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By John, on September 29th, 2011
 Part of the garden plans, showing the front of the house
(wall to the street on the left, garage and house on the right) , who you will have seen a lot on the later photos of the house in Picasa, has been going to the site most weeks and working with Antonio and Pepe, getting earth moved and the ground prepared for the garden plants.
We are really excited about the garden – María has done an amazing amount of work planning the garden, and at the moment is sending us the latest proposals for our approval before the planting starts. You can get an idea of the amount of planning she is doing by looking at the tiny screenshot above. We have a detailed set of plans from her showing where irrigation pipes will be, the lighting plans and planting plans as well as the types of materials and soils being used.
By John, on September 29th, 2011
 The kitchen units being installed
I was in Spain again at the beginning of the week – Ruth had to work, so I took lots of photos of the progress of the house to show her. I’ve uploaded some of them to Picasa – click the picture above to see them. Pedro, the carpenter, has been very busy the last week – the installation of the kitchen units, the fitted wardrobes and a fitted cupboard in the entrance hall are all proceeding apace. As is the installation of the air-conditioning and of all the wiring in the the house.
And outside, a raised vegetable garden near to the kitchen has been created, using saved “off-cuts” from the stones used for the dry-stone walls of the house.
As the house nears completion we are getting restless – we are waiting to hear from the removal company when they can move our belongings from storage into the house. (It won’t be for a few more weeks yet, however. There is still quite a lot to finish off).
One piece of good news, for me, was that I don’t have to hassle around getting the electricity and phone/DSL connected – the electrician has to do that before his work is signed off and the final payment is made!
The bad news was that Telefonica hasn’t laid any lines at all to this part of the settlement, (they are thinking of wiring it with glass-fibre cable, but don’t know when or at what cost), so for now it looks as if we will be connected by a 3G GSM mobile service for our broadband internet, phone and of course for our mobile phones. The electrician is investigating the various possibilities at the moment. At least there is a 3G signal on the site (I checked this time).
By John, on September 25th, 2011
I had been asking myself how on earth the Greeks could have amassed debt of €30 million per citizen until last night talking to someone in German (and using “Milliarden” the German for US-billions) I realized I had been working in British billions instead of American billions.
The actual debt per citizen is just under 30 000 Euro per person. How does that compare to other countries? Here’s a table I put together based on the figures I found at nationaldebtclocks
| Country | National Debt
(1 billion = 10 to power of 9) | Debt per Citizen
(in Euro, '.' as thousands separator) |
| Australia | AUD 147 billion | 4.766 |
| Sweden | SEK 1173 billion | 13.539 |
| Spain | EUR 631 billion | 13.727 |
| Portugal | EUR 147 billion | 13.908 |
| UK | GBP 1077 billion | 19.825 |
| Netherlands | EUR 364 billion | 22.007 |
| Germany | EUR 1899 billion | 23.226 |
| Ireland | EUR 107 billion | 24.064 |
| New Zealand | NZD 189 billion | 25.006 |
| France | EUR 1677 billion | 25.924 |
| Greece | EUR 336 billion | 29.758 |
| Italy | EUR 1894 billion | 31.404 |
| USA | USD 15142 billion | 36.118 |
| Japan | YEN 948741 billion | 72.372 |
Debt in Euro per citizen (25th September 2011, Source: http://nationaldebtclocks.com/)
Note that these figures only give a partial picture of the debts in each country, as this article in yesterday’s Handelsblatt mentions (translation via Google Translate here).
By John, on September 21st, 2011
 Cable spaghetti coming out of the walls, everywhere.
I think all the cables for power and light have been installed now. I hope so, as the house is beginning to look as if the flying spaghetti monster has set up home in the walls. Now the sockets and light switches need adding.
By John, on September 13th, 2011
We were lucky with the weather, yesterday. The remains of our furniture and other possessions moved into storage until the house in Spain is completed. The previous day it poured all day, but the sun shone for the move. Everything expect the piano and a couple of plants was sealed in a container brought by an 18-ton lorry. In order to avoid getting mould on the furnishings and clothes, it was important that everything went in to the container dry.
It was a tight fit for the driver, turning down our little side road – the removers thought they would have to remove the safety-barrier at the roadside, but in the end the lorry got round the corner without modifying the barrier.
The piano was taken in a separate truck to the removers – it goes into a controlled environment, instead of the main storage warehouse, so it should stay in tune while it is in storage. The plants go to the admin office of the removers until the delivery to Spain.
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The piano being wrapped in plastic film
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To get the piano into the small lorry, the lift on the 18-tonner was used
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… in it goes!
We hand the house over to its new owners on Saturday, and then we wait for the new house to be completed. At the moment the builder and Antonio, our architect, think it should be finished at the end of the month, or the beginning of October. There are still a few things we need to decide and do before then – the most urgent one being to choose the tiles for the kitchen walls. It’s not turning out to be so simple – we want locally supplied tiles, and we are visiting various tile showrooms near our flat in Kronberg, trying to track down Spanish tiles which we like!
By John, on September 11th, 2011
According to El País, amazon.es will be starting up on 15.09.2011.
That’s good news for us, as we buy quite a lot from Amazon, not just books, but also electronic and kitchen equipment, and were going to miss them once we got established in Xàtiva!
Spaniards have waited for 16 years, but it is finally here. Amazon.es will be up and running on September 15, a day after its presentation by Greg Greeley, vice-president of the online seller’s European division, sources in the know said…
By John, on September 8th, 2011
… in Valencia, in the Plaza de Toros (the bullring)!
 Oktoberfest 2011 - Valencia
The Spanish Oktoberfest finishes on the day that the “real” Oktoberfest in Munich starts (17th September 2011). As you can guess, I have been to see how the house construction has got on during the holiday month of August. I was very pleased to see that nearly all the interior walls are finished now and most of the power and ethernet cabling is also done. In fact, it looks as if the house could be finished by the end of this month or the beginning of October.
You can see the latest photos of the house here (click the right arrow next to the photo to see the next ones).
By John, on August 29th, 2011
The Daily Telegraph, yesterday:
Euro bail-out in doubt as ‘hysteria’ sweeps Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer has enough coalition votes in the Bundestag to secure backing for Europe’s revamped rescue machinery, threatening a consitutional crisis in Germany and a fresh eruption of the euro debt saga.
Merkel is – in my eyes – the most incompetent and dangerous Chancellor that Germany has suffered since the founding of the federal republic. The only good thing about this mess that she has drifted into would be if the government fell and new elections were called. Germany needs some leadership, and not someone managing by consensus based on Bildzeitung polls.
Update (2011-09-04): This article (in German) is why Merkel worries me so much. And here an article in English.
By John, on August 22nd, 2011
Yesterday afternoon we decided to take a break from the work on our two removals and explore Kronberg. We walked to the castle, which is about 3.2 km from our flat. We hadn’t realised that Kronberg has connections to the British Royal Family – Queen Victoria’s daughter (Princess Victoria, also know in Germany as “The Empress Frederick”, the wife of Kaiser Friedrich III) lived in Kronberg and restored the castle, which had fallen into ruin. She lived in Kronberg after being widowed, where she took up painting – you can see reproductions of several of her works in the castle museum.
At the moment Maggi is sponsoring some restoration of the castle, which is why the scaffolding on the Oberburg tower is covered in a huge Maggi bottle – there is also an exhibit about Maggi, who are celebrating 125 years of existence, in the museum.
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Kronberg Schönberg
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Victoria Park – named after Princess Victoria
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Victoria Park, Kronberg
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Part of the castle (the “Oberberg”, or top castle) is covered by a huge “Maggi” bottle
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Several roads have notices saying there is no way to the Burg.
We eventually found the right way
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Approaching the castle
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The Maggi bottle close up
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In background is the castle’s chapel, partly destroyed by incendiary bombs in the last World War.
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The Maggi Exhibit in the castle
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Mittelburg (Middle Castle)
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Outer Gate to the castle
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Splendid hinges on this door in the old town
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In the old town, Kronberg
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This Apfelweinlokal (cider garden) is about 200m from our flat –
a great place to finish our walk!
By John, on August 19th, 2011
 Lots of packing cases
Last Monday we moved into a flat in Kronberg, having sold the house in Schmitten. This is our “little” move of about 1/4 of our possessions into a flat which Ruth and I will use as our base while she carries on working here. We’re all set up here – it doesn’t take long to unpack the contents of a 52 sq.m. flat!
And we’ve spent a lot of the last week up in Schmitten, packing as much as possible for the move to Spain – we move out completely next week. That is a much bigger job – the photo above is of just one of the rooms which are more or less full of packed-up cartons! So far we’ve packed 99 cartons, and the removers will probably need another 20 − 30 to pack our glass and china (which they must pack, otherwise it wouldn’t be insured for breakages during the move). That sounds like a lot of breakables, but they put a lot of paper or bubble-wrap around them, so not many items fit in a carton.
One difference between this move and our moves in the UK (over 30 years ago, so things could have changed in the mean time), is that all our removers in Germany have always packed our things in cardboard cartons like the ones in the photos. They fold flat when they are not in use. In the UK the removal companies used plywood tea chests to pack everything. Tea chests are much larger, and obviously don’t fold flat – they often still contained a few tea leaves at the bottom of the chest!
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