Like I say, I'm not immune.

It's very likely that this could be the last time we have the joy of racing back to Berlin and waiting for a big box of goodies to arrive. So this time I thought I would share with you the kind of crap essentials that I buy to make my expat life more complete. The theme of this box is 'back to school meets supermarket sweep'. Enjoy it in all it's glorious minutiae. 

So where to start. Shoes! Kids shoes in Germany are far more expensive than in the UK, and although many Germans will argue that their price here reflects better quality, it's not really true. Shoes are just ridiculously expensive, and if I can time a trip back to coincide with a need for shoes then I'm happy. So from left to right (below) you can see where I started to go a bit shoe crazy: Orla got school boots, snow boots, Hamish got snow boots too, then Orla's school shoes, then Hamish's school shoes, both sets of trainers for sport at school (all from Clarks), pink sparkly wellies for Orla - from Mothercare (I managed to leave Hamish's at my parents) and lastly purple Nike trainers for me which were a bargain and bought with a voucher left over from Christmas.



Next up you can see some PE shorts, a Sylvanian Families Wedding Car, one of three cookbooks I had waiting on me that I had ordered from The Book People (Rachel Allen's 'Entertaining at Home, Delia's Complete Cookery Course, and I got Jamie's Great Britain for free.). And just before we went to Scotland I decided what I really needed was an ice cream machine. I found this one on Amazon UK for just under £20 and it gets great reviews. My first try was a little disasterous, but I am sure it will be great with a bit of practice! Anyway it was probably the heaviest thing in the box as it has a double walled insulated bowl which is really heavy.

Next up, clockwise from top left, a cake mould which is 6 little gingerbread men that I couldn't not buy from Wilkinson's, which is lying slightly on top of 2 double sheets which really are dirt cheap in Tesco. Next are a couple of things left over from Christmas which I decided to squeeze in for the kids: foam letters and foam face parts which I bought in the sale at the Early Learning Centre. Below them are some glittery craft shapes (always going to be handy for school projects! Though probably for me and not the kids!). Two books I picked up in Tesco, as I feel our bookshelves really do need a good refreshing. Two little tops and a card for one of my friends who has just had a baby boy, some food clips which are smaller than the IKEA ones, a DVD, and 3 bottles of Mr Muscle Kitchen Cleaner (yes, I know I could buy kitchen cleaner here, but I just like this best). Oh and right at the top is an extra large pencil case for all of Orla's felt tip pens.

Again from top left, I went a wee bit mad in Wilkinson's as everything seemed such a great bargain. I bought 12 (2 packs) of star shaped silicone cupcake cases, 2 children's mixing spoons, some stationary on a 4 for £1 deal that I could put in the kids Schultutes (though I brought a carrier bag more of this in my hand luggage for that purpose), 2 Crayola craft kits (maybe for presents?) and an awful lot of starry cupcake cases in paper. It always surprises me that while Dr Oetker is a German company, the range in Germany is far more limited than it is in Britain. Odd.

These things are all sitting on box number 2 which contains books I had sent to my mums ages ago. I bought the full range of Roald Dahl books for the kids - I think Orla is just about the right age for me to start reading some of them to her. I bought the cookbooks mentioned above, and a set of Harlan Coben books that my mum recommended but which I have never read. In front of the box is some chocolate, the kids don't see much white chocolate here and you don't really get buttons, white brown or otherwise, so...

Below those are some more craft things, patterned papers, glittery paper, and dinosaur stickers. Below those are some Winnie the Pooh cookie cutters (which were meant to be in a Christmas gift for someone, but which were discovered at my parents) and 3 packs of Crayola felt tips which can go into presents for school friends as a wee extra.

Now you can see at the top the tripod my dad bought for me in Aldi or Lidl which I used last night while a bit drunk at my friend's party. The purpose of which is to stop any camera shake, but weirdly the amount of alcohol I drank still seems to have affected the focus of my photos. Oh dear. Then a Lego book also from the Book People which contains Lego and guidelines on how to make about a dozen little toys. A swim cap and googles for Hamish's school swimming lessons, a blue stripy top (part of a set of 2) and a bear hat for Orla from M&S. Cream cable knit leggings from Tesco for Orla which I thought looked warm for winter under dresses. Make up from Boots for me. I planned on stocking up but they are changing the packaging this week, so all the old No.7 range was in the sale and there wasn't much left to buy. Two shopping bags from Tesco, a Cars jigsaw we never shipped back at Christmas, and some plasticine (perhaps left over from Christmas??)

Beside Hamish's swimming cap are a selection of DVD's from Granny Margaret, some tights from Mothercare for winter for Orla, a nice bright cardi from M&S, 1 pair (from a pack of 2) jogging bottoms for Hamish, and enough clasps to hopefully restrain Orla's hair until at least Christmas. I have stopped buying clasps that cost much as she seems to lose them on a near daily basis.

Beside the coloured tights, there are tights for school and a million pairs of pants for both kids, Orla's £3 for a pack of 5 from Tesco, and Hamish's £7 for 5 Fireman Sam ones and half price £3.50 for Thomas ones, both from M&S. Below those some swimming trunks in the sale for Hamish for his weekly swimming lessons, and packs of school socks for both of them from M&S.

 Finally, packs of vests for winter for both kids, 2 of Hamish's 'guys', a whole bunch of underwear for me, 3 pairs of pirate mix and match pyjamas for Hamish from M&S, a tankini for Orla in the next size up (it was in the sale), and 2 plain white polo tops which I can potentially sneak under their school jumpers even though they don't have the school logo. These were priced at £2 for a 2 pack in Tesco! And that's not even a sale price. And there we have it. Back to school shopping (more or less) in a nutshell.

Hello, Galeries Lafayette!

Macarons at Galeries Lafayette

My heart went 'ping!' today. I can't believe I've been here for 2 years and *not* visited Galeries Lafayette before now. It's not that I haven't been in the area; it's not that my loyalty to the lovely KaDeWe has prevented me from passing through a different store; it's just that about a decade ago I visited Galeries Lafayette in Paris and was a little underwhelmed. (Though I'm not sure why, probably my taste was just different)


Today though I had some time, and I thought 'why not?'. I was passing and I suddenly remembered a French guy in my German class saying that a lot of the French expats go there to buy really expensive yoghurt. What? Food hall? Expensive yoghurt? Why, doesn't that sound like it might be just like the KaDeWe?

Oh. My. God. It's lovely! It's smaller than the food hall in the KaDeWe, but it's beautifully, darkly lit, and it's like all the products you could ever need but in lovely French packaging! Oh to be a French expat with lots & lots of money! Not that they aren't catering for the Germans and the Brits. There are a selection of Cadbury's biscuits for the Brits and 5KG jars of Nutella for the Germans. (Why would you buy so much that you can barely lift it?). Oh and of course, the Americans haven't been forgotten: yup, they've shipped in more of that Fluff for you guys, ha, ha, ha! (scroll down for the photos)

Pretty cakes: I want to roll around in there with you with my mouth open.

I have very little use for these, but I just want to take them home, line them up and look at them anyway.

These can stay on the shelf though...

I want my peas to have a gold lid!

Beluga Linsen: One of life's essentials, surely???

I can't even imagine trying to explain to Stevie that I spent 40 euros on a tub of Nutella. 

Nuts: I've run out of photos.

You can find Galeries Lafayette at Friedrichstrasse 76-78 and online.

That's a 100 watt horse you got there, cowboy

I feel like our apartment needs more lighting. We have a problem with light in this place. The ceilings are so high, the rooms are big, and frankly we don't have anywhere near enough lamps. We laugh in the face of task-lighting! Recently the bulb in the main overhead light in Orla's room died, and when we Stevie climbed on top of the chair on top of the chest of drawers to change the bulb we discovered that it was a 200 watt bulb. You can't just get 200 watt bulbs in the supermarket or even in Bauhaus. You can get them on the internet but I have been a bit lazy about getting it and I thought a 100 watt bulb would do. Except it's dreadful. It's like weak candlelight. Anyway, I aim to address the lighting situation in this place at some point. And yesterday quite by chance, I found quite the perfect lamp.

You see, I was going to meet a friend and I had some time beforehand so I decided to have a peek inside  Stilwerk on Kantstrasse (o the corner with Uhlandstrasse). I'd always assumed that Stilwerk was one shop, but in fact it's like a rather cool shopping centre for expensive furniture and home decor design shops. I am almost alarmed that given I am a real lover of furniture porn, that it's taken me the best part of 2 years to visit it.

Stilwerk on Kantstrasse

It has a high proportion of shops that normally I only drool over in Elle Decoration, such as Kartell, B&B Italia, Ligne Roset, BoConcept, and a whole bunch of others that I had never even heard of stocking the kind of high-end furniture and lighting that makes me shed little happy tears.

Part of the Brazilian furniture design exhibition, & Kartell.

This chair is so impractical for Brazil. Just think: Metal + intense heat + bare legs + hole pattern = hot fleshy fishnets

Rainbow cups! Rainbow bowls! Rainbow plates!
20 Euros per cup which is bad enough, but when you consider that you'd want to have the WHOLE rainbow, it suddenly doesn't seem worth it to remortgage the house. Sniff.

There is also a great lighting shop on the ground floor which has some really beautiful, eyewateringly priced lamps and lights. But it turns out the also have 200 watt bulbs for just over 10 Euros, which is the best price I have come across. When I came out of there I had a wander round the Brazilian furniture design exhibition they have on view in both the main central walkway and on the third floor. And after that, I just happened to find myself drawn into B&B Italia which is where a rather nice salesman caught me slabbering over a storage system so luscious I would sell Stevie's kidneys to own it, and it was while we were talking I clocked the perfect lamp.

www.moooi.nl

Now let me just start off by telling you that I'm not that into horses. Never have been to be honest. But a horse-shaped lamp that's so absurdly huge, really rocks my world. I even quite fancy having two of them, one at either side of the bed. Can you imagine how useful that would be? You could sling some saddlebags over it to keep your books and stuff in, and instead of flinging your clothes over a chair at night, you've got a whole horses back to fling them on to. You could hang your necklaces round its neck, why, it's sounding more and more practical by the minute! Alas there's no way that Stevie would let me buy two of them. He wouldn't even let me buy one of them. Priced at just over 4000 Euros, it gets vetoed for two reasons, 1) it's 4000 Euros (even though that's a whole lot of lamp for your money and probably (still doesn't) equate to IKEA prices if you work out how much it costs per square cm, and 2) it wouldn't fit into any room in our house back in the UK. But a girl can dream....... can't she???......................................

Ha, ha, ha, yeah, maybe we can't carry it off....

Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

From now on I will mostly be appearing at a funny angle with a mop and bucket over my left shoulder.

Because I'm worth it

So as you can see I got my hair done. I quite like it, but I am frustrated that I can't seem to get out of 'short-hair-hell'. I have very limited options with it this length, but then that's what happens when you go and do this.

Anyway, here's how it went. Did I tell you that there seem to be a fair number of British women here who seem fearful of going to German hairdressers? Well, so far I have met quite a few who go 'home' to get their hair done, and my last hairdresser in the UK told me that she had a client who came back to get hers done. It seems like a very expensive haircut if you have to include flights.

Now I know I mentioned the fact that haircuts are miles cheaper here than in the UK and that I would be taking full advantage of that while here... well it would appear that that is not the case, in my particular case. Somehow I manage to seek out the most expensive hairdresser in the area. I am not entirely sure how I manage this, but I am so experienced that I now manage to mask my horror at the tillpoint when they tell me the 3 figure sum.

YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY. But go on read it again and have another gasp. I think I managed to save about £10 on what I ha, ha, ha, pay in the UK (and I got a treatment into the bargain), but it turns out that my handy little hairdresser that looked quite nice from the outside is an ex- Vidal Sassoon stylist and Vogue photography shoot stylist.

So in case you were wondering why I am looking into the camera at a funny angle in the top photo well, that's because that apparently is my 'best side' and I should ALWAYS appear this way. I imagine that will cause a few difficulties in my day to day life as I try to position myself to be seen at my best advantage at Kaiser's meat counter and as I emerge from the toilets at the zoo to the waiting paparazzi.

I really enjoyed myself though at the salon. I loved the fact that the trainee quickly assessed the fact that I couldn't really speak German and switched the big pile of German magazines in front of me for a big pile of English ones (I was sold from that point to be honest). I got lots of interesting hair care tips and a bundle of Sebastian samples to take home, and the hairdresser instead of talking rubbish about holidays and what I don't do for a living gave me her analysis of Naomi Campbell's appearance in court from her body language and a break down of how her outfit had been styled to match exactly the traits that she was trying to portray, to how well trained she had been in what she was saying. Of course my life is a news void, so I had very little to say on the matter except that perhaps Naomi Campbell appeared so poised in court because she has had so much practice.

On a side topic of hair, I am currently reading a book called 'What the dog saw' by Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell is a writer for The New Yorker, and this book covers a variety of everday things and looks at them from a different angle. I'm finding it really interesting. He talks about how problems like homelessness might be easier to solve rather than manage and what goes on with the brain that gives us the difference between panicking and choking. My favourites so far have been 'Why there are dozens of varieties of mustard but only one of ketchup' and 'What hair dye can tell us about the 20th century'. It's all about how attitudes towards hair dying have altered over the course of the century and the two main players who made this a possibility. Anyway, if you come across it, have a look through it and you might just fancy it. (Also if you would like to pay the absolute maximum price you ever possibly could for it, send me an email I seem to have a knack for this kind of thing)