The reasons are not simple to outline but they roughly break down as:

• Nicole is travelling a lot with her job and currently a 2 hour meeting in Frankfurt takes 3 days with irregular and badly connecting flights
• When I have to meet in the UK I lose a lot time on travelling to the UK – it is not cheap either since Ryanair left the airport here after an argument with the city government.
• We have been here 8 months yet still know very few people
• There is more to life than fantastic weather and a wonderful city

We have yet to find a flat in Germany but we don’t expect things to be quite as complex there – we will move to a town which is about 5km from where Nicole grew up.

Thats the news for now  - sorry it has been a while – but maybe you want to follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/grouchal

In all it has worked well-even when Nicole’s nephew Luca has taken-over the livingroom whilst sleeping the large terrace has made this not a problem. I have been able to work during the day fairly normally and they have even taken care of most of the cooking so it has in some ways been better than normal.

It took a bit of work to persuade them to hire bikes as it cost €40 each for the week and they were not sure they would use them. In the end it turned out that we went out on the bikes everyday and most of the days more than once. I had hoped that the bikes would also help them feel independent-and that seemed to be the case.

All in all a good week but it has made us grateful we have such a large flat(and terrace). It has also made us realise a few things we would change when looking for a new flat.

I had packed most of the van the day before, but we were up at 7 to finish the packing and then at 8 Nicole’s dad and two Brothers-in-law helped load up the heavy stuff onto the roofrack.

We had a final breakfast with Nicole’s parents and Nicole’s sister Kerstin and her husband Timo stated saying our goodbyes and then I started having problems with the vision in my left eye. The vision problem always happens when I am going to get a migraine. So I took a pill and said my goodbyes not properly being able to see, and not feeling great expecting the headache to begin. Normally when I get a migraine I goand sleep for a couple of hours – mostly to avoid the numbness that I get in my right hand.

We then popped around to see Nicole’s other sister Silke and Nicole’s nephew Luca to say goodbye. Luca (18 months old) has been a great little friend for me while I have been there. He got attached to my name because it was so easy to say – Al, and I got attached to him because neither of us really understood most of the conversations and everyone talked to us in simple words. I spent a lot of time chasing him around and playing with him.

Once we had done our goodbyes we went to do the next most important thing – buy some bread to take with us (the Spanish bread is not as good!). Finally after all of this we got going at about 10:30.

It was about 20 minutes before we crossed the border to Luxembourg and followed the Mosel into France another 20 minutes later. Just as we crossed into France there was a call on Nicole’s mobile (Handy as they say in German) I saw it was Nicole’s dad so handed the phone to her smiling and saying “What have we forgotten?”.

The phonecall was Nicole’s mum (Hanne) saying that we had a letter from the car insurance company saying that we were no longer insured with them. Hanne had phoned the company up and found out that because we had still not proven that we had a large no claims bonus in the UK they were terminating the insurance. This was particularly frustrating as we had spoken to them the week before about this and they said all we needed to do was change the insurance from Nicole’s name to mine and all would be fine. At this point my migraine started feeling even worse.

So there we were just inside France and completely illegally driving – what to do next? Well it seemed there were a few options – either we got some insurance and carried on driving, turned around and went back or we drove on illegally. Nicole was convinced we would not get insurance sorted over the phone (as I would expect in the UK) and I was not happy about going back (“Never go back”) but we are also not the type of people to have taken the risk on driving illegally – so what to do?

After much discussion we decided to try and sort out the insurance over the phone and after 2 hours we were insured again – phew! (if you look carefully at the picture above you will see Nicole on the phone in the front of the van gong through the long winded negotiations). The reason it took so long was that the situation was not simple with us already being in France – me being British and us needing the insurance that day. It became more complex when Nicole’s German phone ran out of pay-as-you-go credit. Then her UK phone refused to phone a German number until we drove back into Luxembourg and were in range of German mobile phone signals again.

The rest of the day went quite smoothly – we drove through France with ease, occasionally stopping but mostly just trucking along. The migraine got better for me – but Nicole started to get some stomach problems.

We got within about 200km from the south coast of France by 10pm and decided to look for a campsite. This proved to be quite easy and we got to see some nice bits of France off the motorways.

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Day 2 of our journey went much more smoothly, the motorway went along the south coast of France and then into Spain and along the cost in Spain. The motorway had (selfishly) been built often as far away as 15km from the actual sea – so we only got glimpses of the sea – but it was still a very pleasant drive.

We got to the flat at 4:30pm and then had to wait an hour or so until the Landlord turned up to let us in – but that was it – the start of a new adventure. By 7pm the Landlord had left and we were in our new home.

We now feel settled in our new flat in Valencia – it has been a hard few weeks since my last update.

Mostly spent socialising, packing and working – fun  but exhausting I shall try to put up a few posts about more things that I learnt whilst in Germany before starting on the Spanish stories!

Today we are going to try and get tickets for the football this evening, but we are not sure how easy that will be. We know where the stadium is as we looked at a flat right next door to it. The strange thing here is that football matches start at 10pm – so we plan to watch the game and then go for a curry on our final night here in April.

We saw the local places in our Barrio (I’ll explain that term another time) – the local fruit shops, butchers, bakers, bars and coffee shops.

Got a feel for the neighbourhood and walked down to the beach also.

After going to look at the flat in the evening, we decided to celebrate in true English style in a local curry house. Unfortunately we forgot that nothing serving food really opens here until at least after 8 if not later and we were a little  too early.

So we caught a bus back to the old town and headed for another place we had been recommended – a taps bar near the one of the main squares. Wonderful – fairly cheap, nice maze-like interior and a the food was quite good. It was amusing to see that yet again Nicole managed to find a place next to some Germans (this is a curse that has haunted her ever since she came to the UK, she seems to never be more than 10 metres from another German – she hates it (-: ).

Today we are off to find out about the Valencia Tennis Open (see here) we are not sure what to expect but it must be better than the Milton Keynes Open or the Serrig Open (Nicole’s village).

We have decided we are not quite yet ready for a relaxing quiet life out of the city – we have had too much time in Milton Keynes – now we need to have life!! :-D

So we will move into the city apartment and have to  cycle to see the views (about the width of Walnut Tree) and be on the beach – hardly a hardship!

The plan is still on for the first week of May – this evening we go to sign and pay the deposit.

Valencia here we come!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are now at the end of the day and faced with our decision between two properties.

One in centre of Valencia:

And one on the outskirts by but the beach – infact 8 floors up with a great view of the sea in one direction and the plains of Valencia and the mountains in the other:

What’s the problem – why not just go for the great views? well it feels like it could be quite remote and we will have to work there everyday in addition to living there. What is the problem with the city centre apartment then? It is quite small – and also it is hard to imagine living and working there.

After a sleep hopefully all will be clear to us……..

It is quite exciting – but it will also be very rushed – it will be hard to make a decision in one day – but for this reason we hope to only sign a 6 month contract.

Will post more details once we are back next week.

Ever since Nicole moved to the UK she has noticed regisration plates – foreign cars (especially German ones) and sometimes English ones also. I never look at registration plates – unless for some reason I am forced to, in traffic jam say or when following the same car for ages on motorway. I might know the end three letters for a few friends cars so that I could recognise them but nothing more.

I have always found it strange how Nicole knows the whole of the registrations from all her family and some of her friends – firstly I thought this was something peculiar to Nicole but then found out that this seems to be quite common in Germany.

Now that we have had to register our van I found out much more about the German registrations plates – and it all makes sense.

The first two letters (as you possibly know) represent the city that the car is registerd in, M for Munich and HH for Hamburg and in this region it is TR for Trier.  Then there are two more letters and then 3 numbers. When we went to register the van I found out that for €10 you can pick the letters and numbers and most people do – and therefore there is a system for them also.

I know from the top of my head Nicole’s dad’s registration plate as it has his initials and the last three numbers are the month and day of his birthday. Our van has my name AL and the last three numbers are the day after Nicole and I met (the actual day was already taken).

So what I have realised is that once you know the system you keep noticing cars on the road, if I am walking in the village and there is a car coming towards me I look at the first two letters straight away – if they are not TR I probably don’t know the people inside. If they are then I might see if I recognise the car then look at the next two letters to guess who it might be from their initials – honestly I didn’t start this on purpose like a train spotter I just suddenly realised I was doing it – they all do here!

So there you go – another little mystery about Nicole solved for me – each day I learn more! :-D