About this blog


If there is one valuable thing I’ve learnt in my life, that’s the notion that there's no side effect to broadening your views and looking past your little courtyard.

Opening up to different customs challenges your mind and stretches brain cells. It makes you less tribal. It debunks pre-conceived ideas and makes you grow as an individual. It shows that things can be done in a million different ways and that you can always learn new stuff from different cultures or ways of life instead of viewing them with defauly hostility or sneering just because “they’re not ‘local’” or “this is not how we do it back home”.

Through a combination of necessity and circumstances, I’ve been lucky enough to experience life in four different European countries - England, Italy, Spain and Germany. In all honesty, I didn’t particularly want to up sticks each time, but like the Spanish say “Hay que comer”, you’ve gotta eat, so you may as well turn chance into an enriching experience.

This blog is simply intended as a record of all aspects of life as I actively observed in those places, more often than not at odds with the stereotypes and preconceived ideas generally associated with all-inclusive package holidays and tabloid-generated common places.

Hopefully visitors or would-be residents of those four European countries may find some of the information useful (i.e. tips on, say, language and its cultural differences; practical stuff such as registering with a GP in England; going about paying for your TV licence in Germany, and so on).

No doubt you will disagree with good chunks of what I write, but –again- remember this is based on the things I’ve actually experienced and –who knows- perhaps different events occur to different people.

Also, don’t forget regional characteristics: remember that some of the content of this blog is based specifically on life in certain parts of those countries: England (not the UK), Catalonia as well as the Atlantic coast of Spain, Northern Italy and Northern Germany, which means chances are what I write will not also apply to, say, Bavaria, Madrid, Scotland or Sicily.

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