hTTi

Today's entry was tricky, I couldn't really find a "C" without using translations, but the places found were all interesting under their German names too. In the end I decided that in Bremen, C is for coffee. (The English spelling was used when they first started importing it). Bremen is o...

And I'm still bored, so I'm going to do a second "B" Botanika is an indoor botanical garden with science center, in the Rhododendron-Park (Which will be my entry for 'R' probably). It contains over 80 different exhibits about plants and animals, various terrariums as well as a reef aquari...

A common name for a barrelmaker is a cooper, and so a Böttcher is a cooper, the content I stole to base my description on, translated as barrelmaker in one place and cooper in another when I stuck it into deepl to get the meaning :-). There are lots of names for people who make barrels in both engli...

And I was today years old when I found out that the big gold relief at the entrance to Böttcherstraße (First picture in my post) is called Der Lichtbringer, and is meant to depict the victory of Hitler over dark forces. The relief was intended to rescue Roselius's reputation with the Nazi party, the...

OK It's raining here in Bremen so I'm going to do this weekend's entry today instead of going out. Today B is for "Böttcherstraße" Böttcherstraße (Cooper's Street in english) is named for the barrel makers that worked between the market square and the river-port making barrels to store eve...

I can try, but I'm pretty bad at doing that kind of thing. Still, here you go, A is for Am Wall Am Wall.png Right in the middle of town, the area around the old town walls is an oasis of calm. The park is lovely all year round, although my favourite time is in the spring when the first displays of f...

Well I had a lovely weekend, didn't do any gardening, didn't get out my bike, but I did manage to go into town, look for a new coat and decide that I can get my old one fixed instead. Bought a ticket for the Bürgerpark-Tombola and won a pair of Bremen socks. Had coffee in a cafe in the town. All in ...

So we have a whole section to ourselves here in Bremen, and no-one is posting in it.

I'm bored and I thought perhaps someone else from Bremen might have some suggestions for fun things for an unfit middle-aged single man to do at the weekend.

It's trivially easy to get replacement birth-certificates, we all know this, but it will take a couple of weeks not a couple of hours, and they won't get you on the plane anyway. It's also reasonable to assume the kids might have been born in another EU country, they still get dual citizenship. Befo...

How do you get your UK birth-certificate when you are already overseas? Will an airline accept a birth-certificate? The issue here is that you could easily head for the country of second citzenship without knowing you need a UK passport to come home. EDIT: It's a hypothetical with an example from a ...

Although I moan about this new rule, for me it's fairly easy I can pay or choose not to travel to the UK. Far worse is the issue for dual nationals growing up in the UK and ending up stuck when they go abroad. Take the following example:- One parent is from an EU country, the other is from the UK, y...

Today this is the mood.

Also while we are on the whole topic, how come they can make a paper passport which gives me entry to the UK and loads of other places for £94.50, but to make a digital "Certificate of entitlement" it costs £589? I mean I would still be pissed off if I had to pay 94.50 but 589 looks like p...

The driving license thing kinda makes sense though, a driving license has very little to do with your nationality or your entitlement to visit the UK. I mean it has your date and place of birth on it, which is a start towards establishing your citizenship, but on it's own it's nowhere near enough. Y...

This just made me laugh when a friend shared it:-

"The Royal family are said to be devastated after Prince Andrew's car crash next Wednesday".

Regarding the expired passport topic:- Dual nationals could use expired UK passports to prove they are British, Home Office says I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, I am British and not having a British passport doesn't change that. From the article:- Morgan Read, an immigration barrister a...

The single easiest solution from the UK side would be to let us have an ESTA and travel on our EU passports. I mean if my German sister-in-law can visit the UK for a two week holiday on a German passport + ESTA, how on earth could it be problematic for me to do the same?

This in the Guardian looks interesting:- Ryanair may let dual nationals board UK flights with an expired British passport That should be enough for me to get in, but I'm sure there are plenty of people who never had a UK passport but are dual-nationality citizens and they still have a challenge ahea...

4 years ago today was the last day I spent with Bettina.
That night I sat up reading to her whilst Rumours played in the background. She was too out of it to know what was going on, but it helped me.

This seems to fill my mind on 14th Feb now.

It doesn't really add much, the uk government quote was:- From 25 February 2026, all dual British citizens will need to present either a valid British passport or certificate of entitlement to avoid delays at the border "Avoid delays at the border" is very much not the same as "denied...