Exciting things to look forward to..

I have been nice and ill over the past few days. It's been both horrid and pleasant. Horrid being ill, but rather nice to have the luxury of actually lying in bed and being ill. Anyway, aside from being able to watch back to back episodes of Masterchef, I have been able to have a think about the possible move back to the UK. My list of positives has grown:-

1. I can park the car facing any direction I like in the street, so there. And I shall. Just because I can. Though I will lose the privilege of parking 'Berlin-style' unless I want the car towed. Schade..

Really, I am a Berliner at heart. I can't be arsed reverse parking either. 

2. I won't need to wait for the green man when crossing the road, though it's highly likely I will continue to stand waiting until until the green man tells me it's safe to walk because I have been successfully re-programmed. I will however use this knowledge when I see people standing by traffic-free roads waiting to cross as a way of identifying German expats (potential friends).

AARRGGGHH! To walk or not to walk?? I have given up the ability to look up & down the road and judge if it's safe to cross for myself. Where's the Tufty Club when I need it??

3. I will no longer have to bank with the Commerzbank. Though god knows I will no doubt miss their charming ways. I am not entirely comfortable slagging off a company in a public place, but well, they deserve it. I have had more bank cards from them in the past 2 years than I have had in the rest of my banking life. Even if you include the Mr Spendy passbook I had as a kid, I am now into double digits with the number of EC cards they have cancelled on me. They are convinced it's my fault (even though my UK cards still work just fine and they are nestled in together) and the last time I was told that it was most likely my "cheap jewellery (female bank clerk helpfully points to the silver Tiffany necklace I am wearing) causing it to de-magnetise", or else I "need to buy a better bag" because my Orla Kiely obviously just isn't good enough for their cards...(!?). Not that she was sitting there exactly dripping in De Beers diamonds herself, but I can admire a woman who can wield her banking power and admonish the customers for their poor purchasing choices. Though Germany better be careful: with bank clerks like her encouraging people like me to go spending the mortgage money on diamonds and Hermes bags.

Though if they want to 'help' me upgrade, I would be happy with this. 

4 go on a German (& slightly Czech) adventure.

Cheb in the Czech Republic

A teency piece of loveliness from Regensburg

Frankfurt in Legoland Deutschland. I quite fancy going to Frankfurt now!

Orla channelling her mothers taste in sunglasses as they ride the Augsburg rhinos

Bamburg, it's all beautiful

What a lovely holiday. It was remarkably drama free - if you don't count the fact that we hadn't read the mail from the Commerzbank that told us that we would neither be able to get money out of any cash machine or use our cards for in store transactions for any of the days we were away. 4 days? That's a bit much, isn't it? Anyway, thankfully we both had our British cards with us.

But that aside, the children were rather good, not nearly as horrid as they could be when faced with endless journeys in the car, and we saw some really beautiful places.

We'd been really keen to see Regensburg as we'd heard it was lovely, and I think we'd like to go back there and spend more time. We also spent a morning in Augsburg, before heading off to Bamburg which was really, really pretty.

But best of all we went to Legoland Deutschland which the kids utterly loved. It wasn't too far from Munich where we spent a day and a half, and we all had just loads of fun. This trip has made us really keen to see more of Germany...

Number-crunching with 'boys in tights' at the 'Commerzbank' 'is giving me gip'

'Like' at your own risk, elf perverts!

Howdy dear readers, I wonder how you found me today? I've been meaning to write about 'stats' for a while but, well, you know, I'm always busy with something else. Don't worry though, I am starting to get on top of my mountain of tasks - why even as I write this I am on hold to the Tax Office. Actually, that's not true, I tried to write while I was on hold to them but their hold music/messages are so fluffy and hard to hear that I couldn't concentrate because I was never sure if I was still on hold or if it was an actual person. I did eventually get through to someone who told me to phone back in February or March, so I have effectively ticked that one off my list of things that really need doing (right now). So that's at least one thing slightly sorted, the rest can probably wait until after I get out of jail for failing to sort out my double taxation issues in January.

But where was I? Yup, stats. I'll try not to bore you, I won't actually give you any numbers or anything, I'm not that way inclined, but I thought I would tell you some interesting stuff from 'behind the scenes' of the blog. At least I find it interesting, who knows, maybe you'd like to hear more about the UK Tax System.

I've been inspired to write about this by Mwa who always has people landing on her blog via the most interesting search terms. I won't re-type them here, you can click the link in a minute and see for yourself. I said "in a minute"!! I am always surprised by the things that people type into Google. An awful lot of people find my blog via Google by searching for 'boys in tights'. Barely a day goes by when there's not someone looking for boys in tights. Or 'facebook boys in tights'. I wonder what it really is that they are looking for. I'm pretty sure it's not me, otherwise I would be gathering up followers like nothing on earth.

Incidentally if you search for 'boys in tights' in Facebook you find the list of pages above. Does anyone want to 'like' the North Pole Sexy Elf Boys for me? I also have a fair amount of people searching for more random things on a weekly basis. This week so far my favourites are "My piles are giving me gip" - and I hope they found comfort and a little relief here, and "The noise in my heating system is driving me crazy". Why would you even type all that into Google? Isn't it more logical to search for something like 'NHS Direct+piles' for the first one and perhaps 'heating system+noise' for the second?

Other peoples searches just have me wondering though. Someone in India (who do I know in India??) searched for 'fiona gray orla hamish'. That's a bit precise isn't it? I really don't think I know anyone in India, unless that's where the UK Tax Centre calls are directed to.

Someone else recently blogged about 'the lurkers'. The people who read your blog faithfully, yet never comment. People from strange far away lands. Well, not that strange really, America mostly. So I'd like to take the opportunity to say "hello & thankyou" to the people who check my blog every single day from various places around the world to see if I have written anything new. You're awfully shy though, aren't you? Why not leave a comment the next time you read (eh, this), or maybe something else so everybody isn't staring. It would be really nice. I'd love to know who you are.

My readers mostly come from America. The UK follows as a close second. Then Germany, then Russia, & then the Netherlands. Recently I've seen an upsurge in my popularity in China and France (Nia hao! (I only know that from Nia Hao Kai Lan) & Bonjour!). I also seem to be rocking in Belarus and Slovenia (but my language skills don't extend far enought to say hello properly).

In terms of what people like to read, well I find that a bit of an odd mixture too. My most popular post is the one about the 'old & new' Commerzbank. Like, by MILES! Why??? I wonder if it's because things go wrong in that one, but then they go much worse in the one where I get locked out the house, and then the Commerzbank waves it's magic wand and makes things a goddam nightmare.

Next up in popularity is 'Only her hairdresser knows for sure'. This is the one where you get to see some quite horrendous photos of me, and read about some expensive highlights that I thought were good at the time and then I saw the day after that they actually started half way down my hair in some places.

After that we have 'I bring my fish bowl home'. I like that one too, and I hope you are all sitting reading this with the copy of it you made from the photos displayed somewhere prominently in your house. (I wonder if I could buy a better one on etsy now?)

And then, then we get to 'boys in tights'. Considering how popular it is search term-wise, it makes things with the Commerzbank post even more unfathomable to me as people very rarely use that in their searches.

Anyway, I thought I would share that with you. I hoped you enjoyed it. While I'm off photographing boys in tights for a new post that'll have my stats going through the roof, I'd love to hear from you.