After the colossally-long blog post last month (about our Cunard transatlantic voyage) this month is refreshingly short. Mainly because not much has happened except for work, walking the dog and Klaus doing some longer cycle rides (he is trying to do one ride over 100km each week).
Klaus decided to cycle to our favourite café in Elten, Mühlencafe. This is a really long way but he planned a nice route (165km) and set off at 10am so that he would arrive in time for lunchtime cake. Which he did – and Frau Limbach who runs it was so thrilled he had cycled such a long way to see her that she gave him a second slice of cake – free!
I suggested I could meet him on the way back for ice cream, and as I had his planned track and the Garmin Tracking so I could see where he was, I set off so that we could meet up in Kapellen/Sonsbeck.
I enjoyed my cycle ride in lovely weather but I only did 65km in total and that was enough for me.
I arrived in Sonsbeck first and went looking for the ice cream shop – which appeared to be closed. So I messaged Klaus and cycled to meet him on his track. He asked where I had seen the ice cream shop and it seems he knew it had moved to a new location further into the village, so we went back and he was right, the Eiscafe was there and open and doing a good trade in the warm weather.
We rode home together after this, but I don’t think my 65km counteracted the calories from the ice cream.
The following Friday we were both off work so after doing some jobs in the morning (collecting Zuzy the Z3 and photographing her as Klaus put her up for sale) we decided to join the usual Friday afternoon cyclists gathering (Kaffeeklatsch) which meets at a different café in Kreis Viersen every Friday. This time they were planning to meet at the airfield Niershorst in Grefrath so we headed there on our trikes.
The cakes were good!
It was lovely to see some of our cycling chums again – Uli, Hartmut, Petra, Heinz and Ralf came along later too. We had a good chat with them all and then headed back on our trikes – it was lovely weather for triking.
The following weekend Klaus decided to do another long ride and I decided again to meet him for cake. We agreed we would meet in Nettetal Lobberich at Café Steeger – he headed off around 7am as he was up and awake.
After lazing in bed for an hour I decided to get up too and thought I would maybe ride a bit further and meet him coming the other way again. His track this time took him around the giant hole in the ground (surface coal mine) and then via Erkelenz and Wegberg and then north through Boisheim to Lobberich.
I set off, realising that we would probably be in Lobberich before Café Steeger was open, but Café Crema (formerly Café Floral) would be open and we had seen some interesting cakes there last time. Café Steeger would open at 11:30am.
So I rode Klaus’s route in reverse, going to Lobberich and then heading south on roads that I have not cycled as much as those to the north. It was a nice day for a ride, though, and I took it gently (cycling on cycle paths when they were available). Now and again I checked where Klaus was and then decided to ride further.
As I passed the turning to Lüttelforst on the way to Wegberg I thought we would probably be meeting soon and this was a wide open cycle path with clear lines of sight so I decided to stop there, turn Millie round and wait for Klaus. I did so, then checked on my phone and it seemed he was actually still a fair way away. The signal was poor but it had him entering Wegberg. So I thought I would carry on.
Of course, two minutes later he passed me going the other way – the cycle path was too narrow for me to turn round so I had to ride on another 200 metres and then go onto the road to catch him up. It seems that Garmin had not updated his location as he was past Wegberg!
I told him about Steeger not being open and it looked as though we would arrive too early so we set off in convoy and headed straight to Café Crema. This is a café run by a Greek family and the lady who served us last time (and this time) has the most beautiful hair! She also prefers to speak English so that is nice for me.
I went for this walnut and honey cake which was lovely!
Klaus went for a more traditional cake, which she said was less sweet.
We enjoyed the cakes and the price was very fair (I think my cup of tea was free).
We then rode home together and were back around lunchtime, Klaus having cycled 110km. He is feeling good about the cycling and the walking he is doing, and for me my running (I am managing 3 runs a week) and the regular walking seems to be improving my VO2 Max again which had rather dropped over our summer holidays. We are trying to keep up with this additional exercise which has also involved us having a 45 minute to one hour walk before work on really hot days. We tend to do a late evening walk with Poppy too when it is cooler, so we are both walking at least 10.000 steps per day at the moment. And enjoying it while we can!
Oh, and I came back from the boat cruise at 77.9 kg which is fully 9kg more than my lowest weight in 2022 – the kilos have crept up on me over the last year and a half, and particularly this year with all the holidays and visits to the UK where I tend to eat the wrong sort of food. So now I am back from most of the holidays I am being much more careful and have dropped down after 5 weeks to 73.8 kg which is much better, but it will probably take me a couple more months to get down to 70kg which is my target. Klaus didn’t put on as much on the holiday and I think he has reached a very suitable weight for him. You do have to keep on top of it!
My website breaks!
One quiet day I had the trauma that an automatic update of a WordPress Plugin broke this website! I get an email when the site is down for more than an hour, and it became clear there was a significant problem. I should have been sent an email telling me what the problem was but it didn’t arrive and I couldn’t work out how to fix the issue.
Fortunately Nils (Dr Chainsaw) was in the house and he is much more computery than me and between the two of us we managed to get it working again after about an hour. Phew! The Google Fonts Plugin had a dodgy update which had completely crashed my WordPress Blog. I take backups once a week but these are within the WordPress system and I couldn’t get in to the user dashboard to restore it.
Once I got it working again I decided to download a PDF of each page so I have a permanent record. I found a Tool that would download everything but it couldn’t handle the whole blog (which is massive) so I had to download each post one-by-one. And there were 453 of them. With all the photos last month’s blog is 251.4 MB too, so in fact my backup of PDFs of each page requires over 15 GB!
Preparations to move to the UK
This month we had our Zoom call with the advisor about visas and other things we need to plan for our return to the UK next June.
The lady was extremely helpful and was able to answer some questions we had and give us links to various information. The UK’s Gov.uk website is useful for quite a lot of this, as I had already found, but for the more German-related things the lady had some additional information. Klaus had assumed he would have to give up his Ausweis (ID Card) which he was rather sad about as it’s a major rite of passage in Germany when you were growing up; the good news is that he doesn’t, they just mark your address as “im Ausland” (abroad). the Ausweis is your proof of address in Germany and so he assumed that without a German address they would take it away. But no!
We discussed items like bank accounts, pensions, health insurance options for him, German contracts such as the mobile phone contract, deregistering from Germany, driving licence, cars etc.
We also discussed with her the two visa choices. The Skilled Worker Visa is much simpler to get – assuming you have a job offer from a UK company and they are registered as visa sponsors (although that is not too much of an issue for companies to get registered if they aren’t already). This visa takes 1-2 months to get and needs minimal paperwork. However, we could also go the Spouse Visa route which takes longer and involves a lot more paperwork (proof of language skill, proof of financial status, proof that our marriage is genuine, paying for NHS treatment in advance) but paperwork is not something that is a problem for me/us. This Visa has the benefit that if Klaus wants to work as a freelancer, or if he loses a job he has under the skilled worker Visa, he is still able to remain in the UK. So we are planning to apply first for the Spouse Visa and get everything in train there as it makes us more independent.
Klaus has been discussing his possible work options with his existing company and has also talked a bit with some of his network of contacts and there are several promising options on the horizon. If he will not be working for the current company in England next year he has to resign by the end of November as he has a 6 month notice period so he is trying to encourage the current company to think seriously about whether they want to keep him and, if so, how they would deploy him in the UK (there seem to be many options). Klaus is regularly writing about the planning for the move to the UK on LinkedIn and has received lots of helpful feedback on his options.
It doesn’t hurt that this month he won an industry innovation award for his “hobby”, a device that he invented nine years ago and brought to life which has been really successful.
The first thing he really needs to do is get the Language Certificate for the Spouse Visa. He theoretically only needs an A1 Exam Pass (which is the most basic language skills like hello and goodbye!) but if he eventually goes for UK citizenship (after 5 years in the UK) he would need B1 so it makes sense to go for that so it is all already sewn up. I got a C1 certificate for my German citizenship application, our language skills are reasonably similar, so he ought to get B1 without any problems. The exams are in Düsseldorf once per month and so that’s his next challenge, to book the exam, take it, pass it and then he has a certificate which is valid indefinitely.
Next week we are heading to the UK for a long weekend which will include the burial of Mum’s ashes. This is six months after she died but we had been waiting for a time when we could all be there. We also got the Grant of Probate this month so are in the process of closing Mum’s bank accounts and savings accounts. Her house is still up for sale and the right person hasn’t come along for that yet so we don’t know how much longer we will have it; if it’s still in the family next year Klaus and I will move into Buckshorns when we come over as that makes sense (to look after the house and we don’t have to pay rent elsewhere) but it’s not an ideal house for us and it would be better to sell it if we can. We shall see. But we are looking forward to seeing my family again next month, and also Klaus’s cousin Tony who we last saw in New York and who is visiting Mannheim with his wife Jill a week later – we have several days off to spend with them there.
Thanks for reading and please leave a comment if you wish – I really enjoy reading them!