Cool! Have you seen that movie Waking Ned Devine?”
(Actually, that’s Irish.)
“But it’s so cold there!”
(Winters are a lot milder in Edinburgh than in Munich. We see that as a downside – we like snow.)
“Why would you want to do that?”
(This one comes mainly from Scottish people who live outside of Scotland.)
“Are you going to learn that kind of dancing where they only move their legs?”
(That’s Irish, too.)
“Do you like whisky?”
(Yes, very much. Can’t wait to visit Islay.)
“Have you found a place to live yet?”
Read moreThings you hear when you tell people you’re moving to Edinburgh
[This post gets a little long and technical. To sum up the juicy middle: we’ve recently come across some good solutions for watching blocked internet videos. If you’re also an expat interested in watching British and American television online from other countries, read on. Otherwise, skip this post and go work on your Oktoberfest dance moves or something.]
As native English speakers who spend most of our time outside of the US and the UK, we are often looking for ways to watch American and British TV shows and movies on the internet. Unfortunately, most of the websites that work well in their home countries block visitors from abroad.
We have a VPN account that we can use to access these websites, but it isn’t always the best experience. Using a VPN will slow down all of your internet traffic, sometimes so much so that you can’t stream the video you were trying to watch.