A day of cycling in Wiesbaden

Some of the things I've come to love in Germany more than living anywhere else away from home are the things that remind me of home. Sydney had very subtle differences to Melbourne, London more obvious ones, and now in Frankfurt I find every supermarket trip to be a challenge if i'm attempting to find the things that I'm comfortable with and make me feel like, just for one meal or so, I'm not having to try something new.

Don't get me wrong - I love trying new things - but occasionally it can become rather tiring attempting to continually do things you're not used to and sometimes you just want that creature comfort that you know you'll love and won't take any time to be unbelievably enjoyable. So when I found out there was an English/Australian style fish and chip shop in the nearby city of Wiesbaden, I put it at the top of my list to make a visit.

Apparently they serve the fish and chips in newspaper as well - a concept that the boyfriend was completely confused by. Wouldn't the ink run onto the food? No, for some reason. Wouldn't it be really soggy and gross? Well, yes to the first bit and no to the second. So in order to show him just how amazing this meal that reminded me of my childhood and endless summers in Aus was, and then how awesome England was, we trekked out to the town which takes about an hour to get to from Frankfurt.

One of the things that everyone notices when they are travelling through Europe is the amount of cyclists around. My first chance to become one of those European cyclists came on a short trip to Amsterdam about 4 years ago. Within 10 minutes I had nearly been hit by a tram and my friend's tyre was flat. After this I decided maybe biking wasn't for me, but since moving here my boyfriend has had other ideas.

A big fan of any kind of sports and adventure sports, if he's not attempting to convince me to go to Italy for a week of paragliding (only 2000 euros and you get to keep the paraglide apparently! I don't think in my life have i ever longed for a paraglide in my wardrobe?!) he's getting me to book diving, kayaking and rafting on our trip to Croatia. I certainly don't mind, and enjoy being influenced into doing things like this, but when it comes to biking i turn into a scared little 10 year old all over again, flying towards a tree with my dad yelling at me to slam on the brakes and looking ahead to my perceived death.

So when he suggested we take the bikes to Weisbaden and ride around the city, I needed some reassurances. Will there be any uphill? Certainly not! Will we be able to cycle on the footpath? Of course! And will there be loads of other cyclists so we're not the only ones weaving in and out of the people? Obviously. Assured by his answers, i got back on the bike (literally) and we took off for the train.

One thing I should have learnt a long time ago was that generally, when you're in a relationship and want someone to do something that they normally wouldn't be ok with but you think they'll enjoy once they're doing it, you dress up the truth just a little bit with a white lie or two and then you'll be the hero when they realise you were right to make them do it. I know this because I constantly did it to boyfriends (come on this holiday! it'll be so cheap, we'll hardly spend any money! Or we'll go to the party but i promise i won't get too drunk/it won't be late and we can leave whenever you're ready). Anyway, turns out there were not many other bikes at all, we were on the road and there was this AMAZING hill we just had to climb to get the best view of the city.

And unfortunately for my stubbornness, despite feeling some pretty strong feelings of hate as I walked my bike up that bloody hill while he circled me saying 'it's better if you just ride it!' over and over with no understanding that in English this sentence has a double meaning, we made it to the top. And the view was actually pretty decent after all.

Weisbaden is actually a really beautiful city, with wineries winding through the old German houses and mansions and beautiful historical buildings surrounded by cobblestones. Not great to ride a bike on, but the place above was perfect for a quick nap before we set down the hill at a much faster pace than I had forced myself up it!

The view of the city - was it worth that horrendous ride? I'm still undecided.

When we finally made it to the fish and chip shop, we found it was closed on Sundays. Pretty disappointed, but a challenging day of riding on the road for the first time, discovering muscles i never thought i had and seeing some pretty beautiful views soothed my disappointment. One thing I've found since moving to Germany; you really never can guess what the next week is going to bring.

xx

Summer Returns to the Mindset in Frankfurt

One of the things that I got very used to living in London was the unpredictable weather. Rain or shine, you always took your umbrella out with you, and the decision over whether to got for a cheap one which would blow inside out after three goes and require buying another, or splash out on an expensive one with a week's worth of pay and have it blow inside out after six goes, was a question we constantly asked ourselves and one another. This was equally the case in summer and winter. For the first time I owned a winter coat and one pair of socks wouldn't cut it - again, this was the case at some points of the summer as well as throughout the winter as we bemoaned the death of our favourite season from our lives and sunk another pint at the pub.

It's well documented that London's summer leaves much to be desired. I always loved Nick Hornby's description of a pub's outdoor area in England in his book 'A Long Way Down':

“I took her outside on to a little roof terrace that looked like it never got the sun at nay time of the day or year, but there was a picnic table and a grill out there anyway. Those little grills are everywhere in England, right? To me they've come to represent the triumph of hope over circumstance, seeing as all you can do is peer at them out the window through the pissing rain.” 

I think the best part about this quote is that it actually represents the entirety of summer in London; while it is as unpredictable as the winter in terms of weather, and will only bring you a collective couple of weeks of pure joy, when it does the Londoners come out in full force to sunbathe in the parks, bask in the beer gardens and try and take in and enjoy every aspect of the sun on their skin like a temporary triumph over the general shittiness of their city's weather.

Moving to Frankfurt, I naively expected more of the same - after all, Germany is pretty cold in the winter and it's not as though I'm moving to a beautiful beachside town. But somehow it is here that i've recaptured that summer feeling where the sleepless nights, warm days for months on end and the ability to go out without a coat of any kind have reminded me so much of one of the greatest things of living in Aus.

I bought my first fan the other day since moving to Europe; while England does have a few hot days the nights are mostly cool and any uncomfortable-ness at the heat never lasted long enough for me to mind. Here, it is the opposite. So far, I've made a blind for my sky window to try and stop the heat getting in, woken up at 3am to reach for the fan many times, twice breaking glasses and scaring the whole house in the process, and brought back a sheet I left in London (apparently Germans don't do sheets, apart from the undersheet - they do 'summer blankets', with the blanket part clearly defeating the purpose) to become my new bedding.

My homemade blind - First DIY project! Material,
velcro and fabric glue (which sticks to walls apparently)
came to 17 Euros in total :)

There's also a beach here - well sort of, it's a lake with sand and the Germans don't seem to be able to explain to me thus far how the sand got there. It's no Manly but it's certainly a nice break from citylife.

Frankfurt's version of a beach.

So far I would say the summers I experienced in Sydney are very much like this temperature-wise, and while I don't enjoy the sleeplessness or the uncomfortable-ness, I have to admit it's been a nice feeling to live somewhere that does summer properly again.

One of the things that makes summer easier as well is the many beautiful parks surrounding Frankfurt city. I live just a 10 minute walk from the centre, and pass two parks on my way to the shops which is a nice change from my life in London where the choice was more either the park or the city centre, not both (unless you could afford one of those awesome Chelsea-style apartment blocks with the private parks).

It does seem the tradition in London of wanting to get away for the summer has carried through to Frankfurt. For us, it'll be a trip to Croatia for a week and a half to sunbathe, go diving and white water rafting, then onto a beach town in Hungary called 'Siofok' (it looks nice in google images) and then Budapest for the music festival which according to my seasoned-friend will be the best festival I'll ever go to. After Glastonbury I'm not so sure that's possible.

At one of the cocktail nights which I'm a regular attendant of, someone who had been living in Frankfurt told me that the city is much more lively in the summer than the winter. I found that hard to believe as I'd been here for Christmas markets and they were pretty damn lively. Perhaps she was referring to the months of January-June, when like London the place probably closes down into a counting down period until we can lose the wellies, put our winter coats in storage, and open those outdoor areas of the German beerhouses once more. But at least when next winter comes in Frankfurt, I'll be counting down until what I know will be a real long hot summer, not just a couple of collective weeks with a feeling deep down that I've moved to a place where climatically at least, I will not be compatible in the long term.

Till next time xx

Five Reasons Why Glastonbury Blew My Mind

I'm not the most seasoned festival goer, or the biggest music lover (I tend to listen to music for background noise more than as a hobby), but whenever the chance has risen to head out with friends to watch some live music, no matter what the genre I've always been up for giving a performer a chance. My only camping festival experience before Glastonbury had been Reading in 2011, and despite the young age group in attendance and the normal practise of burning tents on the last night, as well as only really knowing the headline acts, I had had an amazing time.

So Glastonbury - I assumed it would be a lot like Reading (in the basic sense), and with it being a serious bucket list item for me - when I was a kid and watched clips on Video Hits of the festival, I never dreamt in a million years I'd be able to go one day - we enthusiastically all got up at an ungodly hour on a hungover morning in October 2012 to get tickets to a five day event where we didn't have the slightest clue who would be performing. There were rumours the Rolling Stones would be there, but I didn't want to get my hopes up about seeing one of the most famous bands in the last 50 years.

Fast forward nine months, and I am so thankful that I decided to try and get those tickets on that fateful day. Because what I experienced over June 26-July 1st was something that I don't know if I'll ever have the chance to experience again (though there are plans to do a trip back to Glasto for my 30th!). Here's five reasons why it blew my mind and surpassed every expectation I had:

1. It's not a festival, it's a town

As the days went by we began to feel more like we were part of a town than at a music festival. Getting lost on the first night while we were trying to find V Bar (which turned out to be B Bar, hence the trouble finding it), the walk around just one of the parts of Glasto took around half an hour. I've been to small towns around Europe and this could certainly have passed off as one of them. From areas with craft fields and endless shops with artwork, clothes and festival accessories, to areas for Latino food and music, to a weird 'heaven and hell' area which would be interesting to walk through on acid, to chill out and acoustic areas, to the circus tent, to the place where if i were a child, I'd be in heaven... Glastonbury really had absolutely everything and I know in the six days we were there we certainly didn't nearly see everything.

Glasto: More town than festival

2. The music you never knew before, and can't live without now

We were a rather large group, but myself and two good friends planned to navigate our own way around and meet up with the others as we went along.

I was lucky to have mates with good musical taste!

I won't say I was overwhelmed with joy at the line up (apart from the Stones, obviously) - Arctic Monkeys and Mumford & Sons are not two of my favourite bands, and when my friends moved to convince me to go elsewhere it was a rather easy task. Friday night, we saw Chic feat. Nile Rodgers, and it was like a musical education. A guy I'd never heard of before that night, has written some of the most influential songs in history, penning for Madonna, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Duran Duran and most recently his sample is on the Daft Punk song Get Lucky. He really is the musical gift that keeps on giving and I'm kicking myself for not having known him earlier. Meanwhile, on Sunday we saw American singer/guitarist Gary Clark Jnr, and he equally surprised me. He just screamed cool in ways I don't know if I've ever seen in a live show before, and he's been added indefinitely to my Spotify playlist now.

3. The headliners surpassed unbelievably high expectations

I had a feeling seeing the Rolling Stones on Saturday night, at Glastonbury, and from the planned front of the stage position we were going for, would be a performance to beat every other that I've witnessed in my life. As the days led up to their set, we all talked about the possibility of being disappointed after hyping ourselves up so much for it. I accepted it was going to be a likely fact that they wouldn't be as good as I pictured in my head. I complained when my friends made their way to the front, concerned about the pushing and the inability to pee for the next four or so hours while we waited. But as they came on, I was instantly transported back to when I was that child, watching them on Video Hits and feeling like they were so far away from reality.

He had the moves like the Jagger of old

Now, they were right in front of me, and sounded every bit as when I was on summer holidays with my parents, blaring them out of the sound system. Like their music or not, their performance within itself was extraordinary; my grandfather can hardly walk, and after years of drugs, alcohol and partying these guys still have every bit the energy you'd expect from a 20 year old performer. So Stones, I salute you, and thank you for putting on a show I'll remember till I'm your age at least.

4. The friends you make

We were lucky enough to have some great friends willing to take our tents for us on a 4am bus on the Wednesday, almost rendering our 7am trip pointless. But when we arrived to tents already set up, and a group area in place and drinks at the ready, it was like we had our own community within the Glasto town already. Whenever you needed a break from the music, there was always someone to chill out with back at the tents as we all planned our itineraries to meet up at different points of the day. I went knowing about 5 people, but have come back with an entire group of new mates, and the in-jokes, the banter, the drinking games, the 'i have never's' where I learnt far too much about these people, were as much a part of the experience as the music.

My birthday night at Glastonbury - spent with my new best friends

5. Post-Glasto Life just isn't the same

Here I was thinking that after six days I'd be desperate to go home and have a shower, eat normal food again, and have the privilege of standing up while I got changed rather than having to be creative in my tiny tent. But when I woke up on Monday morning, and looked around at the deserted camp site while struggling to compute how to start packing, the last thing in the world that I wanted was to go home. Walking through the train station back at London Victoria, people were all dressed normally, and it made me so sad! After returning to Frankfurt I've showered less than I thought I would, and my desperation for cheese toasties in the morning has grown considerably. Gigwise summed up the post-Glasto blues much better than I have, but getting ready for a night out last night, when Daft Punk came on my Spotify, I'm not going to lie, it brought a small tear to my eye.

So there you have it kids. If you get the opportunity, do Glastonbury once in your life, you won't regret it I solemnly swear. Of course, I am off to Budapest in a month for Szeiget music festival, so my blues are being soothed by this fact somewhat!

Till next time xx

Heidelberg and Sachsenhausen: A tale of two towns

Since I arrived in Frankfurt, my girlfriends from the UK have been planning a trip over to see me. Luckily, Ryanair does flights between the cities for around 40 euros return if you book early enough, so with a few whatsapps and phone calls we worked out the weekend before my birthday was the perfect opportunity for them to drop by and see my Frankfurt life.

Showing off the life you've made for yourself to others who were a big part of your old one is always really exciting; I always feel the need to explain how different everything is where I am now, and all the good bits about my life and surroundings. The trouble with Frankfurt is that it's very much the kind of place you need to spend a bit of time in to get to know; the festivals and the weekly pop up events, as well as spending time with friends and doing things the outskirts of the city are what make it great. Otherwise it's just like any other city really, with a lot of skyscrapers, a river and a church, and shops that are shut for half the weekend (which still drives me crazy by the way!).

So myself and the boy devised a plan to take the girls to Heidelberg for the day. Heidelberg is about 90km outside of Frankfurt, and apparently is literally the geographical heart of Europe. With a castle and beautiful surrounding parks, it's the quintessential German town that everyone pictures is hidden in between the more modern cities around the country.

We arrived at about 12pm, with a rather elaborate picnic in tow that included fruit, sandwiches, treats and Frankfurt-made Apfelwein. We found a spot with a beautiful view of the castle, and the boy had ever so cleverly brought along shuttlecocks, one of those rocket things you throw that makes a funny noise and a frisbee.

The day was so relaxing, and the girls couldn't be happier to get some sun; I've been taking it for granted a bit here, and I didn't realise the weather was still so poor in London. One thing i can feel glad about having left is that god-awful weather, where the label 'summer' was surely a joke term for the middle months of the year.

So after the picnic we went for a walk through the town, which was absolutely beautiful and packed with like-minded tourists for the day. Ice cream could be purchased for 1 euro - i don't think i've ever seen ice cream that cheap in my life - and after a quick look at the bridge, and a few of the locks, we started the trek home.

Before I moved to Frankfurt, I was told by quite a few people that it's a rather boring city. After having lived here a few months now, I don't really understand how any city in Germany can be boring if this is considered to be the slowest of them all. And i'm entirely certain that the countless hens and stag parties that parade through Frankfurt would disagree with such critics. On a Saturday night everyone seems to congregate to Sachsenhausen, where the Apfelwein pours freely, cocktails are 5 euros and tequila or jager shots well set you back just 1 a piece.

With bars everywhere, you know it's going to get rowdy from around 9pm on every occasion. The hen and stag parties are brilliant here; they must sell alcohol and sex toys to fund their night out, which leads to even more drunkenness without the cheap drinks on offer.

Meeting up with some friends from the girls nights, one of my new found frankfurt friends was well aware of a karaoke bar up the road that we knew after one too many long island iced teas we had to try. The audience was encouraging, and we spent the rest of the night belting out Bon Jovi and Backstreet Boys songs.

I believe this was us singing Livin' on a Prayer

Considering I have only been here three months, it was a pretty nice way to celebrate a pretend birthday before jetting off to Glastonbury for the real thing, and in stark contrast to my first birthday in London where I didn't feel I had enough friends to have a proper party. It really was the perfect way to spend my birthday in Frankfurt, and a reminder of why I love this city so much.

Till next time xx

A Happy Ending To My Visa Nightmare

I'm a born and bred Australian citizen, and though I have a German surname, we're really not sure where that comes from, as my grandparents are all born in Australia and my father doesn't know very much about his family. As a result of this, I have an Australian passport. And as a result of this, the last six months have been spent in complete limbo, resulting in a complete change of life-plans and being rather broke, even though I'm technically not broke at all, while I've been trying to set up this life. It's been a tough and long six months trying to get a visa that will allow me to work in Europe, and on Monday, when it finally came my way, I wanted to cry, and scream, and ended up eating an entire wheel of camembert and a packet of Trollis to celebrate.

It all started with attempting to get my English visa - I employed an agency to help me as I didn't want to get anything wrong or file incorrect documents. I'd heard the horror stories, and didn't want to be one of them, so I thought I had done everything right. Unfortunately, the agency I picked didn't ask me the right questions, and as a result, the British consulate are currently accusing me of deception and not handing in the right forms because I was apparently trying to hide certain information. With the British immigration system, there's no room to explain yourself, no room for an 'honest mistake' the first time around at least. And in in this one rejection, which they probably thought about for a total of 30 seconds, my life completely fell apart.

For a week I held myself together, and was proud that I cried only once. I was stuck in Australia at the time, with all my stuff back in the UK, unsure if I would even be able to get back in the country to get it out. My ticket home to London passed me by, and as I couldn't get a refund so did about 500 pounds, and as my performance in my job suffered and my boyfriend waited patiently in Germany for news, hope that I would get my life back was dwindling.

But then some came, in the form of a lawyer who (no shit) thinks I have a pretty strong case to appeal what Britain is currently accusing me of. And he told me that I could work in any other country I could get a visa in. A quick call to the German embassy, and suddenly I was moving there for good.

I was faced with two choices: to wait in Australia and apply there or get to Germany straight away and go through the local authorities. Apparently Frankfurt is easy to deal with as it's a big city. For the record, this information is about as correct as saying a Bavarian doesn't drink beer.

Arriving in Germany, I immediately took my application form to the 'Alien Authorities'. It was the wrong one, and I had to go back with the right one in a week. I did this, and was then asked for my 'registration' in broken English. This is one big lesson I have learnt coming here - NEVER assume people in immigration, in a widely English speaking country, speak English. Anyway, turns out when you move to any town in Germany you need to register as a citizen of sorts, and they give you a present to welcome you. With this done, I returned to the Alien place for the third time, to be told I would receive a letter with an appointment.

Three weeks later, my German flatmates took me to the Alien place for a fourth time to find out why I hadn't received a letter. Turned out they could book an appointment for me on the spot, there was no such said letter. The appointment was booked for over a month away. In all this time I've been unable to work, which has driven me crazy on multiple levels. So when the day finally came, on June 10th, I think it was pretty understandable that I didn't sleep a wink before it thinking, and hoping, and getting anxious, and praying to a God I don't really believe in on occasion.

My appointment lasted about 10 minutes. I've been handed a visa for the time my health insurance lasts, allowing me to work for at least 10 months before I can possibly swap to an ongoing work visa, dependent on my health insurance. All of this could have been avoided if I'd waited in Australia for an extra month, but then I would have missed out on the following things: Travelling to Spain to see the football team I own shares in; finally getting to go to Queens Day in Amsterdam with most of my friends in tow; finding this amazing house near the city; seeing Borussia Dortmund play for the first time; and spending that extra month with my boyfriend.

So there's positives to be taken out of every situation right? I wonder if sometimes we use this as an excuse to feel better about situations that have just been rather shitty. Sometimes there's no reason for them, and when I go back to London for Glasto in a couple of weeks, and have to stand in front of immigration while they are rude to me and judge me again and I have to take it, I'll probably feel like this is another pretty needless shitty situation. But if it weren't for all of those problems, I wouldn't be in Germany now, and overall, whether this is some kind of human need to justify the situation or not, I'm pretty bloody happy right now that it worked out like this.

A tip to Aussies wanting to come here in the future? Apply from home, not here. Save your sanity.

xx

One Night In Cologne

I absolutely love Cologne - in fact, I think it might be my favourite city to visit in Germany. It has everything you could want from a weekend away; the romance of the bridge where you can lock your love, a beautiful church that's up there with the best I've ever seen, amazing German food, good bars and nightlife, and a river running through the middle of the city to make it even more picturesque. And then there's the shopping. The first time I went to Cologne, it was for New Years Eve in 2011-12. Some girlfriends had gotten a last minute flight there, because it was the cheapest place to head from London. Having met my now-boyfriend only once, I wrote to him asking if by chance he might be there (he is German, so there was a slight chance). It turned out he and his friends had planned a few days there, which was a really crazy coincidence. But it ended up being the best New Years Eve I ever had, despite the fact that we were all insanely broke and cold, and we spent the night in a club where they only spoke Russian.

So this time around, I wanted to see it all again, just to make sure it really had been that amazing and it wasn't just the romance happening on the side that made me love the city so much. And thankfully, it was still as great as I remembered. Walking out of the station, you are immediately faced with this amazing monstrosity -

this is literally outside the main station

I've seen a lot of churches in Europe, from Sagrada La Familia to Notre Dame and Lake Bled's Church of the Assumption. But this one is equal with the church in Rennes, France (which still had bullet holes in the walls in the shape of bodies from the war) as the most beautiful, interesting and picturesque one I've come across. I'm far from religious (I believe there's as much chance that we came from the Cookie Monster as Jesus's dad) but I still find churches to be a very spiritual and calming place.

The other attraction I love so much about Cologne is the bridge where you can lock your love. This is by no means specifically a German tradition, with bridges across Europe and the world doing the same. But Cologne is absolutely heaving with locks - I read that the railway operator who uses the bridge was threatening to throw them away at one point, but the residents protested and got the move cancelled - and looking at them can keep you amused for hours as you search for your name, look at how long each of these couples have been together and wonder what might have happened to them since.

Some opposing views on love here

Having spent a vast majority of the day looking around, and taking in a spot of shopping, there was only one thing to do - get a schnitzel and a cocktail for lunch by the river.

The Saturday night was our initial reason for coming to Cologne; my German friend from Magdeburg had found out about a paint throwing party and was just as keen as me to go to a nightclub simply for the reason of throwing different coloured paint everywhere. And the night provided exactly that - at 1:40am we were allowed to pick up the bottles of paint we had purchased and proceed to do literally whatever we wanted with them. At one stage, as a girl came up behind us and essentially assaulted our entire faces with blue paint, I wondered if in any other situation this would be acceptable behaviour.

Just before the blue paint assault on our faces took place

It was a great night, made even better by the currywurst van out the front which we took full advantage of when we were ready to go home. I really can't recommend Cologne enough - everything about it is just so relaxing, and lovely, and quintessentially German. Before I left on my train back to Frankfurt the sun came out, and I got one last look at this as I got ready for the trip home...

Meanwhile, the boy spent the weekend in Paris, after getting a free trip from a friend who pulled out. It was an all-inclusive weekend where the bus takes you friday night, you arrive Saturday morning for two days then the bus gets you back to Frankfurt for work on Monday morning. With the hotel, it normally costs €70 in total, and includes a tour. Did I mention that the travel options from Frankfurt make me absolutely love living here!?!?!

Till next time xx

A Frankfurtian Masterchef in the Making?

Over time after moving out from my parents, my love for cooking has considerably grown. To begin with, pasta with stir through sauce and sliced cheese was my speciality, or alternatively veggie burgers with some kind of noodles (i reasoned that I got all my nutrients from the burger). I cooked a roast for my ex once, and required my mother to basically cook it for me (thus probably rendering the 'I cooked a roast' bit of that sentence a lie), and I'll never be allowed forget the time I used sugar instead of flour when trying to make a pudding and ended up with the sweetest chocolatey liquid drink I've ever tasted.

But moving to London, I found myself rather enjoying the idea of cooking gourmet food, and things that in the past I had bought from the frozen section in the supermarket. Homemade fish and chips worked their way into my recipe book, and what was a love in Australia for going to Chinese restaurants turned into a love for Chinese cooking. The ready-made stir fry sauces at Sainsburys didn't quite cut it, and I started getting excited over going to Asian supermarkets and making all my sauces and experimenting like a mad scientist.

I mastered the perfect English roast with yorkshire puddings and everything, thanks to my UK flatmates lending a helping hand, and as a result was in charge of the New Years Eve roast when a group of us got a house together in Devon. For the record, Jamie Oliver's tip of putting a lemon in the chicken is genius. And another definite highlight in my cooking experiences would be achieving a gingerbread house, which took a week and three attempts, but was well worth it for the end result.

So arriving in Frankfurt, one of my most anticipated things to do was to go supermarket shopping for the first time. This was a rather delayed trip, as I stayed with the boy for two weeks while I found a place to live. By coincidence his mother was getting a new German visa, and while she is normally based in Russia, she was staying with us as well. Her cooking was pretty amazing, and equally intimidating. Let's just say I won't be trying to compete with her many variations of meat and potatoes.

But back to German cooking - one of the few positive things my ex taught me in our relationship was how to make spaghetti carbonara. It's one of the easiest meals to make, and I don't use cream, just egg and cheese (as demonstrated here), and I can make it with bacon or salmon or sausages. It's quickly become one of my favourite meals to cook.

But while in London the sausage version was often created because it was nearly pay day and I was too broke for the other options, in Germany the sausages are so damn good that this feels more like the gourmet version. And with all the ingredients for this meal easy to find in a supermarket without much knowledge of the language, it's become a staple for me.

Which brings me to the biggest challenge I've found in Frankfurt - none of the food has English wording on it, which I knew would be the case, but I never realised just how hard it would be to find things I needed. Baking soda? Still have no idea what that is. I've found Backpulver, which is apparently baking powder, but a lot of forums seem to tell me it's different somehow.

I had a tooth issue a few weeks ago, and couldn't eat anything solid for three days, which led me to going through the soup isles with complete confusion. The one I eventually picked appeared to be a smooth meat soup, and turned out to be oxtail, which wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

Another thing I'm finding particularly challenging is the lack of variety of vegetables. It doesn't seem that people in Frankfurt cook stir-fries like is the staple of busy Londoners. The first meal I cooked for the boy was a chicken stir-fry with green curry sauce, and he commented how easy it looked to make like he'd never seen it before.

Another meal he's never tried before I moved to Frankfurt was fish and chips - once we got past the fact that it was very unhealthy, he couldn't understand why people would eat this at the beach. "It's hot at the beach, and this is hot! Why don't you eat ice cream??" He argued, and I sort of saw his point to be honest. I didn't even attempt to explain why we put newspaper around it - but luckily there is an English fish and chip shop in Wiesbaden, south west of Frankfurt, which I will be showing him soon so he can see exactly what it is we do in England/Australia.

Last week the boy was ill, and so I brought over some homemade chicken soup (using this recipe - delicious). While at his house, his brother came home with some sausages, and insisted we both try it - as I was eating it and quite enjoying it, he explained it was horse meat. When I said in Britain there were a lot of issues over eating horse, they both looked at me like I had two heads.

And so, my relationship with food in Germany has had it's highs and lows so far, and apart from some horse and oxtail here and there, I am getting the hang of cooking again. I made some great ANZAC biscuits, and plan to make pavlova for my birthday in a couple of weeks. And mastering a proper german schnitzel is high on my list of things to do.