Feeling More at Home

Over the past couple of weeks the new Study has been decorated and finally moved into.  I must say that I can take little credit as the hard work has been done mostly by Uwe, I just picked the colour, help lift things that were too heavy and kept him well fed.  So rather than sitting at the kitchen table as I have done for the past few weeks I am coming to you from an actual proper (even uncluttered) desk!

We had a short discussion about the colour of the walls, in which I managed to sway Uwe away from white to a lovely minty green colour called wellness.  During the course of these discussions I said I wanted to make the place more homely, which caused a small confusion when Uwe checked the definition with an American source which apparently means "plain or unattractive in appearance" which is of course the quite opposite to what it means in British English "simple but cosy and comfortable".

Yesterday we visited Kulinart in Stuttgart with one of Uwe's colleagues and his wife. It is an exhibition of gourmet food and living, which is not great for someone with their weekly weigh in on a Monday. I had originally thought that it was an exhibition of art made from food when I agreed to go. That said I would certainly recommend it and did enjoy it, just in moderation!

I did take my camera but didn't take any pictures apart from one when we arrived in the car park, as the lamp shades amused me:

Bringing the indoors out

Even with all the gorgeous food on display I did manage to restrain myself from eating everything and even managed to decline the most delicious smelling Crème Brûlée.  Instead like a true Engländerin I came away with a new teapot and some tea from the lovely people at The English Tearoom, I was complimented on my lovely English manners which is going to make my Mum so, sooo proud when I tell her this!

Although it looks pink it is actually red

Bad Weather in Bad Wimpfen

I had decided on this week to be the the week when I head out for the first time by myself on a train. I had no idea where I wanted to go but thought that the cheap Länder-Ticket was my best option at 21 Euros for as many trains I need to take within Baden Württenberg between 9am and 3am, if there are more than one of you going it is even better value as you can get a ticket for up to 5 people for just 29 Euros. C N Heidelberg from Heidelbergerin suggested Bad Wimpfen and the name amused me so much that I just had to visit.

I got up at 6am, to catch a lift in to Stuttgart with Uwe and he dropped me at the station so that I had no excuse but to go through with the trip, even though I'd had a niggling sore throat since the night before.  I knew if I put it off then it was likely to be weeks before I built myself up to doing it again.

I managed to order myself a Brezel and a Chai Tea Latte for breakfast, my English vowels breaking through the English words on the menu.  The Latte was served with a straw and although I had learnt early on in life that hot things should not be drunk through a straw unless you don't want to taste anything for a few days, the addition of the straw in the first place was temptation enough to try again, although only a mini sip which confirmed that it needed to be removed.

I had expected the station to be much busier than it was but then again it is a terminal station that people commute to rather than from on a daily basis. The platforms are open so that loved ones can see you off on a long journey from the platform edge, which now is something to be seen in period dramas back home, unmanned ticket barriers blocking our way.

At 9:15am I was on the train and on my way.  The ticket lady came around and stamped my ticket and then handed me a pen for me to write my name on it, obviously at first I wrote my name in the wrong place and only now on uploading the picture have I noticed that I should have written in block capitals... oh well silly Ausländerin!

Yes, if you can read it that is my actual last name... sounds even funnier with a Frau in front of it!

The scene that welcomed me to Bad Wimpfen was slightly drizzly and very foggy, but it wasn't going to stop me from exploring this beautiful place.

It's not as if I am unused to this kind of weather being English so I just got my camera out wandered around and snapped things as I looked out for an Apotheke to buy something for my sore throat.  I just spotted an Apotheke at the same time I spotted what I thought looked like a familiar face, Rene from Ich liess mein Herz in Deutschland, but I thought that it must be someone that looked like her as at the time I had no idea she actually lives there, so there is a small possibility my facial recognition skills are not completely kaput. Also I wasn't really a fan of approaching a stranger and freaking them out, or passing on a cold to her and her baby.

Here are some of the pictures I took, sorry for the quality but it was foggy and I was poorly.

There seemed to be a fountain around every corner, the sound of which may or may not make you want to pee.

So this is how foggy it really was, can you see the tower above the building in the background?

How about now? Just a little bit peeking out from the fog...

Even standing right under it you can't really see the top because of the fog!!

Some pretty doors around town and a really cute signpost.  There were some lovely shops selling beautiful knick-knacks that I could have spent a lot of time and money in.  I tried to take some pics of the window displays but failed.

Although my encounter with this beautiful, friendly kitty warmed my heart, my slight sore throat had turned into a fully blown cold and I couldn't stay as long as I had planned so I headed back to the one platformed station and headed home to bed and Lemsips, which is where I am heading again right now.

Whose Voice is it Anyway?

I think that most English speakers find dubbed versions of films and TV quite amusing to watch, and I often wonder if the full character can come across, like the southern gun specialist in CSI:Miami would it be better to give her a strong local dialect in dubbing rather than Hochdeutsch?  Something I that hadn't occurred to me was brought to my attention a few days ago.

I turned on the telly and a film was playing, the well known main actor was dubbed, Uwe had his back to the telly doing something on the computer.  The actor spoke and Uwe immediately said "Oooh Bill Murray!" I of course asked him if he had seen the film before, which he hadn't so I asked him how he knew who it was before looking, by his voice of course.  Now I am sure this is obvious to everyone else but I really hadn't thought that an actor would be dubbed by the same voice over artist for everything they do.  It reminded me of a story I heard a year or so ago about the death of Princess Diana, something crazy like 3000 look-alikes woke up to find themselves without a job.  I suppose it's not a case of "oh thank god Bill's got a new film contract, I can eat this year!" but they must do other acting jobs and put on other voices for different actor's.

Anyway here is a clip of Ghostbusters dubbed in German for your enjoyment!

It's Life Jim, Almost But Not Quite As We Know It!

I admit to being somewhat naive when I first visited Germany, I suppose I thought that we were such close neighbours and relations that most things would be the same as there are back on the Island.  I can put this down to my not being well travelled at all, in fact I had only ever been to France three times, the last of which was when I was 12 and to Amsterdam for a few long weekends. I was 23 when I flew for the first time and with my trips to Germany I have more than doubled my lifetime flying in less than two years.

Things aren't massively different, even the words sound quite similar, but different nonetheless. Over the past three weeks there hasn't been a day when when one of us has enquired along the lines of "You do it that way in Germany?" or "You don't do it that way in England?"

Some of it may be seen as old fashioned by some, but myself I am quite pleased that Germany holds onto some values which have been long forgotten back home.  Here - as I know other bloggers have noted - Sundays are still rest days, the shops except for bakers are closed which means time to do other much funner things instead. 

Supermarkets are smaller and fresh produce is much more seasonal.  In my local Sainsbury's most of the fridges were taken up with ready meals but here I haven't spotted even one that compares, in fact I remember joking with a colleague a few years ago about potatoes not being muddy any more like when I was a child, I am pleased to report the veg here not only has evidence of coming from fields but is also in naturally occurring un-regimented sizes.

The food itself is of course quite different and Junk Food is not quite as widely available, for example back home I could log onto JustEat.co.uk and order anything to be delivered to my door within 45 minutes, or to Sainsbury's for delivery the next day which just isn't possible to do here.  Which is good for me as I did far too much of that through my depressed non leaving house days and as a result have had to join WeightWatchers to work it off.  Now I have rediscovered the joy of cooking along with discovering for the first time the familiarly alien art of German cuisine, if you're interested in any of that you can check out my other blog Slimming in a Foreign Land.

On Monday I opened a Bank Account here, which I was surprised to hear would cost me a monthly fee on top of the cash machine fees which we don't pay in the UK unless it is one of those privately owned extortion machines.  However the most astonishing thing for me was when Uwe informed me he had made an appointment with his "guy at the bank" which I know used to exist in England before everything got centralised and shifted to massive call centres in Newcastle or New Delhi.

I have to say that a lot of things aren't necessarily better or worse over here or there just different, and I generally like how things are done here. I find the only really annoying thing is that most content on Youtube is blocked because of GEMA, but I can reliably tell you that pisses off the Germans just as much.