This International Life | T̶w̶o̶ One p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ immigrant settling into home country number five.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe reviews 2013, part 2

30 July 201418 August 2013

Have we mentioned how much we’re enjoying our first Fringe? I already predict some serious festival withdrawal at the beginning of September. Here’s what we’ve seen in the past week:

Zoe Lyons **** An entertaining, well-polished show about nothing in particular. She had the audience laughing in the first minute and kept the pace up for the entire show. (Scott gives her a full five stars.)

Bridget Christie – A Bic for Her **** Made me laugh and despair at the evils of the world all at the same time.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe reviews 2013, part 1

30 July 201414 August 2013

Since we’ve been happily soaking up other people’s reviews and recommendations for Fringe shows, we thought it’d be nice to offer up our opinions as well (plus blogging about things is a great way to not forget them right after they happen). Here’s what we’ve seen so far, ordered (roughly) from favorite to least favorite.

Pajama Men **** I loved this show. It starts out with a series of seemingly random sketches that gradually reveal themselves to be part of one big story arc. Don’t have too many whiskies before going into this one or you’ll find it hard to follow.

Scotsman Best of the Fringe **** Loved this afternoon opportunity to see a handful of funny comedians (not as redundant as it should be) all in one show. I think the line-up might be different each week, but we saw these guys:

Edinburgh in August: diving into the Fringe

30 July 201413 August 2013

What Oktoberfest is to Munich, the Festival Fringe is to Edinburgh: that time of year when all the tourists show up. Edinburgh more than doubles in population during August as visitors and performers from around the world flood in. The Old Town is packed with street acts and revelers. Hundreds of buildings around the city turn into venues for performances. Theater, dance, music, spoken word and comedy are the main types of entertainment you’ll find at the Fringe, with comedy dominating in recent years. But the Fringe hardly has a lock on your entertainment options in this city

Tokyo food porn: yakitori

3 July 201514 July 2013

Dining out in Tokyo can be a bit tricky if you don’t speak Japanese. Surprisingly few restaurants offer English menus (despite the government’s efforts to encourage menu translation), and servers are often hesitant to admit they speak a word of English.

Settling into Edinburgh

15 July 201422 April 2013

About time for a wee blog update, isn’t it? Let’s fast forward from my month in Tokyo (we’ll come back to it, I promise) and jump all the way up to present day, where Scott and I are just your typical, everyday serial expats settling in after yet another international move. We’ve been in Edinburgh for about five weeks now, long enough to have most of the new-country administrata out of the way. The first few weeks of a new expat gig feel the same pretty much anywhere, even if the details are different. Register this, paperwork that. Sign up for a cell phone, figure out where all the various kinds of recycling go before the growing tower of vodka bottles in the kitchen falls over, that kind of thing.

Tokyo: things that look like sweet potatoes

3 July 201518 March 2013

This is not a sweet potato.

Plum blossom season in Tokyo

3 July 20155 March 2013

As it turns out, mid-February through mid-March is the perfect time to catch the plum blossoms in Tokyo. They don’t carry the fame or multitudes of cherry blossoms, but they have a certain charm.

And now for something completely different

3 July 20153 February 2013

Greetings from Tokyo. I’ve been here for four days; so far I’ve spent most of my stay wandering around taking photos, sleeping at inappropriate times, and going out with friends.

Edinburgh: the apartment hunt

15 July 201423 January 2013

We’re more than a week into the hunt for a flat in Edinburgh, and it’s been quite the rollercoaster. We’ve seen some horrible places, and some less-horrible ones, but nothing that we’ve fallen in love with yet.

The main problem is our stuff. It’s always the stuff. When we moved from the US to Italy nine years ago, the agent had a hard time finding apartments for us to view because we were adamant about not wanting to buy a kitchen. In Milan (and Munich), the vast majority of rental flats come completely empty – no light fixtures, no window coverings; the kitchen is usually just an empty room with a water pipe coming out of the floor where the sink should be.

Notes from the expat shuffle, Scotland edition

15 July 201415 January 2013

Happy new year! Now where was I? Oh yes, Assisi. After an inspiring artist’s residency in Italy, we headed back to Munich for a couple weeks of Christmas market season before hoping on a plane to the US to spend the holidays with family. Then back to Munich for a quick hello before finally making our first trip (first trip since deciding to move here, anyway) to Scotland.