hTTi

It's not my usual bag at all, but I am a commissioner for oaths. If you just need someone to witness signatures / certify documents I could help. We'd almost certainly need to meet in person though. I am based in Bad Muenstereifel which is in NRW but near the RLP border. I'm also planning another wi...

One thing which helped surviving going full-on native in the early days, and something which would help learning the language and integrating generally, was having a hobby/interest which was not heavily dependent upon good German. When you are spending so much of your time feeling socially constrain...

From my experience, there's no option but to go properly native. The hardest thing about learning German, was being known to speak English (I started speaking German when living in cities, this would be less of an issue here in the Eifel). It always offers the easy way out. Don't know that word? Spe...

Football training tonight. I agreed to help Kid 2's team at the start of the season, as the usual trainer doesn't have time this year, and I've been surprised how much I have enjoyed it. There are several things which have been making me pretty unhappy of late, so on Saturday, when the D-Jugend team...

Pharmacies are indeed your friend for yeasts. Being German, you can usually be very specific with what you're after. Otherwise, you can always get someone from the UK to send over small packs/sachets of dried cider or beer yeast from loads of places (Wilkinsons - if that still exists, or even Asda o...

Then the answer would seem to be that you either have to reduce/flex your requirements (for example, the Skoda Octavia instead of the more or less identical Golf) or increase your budget I'm afraid. Despite having lived here for over 8 years this time, I'm always amazed by how expensive used cars ar...

As a few posters have said, from my experience mobile.de seems to offer the widest choice of cars online. It is only a marketplace though (it is just like Autotrader in the UK). Whilst I always use it when looking for cars, the experience is always completely dependent upon the seller. In addition t...

Yes, in the UK I used to make it every year, but we have so many prolific soft fruit trees here that I've been more focussed on wine over the last few years. Here's how I typically make cider: 50/50 split of cooking and eating apples (although I have used 100% fallen cooking apples and added more ho...

Forget the supermarkets, cider is a perfect entry drink into homebrew, as it's hard to get completely wrong. The coward's way would be to buy some apple juice you like, put it in a clean bucket and some yeast (and sugar to taste). Then just leave it for a few weeks before bottling (about a teaspoon ...

Thanks for that info Franklan. Yes, the Ardennes is close (in fact I was there yesterday) and quite similar, so that would make sense.

Whilst walking my dog this morning, I believe I spotted a black stork. It was by itself as it flew along the river valley and perched on top of a tree stump only about 50 yards away from me. My understanding was that whilst these might be commonplace in the former East German states, they didn't liv...

Just looked in the fridge and saw the two huge, fresh truffels waiting for me. A neighbour dug them out of her garden yesterday and gave them to me as a thanks for barbequeing yesterday. I may have mentioned this once of twice, but the Eifel is brilliant. Will now boil up some pasta, and start grati...

That Eifel (can't resist) tower is a handy thing to have about the place, when you want to put on a decent light show isn't it? Spectacular. A surprising amount of non-French people had starring roles like carrying the flame though....is France lacking celebrities or was it deliberately internationa...

Oh come on Kiplette, you can't leave us hanging like that. Apologies if it sounds like I am questioning you, but a British person writing, "the reasons why I want to be German" sounds like it would be high on the list for shortest ever novel (being distinct from, say, "reasons why I w...

I have a strange fondness for these, "Dear Sir, You've been granted USD 500m" emails. Today's was from "500m MEGA WINNER" Mr Richard Wahl, who told me: "Reply with the CODE [TRNS00009] to this email: bankofamerica@internationalbangroup.com. They will process the delivery. Yo...

I used a very simple one pager, with all of the following as bullet points. Persönliche Daten (name, contact details, family status, DOB, nationality) Studium (reverse chronological order) Berufliche Laufbahn (reverse chronological order) Kenntnisse/Fähigkeiten (languages spoken) My signature with d...

The slugs lost the battle for cabbage....to the deer (and to rabbits in the case of strawberries). Tomatoes still green here (always a bit later up here), but otherwise looking plentiful. A family of foxes turned up at the bottom of the garden yesterday, so I guess that means that whilst I may be lo...

My gamble paid off as my proxy voting papers turned up at my sister's house yesterday, so just in time (of course, in all likelihood that will just reduce Richard Grosvenor Plunkett Ernle Erle Drax's majority to 19,999 but it's the principle that counts). I've heard Dorset is far from alone in faili...

It was on Magenta. The last of the games to be exclusively on Magenta, so if you don't have it, you won't miss any more. Austria were pretty dominant and had plenty of chances for most of the game and then lots of end to end stuff at the end. Entertaining game, but Turkey will be unlikely to beat th...

The natives here seem convinced that Germany is the best team in the tournament. I reckon Spain have played the best football so far, and already beaten some good teams. Sadly, it is rarely the team which plays the nice football which wins the tournament....although that's good news for England (hop...