Sorry, Mum, if you managed to find this blog only to see that I haven't updated. I am not in a ditch anywhere - in fact I've been so busy really that I've barely opened my laptop (a novel experience for me).

I've managed to get internet sorted for next Wednesday: for now I am in an internet cafe which is just that ... a cafe where you can surf the web as long as you like as long as you have a coffee with you as you type. And that is no hardship for me - I have extended my patronage to a chocolate muffin as well.

So I’m officially a real ex-pat now. I’ve got a German bank account, a German mobile, a German umbrella … all I need now is my lederhosen and some yodelling lessons and I’m good to go.

Or rather perhaps what I’ve got to do is let going of the Bavarian tourist-mongering stereotype and embrace the city and culture that I’m living with. I don’t want to be a Brit abroad who speaks only English and associates only with other English people. There are people in this city who don’t even know what’s going on in the country they live in because they can’t read the newspapers or understand the local news. I’m one of them. But I’m a newbie ex-pat. I have dreams of speaking German, of meeting German people. Perhaps one day, in the far far distant future, I shall be asked whether or not I come from Holland.

For now I am trying to read The Famous Five in German (I’m on page 40) and have decided to try to like Kölsch, having felt like an idiot with my sole glass of wine, and having also discovered that it's the cheapest drink around here.