Who stole the bar?

As we get closer to our date of leaving the country, just 4 full days left, we of course have to go through the packing up process.  For months, we have been opening cupboards and drawers and thinking “do I still need that?”.  This of course has generated loads of unwanted belongings and rubbish after 18 years of living in Germany.

But what to do with our unwanted belongings.  Books which we have loved have little or no value anymore.  Especially those in English when you live in Germany. Also, the new digital download world has made music CDs obsolete and English language DVDs almost worthless.  Luckily for some of our possessions, we have found a literate friend who has taken about 10 boxes of books and a very caring individual who has taken the CDs and DVDs to sell in a Flea Market to raise money for Animal Rescue.

Some less analogue items have found new homes. As you can see from the picture, our bar – the base of the Black Cat pub – has found a new home. It is disconcerting how many times you want to put your beer down on a non existent bar after 18 years of practice!

But that of course still leaves a household full of stuff.  As we are moving to a small island, we have been advised to bring everything as there is more of a demand for goods there than in the  local German economy. Luckily my employer (soon to be an ex) is helping paying the removals and so everything is going. For just a married couple and a cat, we need two 40′ containers to take it all.  To prepare everything, we have a removal company providing 3 people working for 4 days to wrap, box and shift it all.

For us, we are mainly watching and so have little to do apart from making sure we retain some belongings to take with us.  These 3 packers are perhaps too diligent – if it is not in a safe place it is packed. And the number of safe places is decreasing by the hour.

If it wasn’t for the social events being organised by such good friends over the next days, I would be onto the airline to see if we could go earlier. Being relegated to one room in your house with its remaining chairs and few belongings is dispiriting. We have both slept badly the last few nights and just wish we could be there in our new home. We will then have 6-7 weeks of a holiday (apart from immediate building works) before we start the unpacking process.

So, from mid next week,  it will be a fresh start in a new country for the next years but surrounded by all our old belongings.  The challenge will be to integrate the two.

The schedule to give it up starts at the end of 2013. So still 6 months to go and I better start practising.  Have taken a 2 week break with U to Southern Corsica.  What a great idea that was to come here.

So far the weather has been marginal; it has been mainly sunny but strong winds that have rattled the roof tiles.  The wind is from the west but it has a cold edge to it which should not be there this late in the spring.  However, we are not alone as the whole western Mediterranean is suffering with hardly anyone seeing 20C.  But it is mainly sunny and so the countryside looks spectacular.  It is still very green and with this late spring, all the alpine and meadow flowers are out in full blossom.

What is not blossoming is the tourist trade.  Selfishly, I am very happy about that.  Apart from a busload of Northern European elderly folk clogging up the pavement behind their tour guide in Porto Vecchio, the tourists are low in numbers.  It is strange as I have found Corsica to be very welcoming yet there seem to be few tourists.  I hear that changes in July & August when the swarms of French and Italians arrive. So let me enjoy my space.

Some of my immediate first impressions were that everything is downsized.  Figari Airport, so cute. Porto Vecchio Port – so small, only 4 or 5 seaside restaurants. The small resorts are as I describe, small but comfortable.  Nice restaurants, small hotels and residential/seaside villas.  Nothing big glitzy and “let’s rip off a tourist today”.  It’s not backward but it’s just right for me.  So many holiday resorts these days offer the customer experience.  But who designed that experience?

A lovely story today at lunch.  Apparently the Corsica Separatists arrived at a hotel in the middle of night, asked the guests to board the mini buses before planting bombs and blowing the hotel up. I like the Corsicans!