Three years ago I was living in Germany and eager to share my experiences with the world. I was going on seven months as an expat and I jumped at the chance to join an expat interview series by a popular blogger. Last month I discovered that the interview was taken down (thanks to my broken link checker – such a useful tool). I don’t want my work to be wasted, especially when it’s so hard to work with chronic pain, so […]
How long does it take for a new place to start feeling like home? Probably not long if you’ve only moved across town, but it took seven months for me after we moved across an ocean. I wasn’t sure that Schweinfurt would ever feel like home during the 13 months we planned to live here, but yet I started having unexpectedly warm fuzzy feelings about going home at the end of a long train ride back from Berlin. Perhaps the […]
I’m not going to pretend like Schweinfurt’s Volksfest was impressive, because it wasn’t. At least not after we’d already been to the larger ones in Würzburg and Nürnberg. I was also a bit upset when I realized the people running the Schweinfurt Facebook page were using photos of the Volksfest from the previous year (without stating that they were doing so), which led me to believe there were different rides available than there actually were. But it’s not every day […]
1. Is this just an excuse to have another festival? Probably. 2. Wait a minute, this might be an excuse to sit outside and drink lots of beer. That’s more likely. 3. Why is there a giant pirate ship? I don’t know. But they serve beer. 4. Is that Linkin Park that I hear blasting? Yes, and it’s coming from the merri-go-round… 5. Can I ride this?? YES!!! I can and I did and it was awesome. Mr. Meena might […]
I started learning about the Schweinfurt pigs the day that we got the offer to move there. There isn’t a lot of information about Schweinfurt available online (you can read most of it in about an hour) and the pigs were the only thing that was interesting to me at the time. It was my one fun fact to share when I told people about the small German town that we were moving to (because 99.9% of people had no idea […]
Mr. Meena and I spent four short days in Schweinfurt, Germany, to prepare for our move there in less than a month. It was encouraging and a bit terrifying at the same time. A lot of people at Mr. Meena’s company have told us that most Germans speak English and are happy to practice it whenever they get a chance. This was not what we experienced. I understand a bit better now what foreigners that visit America for the first […]
This is my fifth yearly digest since my blog began in July 2015, and I really love writing them. I enjoy going through my files, documents, statistics, and photos to relive the last year – it’s amazing how quickly I’ll forget what happened just six or seven months ago. When I started writing the digests I figured they would mostly be for my benefit, but over 200 people read my 2018 digest. That’s not a huge number, but I’m impressed […]
We were able to stop in Hildesheim for just a few hours on our way to Hamburg, Germany in August 2016, although the lovely city certainly deserved more of our time. I had developed a deep wanderlust for German cities that were full of half-timbered houses and so Hildesheim had quickly risen to the top of my must-see list. Walking along the rose route in Hildesheim was a bit inadvertent, however. I had planned a walking tour for our visit and it just […]
Allow me to introduce Koopa, my four year old pet budgie, emotional support animal, and pint-sized travel companion. She is named after Koopa Troopa, a turtle-like character from the Super Mario series. She loves to eat corn and climb in my hair. Koopa also loves to fly laps around our home and requires constant supervision. I love her so much it hurts. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Koopa is that she travels with us! People, especially dog or cat […]
I am delighted that Rhiann from My Brain Lesion and Me found my blog worthy of A Lovely Blog Award. Rhiann is a fellow chronic illness blogger from the UK who lives with a neurological condition. I’ve found her blog to be very relatable and also lovely. One of my favorite posts by her is 2017: A Year for Grace, where she talks about showing kindness to yourself as a chronic illness warrior when it’s hard to follow through. A Lovely Blog […]