About time for a wee blog update, isn’t it? Let’s fast forward from my month in Tokyo (we’ll come back to it, I promise) and jump all the way up to present day, where Scott and I are just your typical, everyday serial expats settling in after yet another international move. We’ve been in Edinburgh for about five weeks now, long enough to have most of the new-country administrata out of the way. The first few weeks of a new expat gig feel the same pretty much anywhere, even if the details are different. Register this, paperwork that. Sign up for a cell phone, figure out where all the various kinds of recycling go before the growing tower of vodka bottles in the kitchen falls over, that kind of thing.

This time around we’ve been busy signing up with the NHS, figuring out how to pay our Council Tax, and becoming members of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. I must say the administrata of settling into a new country is much more enjoyable in English (and accompanied by whisky) than it is in a foreign language (as it was for our last three moves). It almost feels like we’re cheating, parading around using our mother tongue everywhere we go. There are still plenty of little reminders that we’re not in Kansas (or Munich or Milan or Zurich) anymore, though: men running around in plaid skirts, daily bursts of bagpipe music from unexpected sources, nurses who ask you how many stone you weigh. 

As for our new home city, Edinburgh has been busy charming the pants trousers off of us. The city center is just stunning, making every outing a treat (even those in the sleet and wind, although I suppose that could get old pretty soon). It’s going to take us years to try out all of the interesting-looking pubs and restaurants we’ve come across. And there are so many delightful little things that we’re still not entirely used to. Free ice water in restaurants! Free museums! Grocery shopping until 11pm! And on Sunday! (Any kind of shopping you want on Sunday, really, but the only kinds of shopping that I get excited for are food and art supplies.)

Of course there are bits we miss about our life in Munich. Our friends, most of all. We moved to Edinburgh knowing exactly one person (hi, Jools!). It sounds kind of scary when I put it that way, but we’ve done this enough times to know that we’ll make plenty of wonderful new friends here. It’s just going to take time. We’re off to a good start already – this city has shown itself to be full of interesting, smart, creative, open-minded people. And our friends from Munich (and elsewhere) are sure to come visit, too.

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This is not a sweet potato.

It’s an homage to a sweet potato: a sweet-potato-shaped bread roll with sweet-potato filling. In the novelty-filled world of Tokyo, it fits right in.

Here’s another one: sweet-potato-shaped novelty ice cream (available from Lawson convenience stores). Sweet-potato-flavored soft-serve ice cream is also pretty easy to find around the city (sometimes orage, sometimes purple).

Alas the sweet-potato-shaped outer wafer on this particular specimen doesn’t line up exactly, but you get the idea.

And then, perhaps the greatest novelty of them all: actual sweet potatoes.

This particular sweet potato was purchased from the sweet potato man, who drives his sweet potato truck around Tokyo blasting the sweet potato song (Yakimooooo! Yakimoooooo! Ishi Yaaaaa-aaaaakimo!). To hear the song (one version of it, anyway), see this.

This is the back of the yakimo truck. Sweet potatoes roasting over a roaring fire, being driven around a metropolis of 35 million people in the back of a tiny truck. Beats the ice cream man hands down.

In case I haven’t mentioned it recently, Japan is too delightful for words. Go there now.

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As it turns out, mid-February through mid-March is the perfect time to catch the plum blossoms in Tokyo. They don’t carry the fame or multitudes of cherry blossoms, but they have a certain charm.

Several parks around the city have plum tree groves, including Shinjuku Gyoen and the gardens at the Imperial Palace.

These photos are from a recent afternoon in Koishikawa Korakuen.

There’s a month-long festival to celebrate the plum blossoms at Yushima Tenjin, one of Tokyo’s most well-known shrines.

Much like festivals in other parts of the world, vendors at Yushima offer a variety of deep-fried foods. Scott recommends the squid balls.

There are also performances such as this one involving traditional Japanese drumming.

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Greetings from Tokyo. I’ve been here for four days; so far I’ve spent most of my stay wandering around taking photos, sleeping at inappropriate times, and going out with friends. 

Another good chunk of my time and mental effort has gone towards staring blankly at items for sale (food, art supplies, etc.) and trying to figure out what they are and whether they will meet one of my immediate needs.

I seem to have mastered most of the appliances in my Japanese apartment, although I can’t figure out why the water heater occasionally wants to talk to me. I haven’t gotten around to trying out all the buttons on the toilet, but I’m enjoying its heated seat.

It’s all a lot more fun than it sounds. There’s something delightful about my current lack of understanding of my environs. Suddenly every little bit of daily life is an adventure, a puzzle, a discovery. I get a huge feeling of accomplishment from something as simple as taking the subway across town to meet a friend. It helps that I’m here for an entire month – so I can take things at a slower pace that if I was trying to squeeze the entire Tokyo experience into a short trip.

I had been hoping to learn a little more basic Japanese before this trip, but the last couple months managed to fill up with other things. I’ve decided that’s OK, though. I will pick up a little Japanese while I’m here, and I can take a class before my next trip (as soon as I arrived my mind started working on figuring out when I can come back). Meanwhile, I’m enjoying the confusion. 

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We’re more than a week into the hunt for a flat in Edinburgh, and it’s been quite the rollercoaster. We’ve seen some horrible places, and some less-horrible ones, but nothing that we’ve fallen in love with yet.

The main problem is our stuff. It’s always the stuff. When we moved from the US to Italy nine years ago, the agent had a hard time finding apartments for us to view because we were adamant about not wanting to buy a kitchen. In Milan (and Munich), the vast majority of rental flats come completely empty – no light fixtures, no window coverings; the kitchen is usually just an empty room with a water pipe coming out of the floor where the sink should be.

While it would be delightful to design my own kitchen one day, it’s hard to stomach the expense when we don’t know how long we’ll be in a place. Luckily that’s not a problem in Edinburgh. The issue keeping us from considering 90% of the rental flats in the city is the opposite – they come fully furnished. Sofas, beds, often dishes and cookware, too. We own all those things already. And, despite the high Ikea content of our pile of stuff, we actually prefer it greatly to the stuff that Edinburgh’s landlords want to provide.

It’s still novel that I can speak my native language with everyone here (without it being a lazy shortcut), but opening my mouth still outs me as a foreigner, even more quickly than my accented German did in Munich.

Here Americanism seems to enjoy the same status as a mildly disfiguring physical affliction – a large scar or webbed fingers, perhaps. How to let someone know that you’re comfortable with their little difference without making the afflicted feel self-conscious? Often we get asked where we moved here from. “Munich” seems to leave the askers unsatisfied, as if we’ve rejected their desire to discuss the large, hairy moles on our foreheads. But politeness reigns, and there are no follow-up questions. I’ve found I can provide significant relief by voluntarily adding “… but we’re originally from the US” to my answer. This elicits responses along the lines of, “I thought so but didn’t want to offend…” 

Is this a general polite approach to foreignness in Scotland, I wonder, or are Americans the only ones who get this? I’ll have to start asking other foreigners I meet about this. (If it’s only Americans who get the kid gloves, I have a feeling that the blame could be shared between easily-offended Canadians and everyone who voted for George W. Bush).

But I digress. We’re still hoping to land the perfect flat before I head off to Japan next week. I should be looking for new listings now, but keep getting distracted by this show “Prime Minister’s Questions.” Brilliant writing, if a bit unrealistically presented. Will they solve the root causes of world hunger by the end of the episode, or will it end in a cliffhanger?

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Happy new year! Now where was I? Oh yes, Assisi. After an inspiring artist’s residency in Italy, we headed back to Munich for a couple weeks of Christmas market season before hoping on a plane to the US to spend the holidays with family. Then back to Munich for a quick hello before finally making our first trip (first trip since deciding to move here, anyway) to Scotland.

It wasn’t until the day before our flight to Edinburgh that it hit me: this move is really, finally happening! The thought made me giddy.

Five days later and I’m still giddy. I walk down the street grinning from ear to ear at nothing and nobody, despite clouds and wind and gloom. I live here, in this moody northern city full of whisky and haggis and people who say “aye” and roll their “r”s on the word “great.” I couldn’t be more pleased with the situation. And just when I was starting to think I was crazy for loving the damp, dark north in winter, a friend shared this article. At least I am not alone.

Even the usual absurdist rigamarole of moving to a new country can’t get me down. What’s that, I need a bank account to rent a flat but I can’t open a bank account until I have a flat? Oh pish. People here actually use the word “pish.” We have learned quite a bit of new vocabulary this week, especially in the course of our apartment search. Gas hob this and council tax that. DSS and EPC. I keep expecting to see IOL pop up in an ad.

After two months of country-hopping suitcase living since I last saw my own bed, this should be the point where things start to calm down a bit. Where I get to relax into the rhythm of my new country. Where I start learning the coins in my wallet and using them appropriately, rather than letting them accumulate because I can’t be bothered. Where I start to learn my way around the public transportation. Where I start to look for friends. Ah, but that would be too easy. This is advanced expatriatism, boys and girls, not for the faint of heart or slow to adapt. So what if you wake up each morning surprised to find out which country you’re in? It’s an adventure!

In two weeks I leave to spend a month in Japan. There will be plenty of time for settling in when I get back.

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While on an artist’s residency at Arte Studio Ginestrelle, I’m getting to know the town of Assisi a little bit more. December seems to be a lovely time of year to do this.

Umbria has become quite popular in recent years, and in the summer Assisi is jam packed with tourists and pilgrims (superfans of Saints Francis and Clare). In early December the city is still lively, but not overcrowded. We had no trouble getting into popular restaurants (such as Osteria dei Priori) which would have required reservations in the high season.

One of my favorite things was the Focaraccio dell’Immacolata, part of the lead-up to the Immaculate Conception on December 7th. (Apparently the Virgin Mary was pregnant for a mere 18 days, or possibly 12 and a half months. I couldn’t find anyone who could confirm the facts for me either way. Luckily this ambiguity didn’t ruin our enjoyment of the festivities.)

The people of Assisi have decided that the optimal way to celebrate the anniversary of their god’s impregnation of a virgin is with roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, and a dangerously large bonfire. I can’t think of any possible improvements on this plan. Did I mention that the mulled wine and roasted chestnuts were both free and plentiful? My kind of party.

The bonfire takes place at Rocca Maggiore, the castle that looms over the town of Assisi. When we arrived at the castle, the bonfire flames were whipping all over the place in the strong wind. Fortunately the fire department decided to show up a little after we did, so we could enjoy our free chestnuts and wine knowing that they surely had the situation under control.

Down in the main town square (Piazza del Comune) there was a so-so Christmas market on for the weekend. The more interesting market was the one in Piazza Santa Chiara, which contained mostly edible wares: fresh-pressed olive oils, Christmas cookies, cheeses, cannolis, that kind of thing.

The Germans usually win when it comes to Christmas markets, but they have nothing on the Italians when food is involved.

No post about Christmastime in Assisi would be complete without a mention of the exceedingly creepy life-sized nativity scene in front of the Basilica of Sant Francis. It went up in early December, and stays through early January. It might cause nightmares.

Edited to add: best pizza of this trip was had at Il Menestrello.

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Because moving to a new country isn’t complicated enough, we decided to spice it up a little. OK, not decided exactly; things are just working out that way. While Scott is home in Munich watching the contents of our apartment get packed up, I’m in Assisi experiencing my first stint as an artist in residence. 

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of official paperwork and relocation planning. The British government is holding onto our passports for a bit while they decide whether we are worthy of visas. Having to spend up to two months without passports was a daunting prospect, but luckily we were (just barely) forewarned enough to nip the problem in the bud by asking the US consulate to issue us extra passports. Very handy indeed.

Munich is still our base for now; we’re not exactly sure when we’ll officially switch over to being residents of Scotland. Hopefully it will be before February, when I head off to Japan for a month, but we’re not counting on it.

In the meantime, I’m trying not to worry about all the uncertainty too much. It’s dinnertime in Italy, and all that pasta isn’t going to eat itself.

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One of the first things you learn living in Munich is that the city has six big important breweries (Hofbräu, Augustiner, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Löwenbräu, and Spaten). These breweries own most of the beer gardens and beer halls, their beer is served in most local restaurants, and they are the only breweries allowed to sell beer at Oktoberfest. All this local beer pride seems a little silly once you realize that most of the six breweries were sold to large multinational drink conglomerates long ago, although they still continue to to brew their beer within the city limits of Munich (one of the conditions for being allowed to sell at Oktoberfest).

We recently learned that Munich also has a single microbrewery. Richelbräu is run out of a basement in the neighborhood of Neuhausen. They brew several different varieties of their CasaNova beer, ranging from the local traditional Bavarian types to American-style pale ales and the like. We got to try a helles and a dunkles; both were mighty tasty and easy to drink.

The cozy tasting room and (in good weather) small backyard biergarten are open to the public on weekend evenings for most of the year (check their website for details – you can also make appointments for small groups to visit).  If you go, don’t miss the erotic art exhibition that’s (ahem) hung in the rooms next to the brewery. The stübe is also a popular gathering place for fans of the local card game Schafkopf (we’d never heard of it before, but then again neither had most of the Germans who were there). The guys from Richelbräu also teach homebrewing courses at the Volkshochschule, and host a stammtisch for homebrewers in Munich.

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“But it’s so cold there!”
(Winters are a lot milder in Edinburgh than in Munich. We see that as a downside – we like snow.)

“Why would you want to do that?”
(This one comes mainly from Scottish people who live outside of Scotland.)

“Are you going to learn that kind of dancing where they only move their legs?”
(That’s Irish, too.)

“Do you like whisky?”
(Yes, very much. Can’t wait to visit Islay.)

“Have you found a place to live yet?”
(Who finds an apartment six months before they move?)

“You’re going to have a hard time understanding people – they don’t really speak English there.”
(Yes, they do.)

“They’re going to make you eat haggis.”
(They already have.)

“Are you going to take up golf?”
(Nope.)

“Sweet! I love the Corrs.”
(Yep, Irish.)

“Is Scott going to get a kilt?”
(Obviously.)

Any other questions?

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