Life under the Tuscan Sun

Do not move to Germany in search of a life perceived as romantic and hip. That's what Italy and Southern France are for.

Disappointed writers or marketing exceutives losing their lustre should head south if they intend to take their new life and work it into a bestselling book and then into a movie.

Well, maybe Berlin. Berlin is hip. Like in the 1920s but without Einstein and, despite what many people will tell you, without communists. But WITH a National Public Radio (NPR) studio. Yes, my Tea Party friends and foes of Big Bird, it is true. NPR is sitting pretty in Berlin, Germany, while you are trying hard to oust that liberal from the city council of Berlin, New York, or some other Berlin, U.S.A.

Unless you move around the world within the cocoon that is the U.S. military, there will come a day when you wake up and crave somthing unattainable.

Like Cheerios.

Or Mexican food.

Or the really, really Big Sky of Montana.

Despair not. This is the 21st century, and flourishing global trade and the internet can accomplish the hitherto unknown.

You no longer need that pal on base as a commissary lifeline, now you can just be friends, with or without benefits.

You can buy Cheerios from an internet shop specialising in empty calories from all over the world.
You can make your own Mexican food by growing cilantro or buying it at the local farmers market.

And, with a large enough tv, you can have the Big Sky right in your living room.

What all of this is meant to illustrate is: the small world everybody was talking about when it was decades away in the future, that small world is finally here.

The main consequence of this for your new life in Germany is that you will likely trip over little things, such as where to say Guten Morgen, or Guten Tag, and where to say Grüß Gott, than over big things. Like that German language Mark Twain made fun of.

Translation software has improved so much. Buy a tablet, load that one translation app that is great with a wireless LAN connection. Use short sentences, and it will even talk for you.