T̶w̶o̶ One p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ immigrant settling into home country number five.
But not really. First of all, I’m sure plenty of you are wondering what Vonage is. Simply put, it’s an awesome service that has allowed us to keep our last US home number through four countries now. Friends, family, and business contacts in the US can call us on our old US number, and a … Read more
Germany’s Merkel suffers blow ahead of 2009 vote Elections in Germany confirm leftward shift Obviously mainstream conservatives in Germany are very different than those in the US, but still I tend to forget which party Merkel is from. Both the fact that she is a woman and that she grew up in the East make … Read more
I won’t claim to know enough about the issue to have an opinion I’d wish to post here, but I do want to share some photos of the anti-Kosovo-secession rally that took place at Marienplatz (the main square in the center of Munich) today. We decided to swing by and check out the rally after … Read more
This afternoon I was going to finally finish putting together our Ikea guest bed. I had plenty of time set aside, so I should have been able to get it done today, right? Except I forgot about the screwing. Or rather, I forgot about how painful non-stop screwing can be. My palms are red and … Read more
Even though Germany has some great home-grown musical acts to offer, rarely does a German artist make it across the Atlantic to the US (as opposed to American music, which makes it over here to Germany far too often). If I had had to bet on which German music was going to make it big … Read more
In an effort to get to know my new home country, I’ve been diligently checking out German TV. On of the shows currently on is The Next Uri Geller, a show in search of Germany’s top mentalist. I can’t bear to watch this show. It’s just too stupid, even for my relatively low standards. All … Read more
After over a month of sleeping in my own bed (for a change), it was time to move around a little bit. So last week I hopped on a train and headed back to Zurich for a quick visit. It’s always strange to go back to a former home city for the first time. It’s … Read more
Finish this phrase: “Gut, besser, ____” (“Good, better, ____”) I’ve always been under the impression that the correct answer was, of course, “Paulaner”. So why is it that I keep seeing these commercials for Gösser, a little-known Austrian beer? [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daVpOhEYguM] I was starting to think I was going a bit crazy, but recently a German … Read more
So the other day I was reading this post by Brian in Munich about how he is having to extract elderly Germans from his reserved train seats all the time. And while I found the post amusing, a part of my brain was protesting: surely he doth exaggerate about the frequency of such occurrences. Oder?* … Read more
We would be awfully bummed about moving away from Switzerland in the middle of ski-season… if we hadn’t moved to Munich. The oh-so-conveniently-located Austrian Alps are close enough for easy day-trip skiing. Unfortunately this season hasn’t been as snowy as we would like, but the Austrians seem to be pretty good at filling in the … Read more