• Expat

    What You Need to Know Before Moving Overseas

    ‘Steve and Mary from Nuneaton are following their dream, of buying and renovating a period property in rural France. The cottage we are showing them needs a bit of work, but we think that with a bit of updating, it could be stunning. Neither of them speak the language, but they came to this area on holiday last year, and fell in love with the natural beauty and the carefree lifestyle. Mary is an artist, and Steve is a graphic designer, and both hope to set up thriving home businesses in France.’ I quite like watching property shows, particularly A Place in the Sun, but usually spend the episode shouting, ‘NO! Don’t do it!’ at…

  • Germany

    Daily Mail and German Bashing

    I know I have promised to stop reading the Daily Mail. I even considered installing the wonderful Kittenblock as recommended by @ivan_jelical  but this time it was my husband’s fault. To keep up with the gossip from his home country, he skims the Bild Zeitung daily. It is a populist tabloid belonging to the Axel Springer publishing house, read by almost 2.9million Germans and highly influential.   (pic credit) Yesterday, he remarked that the Bild had an article about the Daily Mail and then he clicked on the DM website to read the article in the original English. “Bloody hell, it is even worse than the Bild Zeitung”, was his first comment…

  • Expat

    You just can’t get orange cheese…

    An American friend was chatting to one of his countrymen, who said that they liked living in Geneva, but ‘You just can’t get orange cheese!’ Cheese capital of the world Switzerland does not sell orange cheese in a spray can. For expats this is one of the biggest gripes – that some favourite food stuffs are just not available in the host country. Which is why the American/British food stores thrive in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe. It is the taste of home, the comfort food that we crave, no matter how good the food here is. I have been an expat for 18 years – it was my expat…

  • Food

    Birthday Cake for Football Fan

    My daughter helps to sieve the sugar – still in PJs This week my son reached the grand old age of 6 years old. For the past few weeks he has been avidly following the World Cup so I decided to make a football themed cake. He is Scottish/German so has obviously been supporting Germany (as Scotland did not qualify, no surprise there). Thankfully Germany stayed in the tournament long enough for us to celebrate his birthday. I would have felt a bit daft making a German Flag cake now. My lovely friend at Kitschnbake provided a recipe for Vanilla Yoghurt Cake that is good for birthday cakes. It is a…