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Permanent Stranger: The Expat’s Journey of Identity & Belonging with Paul Hughes · Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences

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I'm a permanent stranger. I'm a stranger when I go home,
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I'm a stranger at work, I'm a stranger in my home city, a
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permanent stranger. I genuinely don't think I've
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been happy in a very long time. I'm in survival mode and I'm
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just surviving. This is safe, it's secure, it's
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comfortable, but I don't know what happiness looks like.
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If I'd have stayed in Swindon and never left, I may have been
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one of those Brexit voters. Experiencing different cultures
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all the time gives you a much kind of more global mindset,
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much less isolationist than than people that don't leave their
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countries. I got really emotional and I
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couldn't figure out why it was. And I realized it was the first
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time I felt like I was at home since I'd left home in the UK
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like that. That feeling, I'd missed it for
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so long. I hadn't experienced that
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feeling in in so, so long. There was quite emotion.
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It was quite overwhelming. Paul, good evening and welcome
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to whereabouts deals. Hey, yeah, thanks for having me.
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It's been a long time coming. We we organized this a couple of
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months ago. I've been excited.
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Absolutely. I Paul, we postponed it once
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because of me. I was sick.
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Sorry for that. I have to say it on the
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recording to take the guilt on me.
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Paul, you have a story which is which is incredibly nice for me
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at least. But I would like to wrap it,
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unwrap it page by page by starting with the with your area
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in which you you grow up, you grow up.
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Where are you originally from? Yes.
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I'm originally from a town called Swindon, which is in
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England. It's about 100 miles West, or
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100 miles, 100 kilometers West of London.
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It's like right in the middle of London and Bristol, right in the
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middle of the country. A lot of people have driven past
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it, but nobody ever really goes there because there's nothing
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there. That's why we decided to live.
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Well, you know, I didn't decide to live there.
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I grew up there. My parents, my father actually
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grew up in the house next to the house that we ended up buying
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and living in for most of our lives.
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So the the epicenter of my whole family is kind of Swindon in, in
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England. Yeah.
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That's cool for your father. I think it's always interesting
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for people that are getting to make a living as a grown up in
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the place where they grew up by themselves.
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Because I it's, it's, it's so easy.
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You know, you have all the connections.
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You know everyone on the other side.
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It's not so interesting anymore because you have no surprises.
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What what sparked your interest to move abroad, Paul?
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I think so. I was thinking about that when I
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was a kid and living in Swindon, you know, behind our house was
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this huge park. And in that park, you know,
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there was places where we would go and build bases and dens and
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we would play football and tennis and climb trees and fall
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off of buildings and all, all these things.
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But beyond our park, there were other parks and other areas
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where other kids hung out. And it was kind of like, you
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know, your, your island is that little park in, in Swindon.
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And then there's all these other islands where kids go to
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different schools and it's kind of exotic and they don't know
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you. And you, you know, you kind of
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see them as enemies or kind of like weary when you first meet
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them and they, they go to this school over.
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And I was always kind of exploring.
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He's always out on my bike. So he's always in these other
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areas with these other kids and meeting other, other people.
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And I kind of think that that gave me or broke down barriers
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to the, the limits of my town. You know, everybody I grew up
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with still lives in Swindon apart from one person, but I'll
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get into that later. You know, my family pretty much
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will still live there. My son lives there with his
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parents. They go to the same schools that
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we went to when I was a kid. But I was always kind of like
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curious what was beyond the fence of the park.
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You know what what was in, in, in the, in the distance there.
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And the short answer to that is I met a girl and she wanted to
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leave England and I went with her.
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So the short answer is love, but the exotic answer is I've always
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been an explorer. And I've always.
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Wanted to see what's out there but really it's it was a girl.
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I like both of them. So she's the second person who's
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not living in in New York City anymore, right?
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Yeah, well, she was German. I, I met her when I was working
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in London and she was working for Tesla Motors at the time.
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Back when it was exciting. Yeah, before they'd even
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launched any cars, you know, when it was a real sexy brand
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and they closed the UK office after she'd only been there
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about 6 months and moved it to Amsterdam.
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And my wife was, Oh my, she was my girlfriend at the time.
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So my wife now she's like, I'm really sad because you know, I
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was kind of excited about this job opportunity.
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I'm going to have to leave. I'm like, you can't leave.
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Definitely not to stay here in Swindon with me.
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You know, like there's a whole this the world's most exciting
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country company and moving to Amsterdam, one of the world's
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most exciting cities, like it's a no brainer.
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You're going. So she went and or as she was
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preparing to leave, I was trying to set up a business rather
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unsuccessfully and realized that I kind of didn't want to do a
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long distance relationship with her.
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I kind of thought, well, let's go, let's go and do the
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adventure. So I moved with her and we moved
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to Amsterdam, me without a job, her working for for Tesla and
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yeah, we went for it. That's, that's an interesting
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step. It's always an interesting step
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when you do it together because you have the yeah, you have the,
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you are not alone. And I think that's important as
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an expert at least. But you are both experts in, in
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Amsterdam, right? Because she was like you said,
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she was from Germany. You see you are from UK.
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How was the How was the expected experience in the Netherlands?
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So we, we moved into an area called the Pipe, which is kind
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of one of the cooler areas, very narrow streets, very tall
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houses. You know, my wife had her work.
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So she was very, very focused on Tesla.
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I was kind of enjoying the city, networking, trying to find work.
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You know, one thing that's wonderful about being European
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back when Britain was part of it, you know, I was able to
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arrive in Amsterdam and be given health insurance whilst I looked
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for work and then, you know, until I found a job.
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And I did. But it was very, it was very
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hard. It's a very strange city.
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You know, I remember being in the hotel on that first night
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after we had, you know, driven over, put all our stuff in
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storage and we went to this hotel whilst we were waiting for
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our apartment to be made ready. And I could hear the sirens in
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the background because we're in the city.
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And of course they're different to what they were in the UK.
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And I just remember being LED there at night, hearing the
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sirens and thinking, I am not in Swindon anymore, you know, like
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I've, I've set fire to my whole life and decided to move to, to
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Amsterdam. And it was, it was open.
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It was scary. But I think what I learned about
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Amsterdam really was the, the, the world's quite a friendly
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place. You know, I'm landed there.
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I networked, I found people, I've found a new career.
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We always managed to find a job where when we needed it, you
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know, when the bill wasn't going to get paid, some work came out
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of nowhere and we, and we managed to survive, you know,
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and then it, it went beyond survival after a while and, and
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we began to enjoy it. I think we were there nearly a
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year. And that was my first experience
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in a, in a foreign city. And for it to be Amsterdam was
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pretty cool because everybody speaks English.
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So you know. That's that for sure makes it an
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advantage. And the fact that English is
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your mother language, not your second or third language makes
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it even more interesting because everyone is interested to speak
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with you because they improve their English.
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That's that makes it makes a lot of fun.
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But I have to ask you what was, what was the so first thing?
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I think the you said you you lived only in your hometown, so
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not in London at all before moving to Amsterdam.
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I, I commuted from Swindon to London every day.
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It was a nightmare. And this was in the days where
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Home Office was just becoming to be a thing.
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So sometimes I was able to, to work from home.
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But now, yeah, I, I've had only ever lived in Swindon my whole
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life. I I left when I was, I was 30
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one and that was when we went to Amsterdam.
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Do you think it was the the big city experience besides being in
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another country? Was Amsterdam a big city
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experience? Amsterdam culturally,
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aesthetically was completely different to to Swindon.
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You know, it was, it was coffee shops on cobblestone streets.
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It was no cars. It was biking everywhere.
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We didn't even have a car the whole time we were there.
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We just ride in our bikes everywhere.
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It was, it rained more than England.
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People don't believe me, but it did it.
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Just the volume of rain might be more in England, but in
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Amsterdam it rains all the time, all the time, all the time.
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So it did feel like a big city experience to me because you
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know, there's trams and buses and things.
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There's no trams in Swindon. There's not many tram networks
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in the whole of the UK. To be honest, it did feel like a
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big city experience. It made me less nervous about
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being an expat. I think it was it was almost
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kind of doing being an expat on easy mode.
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Sounds, sounds fun. How was the, what was the
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family's, what was your family's direction when you said, you
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know what, I live my life, all my life here, but I'm going with
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this girl that I met in London. They were, they were excited.
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The, the biggest issue was, you know, really was my, my son,
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because I think he was around 4:00 at that point and he was
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living between me and his mother.
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And when I left, you know, he may, he moved in with his mother
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full time and he was meant to come and see me often in
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Amsterdam. That, that didn't work out for a
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number of reasons. But my, my parents are very
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happy. My wife's parents were even more
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happy because they live in Germany.
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And now instead of it being a flight to come and see their
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daughter, it was a, just a much longer car ride.
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So, you know, they were, they were happy with that.
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And then the next time we move, we move to Frankfurt, which is
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even slightly more closer to them.
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So each time we move in Germany, it seems we we get slightly
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closer to them. So you said one year, one year
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in Amsterdam and then decided also because of the job to move
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to Germany. Yeah.
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So my wife took a kind of promotion into the sales realm
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of Tesla. So moved to Frankfurt and was
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working in one of the showrooms as a they don't call themselves
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people, they call them ownership experience advocates.
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So yeah, we were in Frankfurt. But again, we made that move
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without me having a job. I had no job.
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We we rolled the dice again and we moved to Frankfurt.
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And actually that worked out fine for me.
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But Frankfurt I didn't like, I didn't like Frankfurt.
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Frankfurt Grey. Big soulless shit hole.
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Really, I I just didn't like Frankfurt at all.
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I I have to say Frankfurt give me gives me the impression of
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the of AUS city without the benefits of the US city.
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I know it makes sense. Yeah, everything's still hard to
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get to. All the people don't live there
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and they're all rude. It's it's not very clean.
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It's layout is ridiculous. Like, yeah, Frankfurt is.
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I mean, maybe it's gotten better in the last decade.
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I haven't lived there in 10 years, But certainly when I was
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there I was not a city I was fond of.
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I go every once in a while because I'm a big fan of
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Chipotle and the only Chipotle restaurant is in Frankfurt.
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There is no other in Germany, so everyone's here.
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I'm there because that not not much has has changed.
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How long were you in Frankfurt? I was in Frankfurt for just over
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a year and then I got a job in these Baden, which is about 50
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kilometers down, down the river. And that was beautiful.
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And then we were there for five years.
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So these Baden is very much more of a home feeling place to me.
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It's it's still got a lot of its old buildings, it's still got a
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lot of character. It's good as cobblestone
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streets. It's got a wonderful church with
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the marketplace. It's quite a wealthy city as
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well, a lot of kind of generation of wealth and there's
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the capital of the state. So it just feels feels nicer
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than Frankfurt, feels classier. You had quite, a quite a
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journey. So you, you are not the the
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typical I move into one place and stick there for for the rest
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of it. You you move, move around a bit.
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Was it only job triggered? Mainly, so actually I, I moved
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twice more after that. So we we went from Amsterdam to
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Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden to
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Stuttgart and then Stuttgart to Mines.
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So at the moment I'm in Mines. Mines is just across the river
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from Wiesbaden. It's kind of the younger hipper
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version of Wiesbaden because it's got a university and Mines
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is OK. I'm, you know, I'm fairly happy
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here. We've been here 2 1/2 years now.
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But yeah, the, the, the, the journey of, of all these
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different places is exhausting, to be honest.
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You know, I, I'm, I don't want to move again.
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But unfortunately, you know that you're ain't going to end up
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moving again. It's just a matter of time.
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I see it as a you know by now that I I live in Germany as
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well, but I see it as a pattern in the German culture.
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This moving from one city to city to another is not something
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which is uncommon. It's a huge business that that
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that grow up in parallel to this or or to support this.
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But this movement from from one side to another is really
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happening a lot in Germany. This is this was my feeling.
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Yeah, and I, there's a there's a lot of things I love about
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Germany. There's a few things that still
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frustrate me about living here. You know, the, the things I love
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is that that there's a lot of security, there's a lot of
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workers rights. You know, the infrastructure is
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good. You know, even you can say what
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you like about Deutsche Band, but there's still trains to
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every city and it's very cheap compared to, you know, the UK.
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But it's, it's not a very warm country.
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It's not. And I'm not talking about the
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heat, I'm talking about the people.
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You know, it's difficult to make friends.
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I come from England. So you know, when we walk past
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each other on the street, we acknowledge each other like,
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hey, all right, how you doing? Whatever.
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In Germany, they don't, they've just walked past you just
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completely ignore you like you didn't even exist.
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And then there's the there's some cultural issues with, you
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know, with the immigration, with the the make up of the country
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that's not doesn't feel fully integrated.
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Everything feels isolated or siloed.
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You know, there's, there's, there's the Turkish communities,
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the Syrian communities, there's German communities and, and
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they, they don't seem to gel very well.
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You seldomly see, you know, a bunch of Germans and a, and a,
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and a, a bunch of, you know, I'll say immigrants because you
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know, they might be 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation immigrants, but
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you know, you, you seldomly see them mix.
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It's very siloed. And, and again, I come from the
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UK where that we kind of left that behind a long time ago and
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there was a lot better integration.
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Again, I haven't lived in England for 12 years.
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It might be different now, but that was my, that was my
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experience. Other things that I like about
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Germany, everything's quite close together.
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So, you know, you can go to the supermarkets and get what you
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need and walk home or ride your bike home.
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So I, I kind of like that infrastructure.
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Again, in England, everything is kind of, you go into a huge shop
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at Tesco's once every two weeks. And I think I eat more healthy
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now because if I, I'll go into the shop, I'm going to buy, you
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know, a few vegetables, a few bits and pieces and there we
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grab that. So that's other things I like.
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I like to say that I think talking about the, the, the,
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what you said at the beginning of Bing Bing, it's a bit colder.
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It's, it's not necessarily so it's, it's so interesting
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because I'm in Germany since 10 years as well.
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And I realise more and more that people are, they have a, they
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have a strange openness to, to welcome you inside, to, to talk
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to you, to have a chat with you. But there is a moment in which
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they break it like, you know the reason?
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I have the feeling that it's all all a surface discussion, which
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is happening and stays as the surface discussion.
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This was my feeling, at least until now.
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Yeah. I don't know.
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Please go on. I, I, so I've joined football
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clubs over here and played in football clubs and always found
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them to be very welcome. At the moment I'm part of the
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baseball club, so I played baseball and, and softball here,
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which is kind of an obscure sport.
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But the, the friendliness and welcomeness I get at those clubs
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are quite different. It seems to be like, OK, those
18:06
doors are open and, and everybody's kind of makes an
18:09
attempt to talk to you in English.
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They're a bit nervous sometimes to do it at first, especially
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when they know you're English. I, I think it's like if it's a
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German and a Romanian person, they'll kind of both accept that
18:19
their English isn't perfect and they'll just talk.
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But if it's a German and a British person, sometimes they
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feel a bit shy about it. And you know, for us, for an
18:26
English person, somebody trying to speak English is amazing.
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Like you, we already like you just for trying.
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Like we're never going to pick apart your grammar or be like,
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Oh my gosh, this guy is English is horrible.
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Like, no, no, no, you're speaking our language.
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This is amazing. So yeah, it's.
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And once they realize that, once we're appreciative of it, I find
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that they really open up. You'll go from somebody who
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never says any words to you at all to having like full on
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conversations. I'm like, I thought you didn't
18:53
speak English. The the typical answer that I
18:56
got at the beginning was when when I was asking to speak
18:59
English, they were also a little bit.
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But then half an hour into a conversation, I thought, that's
19:03
not a little bit. My friend, that's a really good
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English. So I don't know what you mean by
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a little bit. Yeah, I met so there was a a guy
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at the the baseball club there with his wife.
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And so I play there with my wife and exactly that scenario.
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I was talking to him. His English was fantastic.
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He was, you know, not nervous about it at all.
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But his wife was, his wife's a doctor.
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And I remember us going out and she, we, we were talking about
19:29
something and she said, oh, I think they're eavesdropping or
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I'm eavesdropping on this conversation.
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When I say eavesdropping, I think you tell me you didn't
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speak very good English. You come out with.
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Eavesdropping. Eavesdropping.
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Yeah. Where do you even know that word
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from? And so I think that I'll break
19:45
down some walls there. And she's kind of like, OK,
19:48
like, yeah, I'm cool here to to try and talk English.
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It's interesting for me. The only thing which is which is
19:54
interesting. We, we went deep into the
19:57
language, but I think what's what's, what makes it
19:59
interesting for me so. Growing up in Romania, I've seen
20:02
a lot of English in TV. Now the British English, of
20:05
course, the American English because that's the most the the
20:07
pace you get the you get the most movies.
20:11
But I kind of learn how the English language is spoken.
20:16
I most probably not don't get the grammar.
20:18
I think that the the most spoken language is the world is broken
20:22
English. So everything we we all speak
20:25
this, but I what I do realize quite often in my German
20:29
colleagues that they learn it in school and they are good
20:32
learners like they learn the rules.
20:33
But I heard I hear quite often people saying harness to be
20:39
harnessed because it's written harness.
20:41
We read it honest or the the funniest piece for me is wetness
20:45
day. So I think Wetness Day was
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something which will forever stuck be stuck into my head
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because I never I never heard someone struggling to read
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exactly what which was which was written on the paper.
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Yeah, and my, my wife still makes grammatical mistakes
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talking to me and we, we only talk in English.
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But The thing is, I'm so used to broken English now that I, I
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barely even notice, you know, I'm listening to understand, not
21:11
to correct, you know, So I Polish, Romanian, French,
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German, Italians, Norwegians, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, you
21:19
know, like I've worked with them all.
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And so I'm just used to this kind of not quite correct
21:24
English. But I'm, I'm never hearing the
21:26
inaccuracies anymore. I'm just hearing the message.
21:29
Correct. Makes sense, makes sense.
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And that's that's a good message.
21:32
That's a good piece of of message.
21:33
Paul, I have to ask you what? How are you with German?
21:40
It can, I'm busy in Deutsche Bracken.
21:42
Are the Nick's still good? It have a supermarket Deutsche.
21:47
I call it restaurant Deutsche. We have different perspective
21:50
there, yeah. Yeah, no, I speak enough German
21:53
to get around. It's not something that I, I
21:58
didn't enjoy learning it and I found it very, very difficult.
22:03
So the, the main course that I went to was an evening class and
22:09
you know, square room, square table teacher, 15 people in
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there, the Iranians, Italians, Czech guys and off we go.
22:20
You know, here's the here's the book, and you're learning to
22:22
read, write and speak at the same time.
22:24
The good old Integratios course. Yes, again.
22:27
Yeah, Ganal's nearly replaced exactly for me.
22:31
You know, I'm sitting there in this class and I'm struggling
22:34
with it. And the main thing that I don't
22:37
think people comprehend about the British is we don't really
22:42
learn how to speak English. We don't get, you know, we don't
22:46
go spend a huge amount of time on what verbs, adverbs, nouns
22:49
and everything out or sentence structure.
22:51
We just we, we speak it. And so when you go into a German
22:54
class and they say, OK, you know, you need to put the, the
22:57
second verb in the news fighter, it was fighter verb comp ender.
23:01
And I'm like, which is the verb in this sentence.
23:05
So in order to learn German, I had to learn English again
23:09
first. Oh, that's interesting.
23:10
And so for me it was, it just wasn't an enjoyable process.
23:14
And I, I found that as the course went on, I was getting
23:18
slightly further behind everybody.
23:21
Everybody was kind of picking up where they should be and I was
23:23
slightly further behind. And I think when I finished my
23:26
A2, I, I just was so traumatized that I did, I didn't go back,
23:31
You know, I, I realized that I could speak enough German to, to
23:35
get around the learning this language, you know, is not
23:39
something I take to very well. And I, I haven't really been
23:44
back. I know I owe it to my wife and
23:46
to Germany to, to learn more of it, but it's, I know it's a year
23:51
long process of, of, of torture, you know, four times a week, 4
23:56
hours a night, whatever it is of looking stupid.
24:00
And you know, to me that's it's just not a way I want to live my
24:04
life at the moment, to be honest.
24:06
But Paul, I have to ask you, because you, you, you mentioned
24:10
that you, you are nobody's teaching you exactly how to
24:13
speak the language in England. That makes sense.
24:15
I think it's the same for German.
24:17
I do remember discussion with the that I had with all of my
24:20
colleagues when I asked him, OK, how do you know if it's then
24:23
there or this? And I said, man, I don't know.
24:24
I just know I. I have no idea what my wife
24:26
said. Yeah.
24:27
And like, and, and I, I need that pattern.
24:29
Like if you teach me the pattern, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll
24:32
revise that pattern and I'll. Figure Absolutely.
24:35
But like she's no, you just need to know that it's then at 4:00
24:38
and I'm like, where's it then at and Das Alto?
24:40
And then that changes parts of the sentence, you know, 5 or 6
24:43
words before and then is it formal?
24:45
Is it informal? And it's, it's just so much.
24:48
And because there's no pattern to it, I can't figure it out.
24:51
And for me, the the what made it really hard to the beginning was
24:56
the fact that the conclusion of that sentence was happening at
25:01
the end. So to make sense of that
25:03
sentence, you had to wait until the verb was at the end.
25:06
Yeah. Made it so complicated because
25:10
you are wait is like a building suspense which is happening in
25:13
front of you and you had to wait until the end to understand what
25:16
exactly the that was meant. With that sentence.
25:19
We made it incredibly hard. And get that verb wrong and
25:23
you've misunderstood the entire conversation.
25:25
You know, if you. Yeah.
25:27
So it's my wife's father is still very disappointed with me
25:33
that I still don't speak German. He tells me every time we meet.
25:37
And I'm like, dude, I work with the Americans.
25:40
I speak German with my wife. You know, I watch television and
25:44
media in English. I can go weeks without hearing
25:47
German. Weeks makes sense.
25:51
So it's not like I'm working in Raver and I need to understand
25:55
German to, to speak to everybody.
25:57
You know, I, I, I don't use the language very often.
25:59
But but I need to come back to a question, Paul, what's the
26:02
language that you, what's the foreign language that you learn
26:04
in school in England? French, but I'm I'm no good at
26:08
that either so. Oh, OK.
26:10
Nobody really takes it seriously though in.
26:13
Because you don't. Need.
26:15
I don't know an English person who can speak another language
26:18
if you know, And I'm amazed if I meet an English person who
26:21
starts conversing in another language, it's like I'm looking
26:23
at somebody with a superpower. I'm like, Oh my God, you
26:27
actually learned another. Like this is amazing because
26:31
it's just, it just doesn't happen.
26:33
There is no pressure, to be honest.
26:34
There's no pressure. You can speak your, your, your
26:36
mother's language anywhere, almost anywhere in the world.
26:39
And there you can, you can come through with it.
26:44
I have to ask, how was the was it combo back then when you
26:48
moved to Germany? UK was still in the EU, so I do
26:51
guess that your registration process was quite easy, right?
26:55
Yeah, it was great. And and this is the thing that
26:57
people I didn't think understand about how amazing the European
27:00
Union is. When I moved to the Netherlands,
27:04
I walked into the the town hall and said, hi, I've moved here
27:12
from England. They said fill this form out.
27:14
Have you got work? No.
27:15
OK, fill this other form out. OK, you've now got health
27:19
insurance and here's your, you know, paperwork.
27:22
You're, you're here in Amsterdam done like one hour.
27:25
I'm now an Amsterdam resident. And when I moved to Germany, it
27:29
was a similar thing. I didn't have work there.
27:32
So I, I went to the, the ordnance amp to wherever it is
27:35
the, the, the town hall registered and now live in
27:40
Germany. OK, here's your health
27:42
insurance. I found a job.
27:45
I worked for 18 months, The contract ended, and then I was
27:49
able to go on unemployment because I was living here in
27:53
Germany. It was amazing.
27:54
So the German state was supporting me.
27:55
I'd paid. I think I just want to clarify
27:58
that for any Germans listening. I'd paid enough into the state
28:00
at that point, you know, I wasn't a Leech on society, but
28:05
the, you know, they paid and my health insurance was covered and
28:08
I got unemployment benefits whilst I searched for another
28:11
job. I think it took me 6 months and
28:12
I was and I've been in work ever since.
28:16
And then you know, Brexit happened and all of those rights
28:21
are now denied to my friends and family and my son and I have to
28:27
apply for permanent residency. So I can live in Germany, but I
28:29
can't freely travel in in Europe anymore like my my wife can.
28:33
So. I think the benefit of the EU is
28:37
only appreciated by the persons travelling outside of their home
28:40
country. And I think I see that in
28:44
Romania as well. I see that quite often that
28:46
nobody understands why exactly we need the EU.
28:48
That makes no sense. But March 2025 from since March
28:53
2025 Romania is in the Schengen space as well.
28:56
So now I don't have because drive driving from Germany to
29:01
Romania, which I do once a year. The only border that I had to
29:04
stop in was the Romanian border, so the border between Hungary
29:08
and Romania. And now I don't have to do even
29:10
that anymore. And that's such an amazing
29:12
feeling. The fact that you are able to
29:14
use every euro everywhere you go into into European Space, you
29:18
can use euro. I think the huge, there are huge
29:20
benefits and nobody's able to understand.
29:22
But if you don't travel, here's what's happening.
29:24
I mean, it's so easy. I made a remember making a
29:26
YouTube video, we drove home for Christmas one year and you know,
29:31
we go from Wiesbaden to Swindon. So you go through the
29:36
Netherlands, France, Belgium and then into the UK.
29:40
And I made this YouTube video about the travel and I posted it
29:43
on, you know, my Facebook page or whatever.
29:45
And my friends question, like, I always wondered what that would
29:48
be like crossing the borders. But it's, it's just a sign on
29:50
the road. You just, oh, I'm in Belgium.
29:52
Oh, I'm in the Netherlands. And that I think they would
29:54
imagine it was, you know, border guards and fences and, and
29:56
whatever. And I'm like, it was no, like
29:59
it's just just open. It's amazing.
30:02
I I'm still still sad for for my country leaving.
30:07
That's that's something you cannot control.
30:11
So your your lending experience was interesting because back
30:15
then the UK was still in the EU. Did you had to do something else
30:17
after the UK moved out of you? You had you said that you have
30:21
to apply for. Alfenhaltz title had to apply
30:25
for that. But then because I'd been here
30:27
longer than five years, actually, I was qualified for
30:29
permanent residency. So I'm a permanent resident,
30:33
which means I have all the same rights as a German except the
30:36
right to vote basically. Are you entitled?
30:39
Because I know it, at least for Romania I was entitled to
30:44
citizenship after I think 7 years if I remember correctly.
30:49
Are you also entitled to being outside the view?
30:51
I have to pass the integrations course and then I can, so
30:55
Germany relaxed those laws so I can have dual citizenship, so I
30:58
could have UK and German citizenship, which would give me
31:01
European citizenship. But it, it does mean I, I need
31:03
to do that integrations course. So it's, it's like, well, I just
31:07
have to learn German. Well, it's, it's a year at night
31:09
school and then you have to pass the tests and pay the money and,
31:13
and whatever you know, it, it, it's probably, definitely worth
31:17
it. And other people who are better
31:19
learners than me and better people than me, we would
31:23
probably just go and do it. But I sometimes feel like I'm in
31:27
survival mode in Germany so. It's not, it's not about the
31:31
the, the better learning, Paul. I think the, the important thing
31:34
that we keep forgetting is the fact that you, you have a job,
31:37
you have a family, you have, you have some social obligations
31:40
that they have to. And besides that you'll, you'll
31:42
get some an evening obligation for one year to go to
31:45
integration course. And it's not easy.
31:47
This is this does make it fun as much as you, you as someone
31:52
would think it's easy. No, it's not It's not.
31:54
It's frustrating and you think why do you have to do it?
31:57
Yeah, yeah. Is there an How did you, how did
32:02
you adapt to the local food? I don't mind the food.
32:07
The food's quite hearty. I, I think the way that when you
32:11
notice the food really is more when you go to a Mexican
32:15
restaurant and you know, there's not a single South American
32:17
person who works in the whole Mexican restaurant and then you
32:21
go to, you know, a Japanese restaurant and it's the same
32:26
thing. I think Asian food and Italian
32:28
food are very good here. For the most part.
32:30
I and I like German food, Schnitzel and pommers on a cold
32:34
day after a long walk, like, yeah, just get that in me.
32:37
The beer is fantastic, the wine is fantastic.
32:39
I'm in the wine region, you know, I'll go to the, the
32:42
supermarket here and I'll buy wine that's travelled less than
32:46
10 kilometers from the grape to the shelf and I will pay €4.00
32:52
for that. You know, it's an amazing, it's
32:55
a bad place to be if you're an alcoholic, but it's a wonderful,
32:58
wonderful luxury to have. So first of all, for a person
33:02
coming from UK and saying that the the beer in Germany is
33:05
amazing, it's impressive because usually it's the odd.
33:08
It's never happened, at least in my experience.
33:12
No, the, the like, you know, you've got the, the hellison,
33:15
the bites and, and you know, I'm not a fan of pills.
33:19
It's different to what we have in the UK, but it's, it's just
33:22
very tasty. It's very cheap.
33:24
And again, that, that local pride, you know, I, I've got 2
33:29
breweries within walking distance of my house that brew
33:33
their own beer that they then bring to your table, you know,
33:35
they, they serve from their own brewery.
33:37
They make sorry, 33. I can walk to 3 breweries in
33:40
England. In Swindon, where I was, there
33:42
was 1 main brewery called the Arkell's Brewery, but that was
33:46
it. Everything else is kind of more,
33:50
it's getting better. You know, there's artisanal
33:52
stuff over there and a lot of people are making it.
33:53
But like the the big breweries were kind of more chain when I
33:58
was there. You know, everything behind the
34:00
tap is Stella, Heineken, whatever.
34:03
And then you've got a few that you'll have like, you know,
34:05
Bombardier or Spitfire, normally these wacky Second World War
34:09
names, but that's that. I never liked that anyway, that
34:13
bit of warm flat liquid. I had AI had a colleague from
34:19
from Dublin who told Nepal there's not the Odessus monkey
34:23
piece. Yeah.
34:27
I. Just I never drank it.
34:28
I was, I was, you know, I was 30 when I left and the only people
34:32
I was drinking that were 50 year olds, you know, I was always
34:34
drinking Stella Fosters, which, you know, none of that's English
34:38
anyway. Correct, correct.
34:40
And the second question regarding the wines, because
34:42
there was a something which impacted me in the negative way
34:45
at the beginning regarding the wines, it wasn't that of a bad
34:50
impact, the fact that the wine bottles you know, had the cork.
34:54
Yeah, every single one has the the screw top here, right?
34:57
Isn't isn't that interesting? Yeah, well, any bottle of wine
35:03
you get in England has to have a cork, right?
35:04
Exactly. Otherwise, you know it's not a
35:06
bottle of. Wine.
35:07
It's too cheap. Yes, exactly.
35:09
Exactly. Everything's got a screw top and
35:10
you're like a screw top, but then after a while you're just
35:12
like, that's really handy because when I go to the river I
35:15
can open my wine. Absolutely.
35:18
Absolutely. But I think that the the, the
35:21
most, the, the interesting fact is that the, the, this fanciness
35:25
is missing from the wine bottles.
35:27
But nobody's upset with that. I mean, everyone's happy to have
35:29
a local, local wine, yeah. Have you ever experienced a
35:34
basin? Basin.
35:36
No, I don't know what that is. They it could be that it's a
35:40
it's a bottom Wuttenberg thing. Maybe maybe your wife can tell
35:44
you, but it's an they have a, you know, basin is actually the
35:47
name of the broom. OK, that's actually what's its
35:52
name is. And in fact is there are houses
35:55
inside of wine fields and usually back then in the old
35:59
times they were using that house during the summer for the family
36:03
that owned the wine yard. OK.
36:06
To live there during the summer so they are closer to the to the
36:10
one because they had to do a lot of work at the winery and that's
36:13
why they had to live closer. And what was usually happened, I
36:17
know the story from a colleague of mine.
36:20
What was usually happening. They were cooking two types of
36:23
food every day. And whomever was it was going
36:26
around and working and not having a basin inside their
36:29
winery. They were coming by having their
36:32
food and paying them for that. So you only have two types of
36:36
food, like happening every day, but different.
36:38
Like, like, like you would have a normal household cooking.
36:41
Yeah, but for your cooking more because you knew that people are
36:45
coming in to to enjoy your food. And that habit stayed there.
36:49
And you have basin now. So you have places in which and
36:51
the name of basin. Sorry, I have to jump back a bit
36:54
to the logic was that because you knew that when the broom was
36:57
in the door the the the basin was closed and when the broom
37:01
was not in the door then the basin was open I'm.
37:04
Sure, my wife would know about that.
37:05
She did. She did the hike.
37:07
I think it's the vest vague hike, which runs the entire way
37:10
through the Black Forest. Yeah, she was staying in little,
37:13
little places all along the way. I think it took her two weeks
37:15
and like a different house every night.
37:17
So I'm sure she came across that.
37:18
But no, I haven't. I haven't come across.
37:20
That that's that's an interesting experience, I have
37:22
to say. What does the the thing that
37:26
took you the most by surprise in Germany?
37:29
I think how much every city looks the same, you know,
37:34
whether you're in Berlin or Cologne or Dusseldorf or
37:40
Hanover, like they all just look the same.
37:43
And, and I wasn't, I'm not, it's not like that in the town where
37:48
in, in the UK where I'm from, you know, every village, you
37:50
know, whether it's 12 miles apart or 200 miles apart,
37:53
they're all completely different or there's a lot more uniqueness
37:56
of play. So that took a while to get used
37:59
to because you know, a lot of the places where a lot of people
38:02
live like your colognes or your Dortmunds or whatever, there's
38:06
like, there's very little redeeming features to them.
38:10
You know, when people say they're going to the Cologne for
38:12
the weekend, I'm like, why? Oh, we want to see the Dom.
38:15
I'm like, yeah, like that's it. That's all you're going to see
38:18
there like is whatever. So, and then, you know, we went
38:23
to Berlin and I was very underwhelmed because we've been
38:26
to a lot of nice places in Germany up until that point.
38:30
So we went to Berlin. I was quite excited about it.
38:34
But Berlin's weird because every other city kind of has that
38:38
central place where everybody goes to, you know, you go to the
38:40
old stat, there's an old church that was probably rebuilt in the
38:43
1950s, has the old Market Square that was rebuilt in the 1950s.
38:47
You know, it's all Disneyland, none of its original.
38:51
And you, you kind of hang out there and it feels nice.
38:53
But in Berlin that doesn't really exist, you know, So you
38:57
have to kind of peel back the curtain a bit, especially with
39:00
somewhere like Berlin. And it becomes about the people
39:02
and the art and the feel. And I remember being in Berlin,
39:05
having this experience at the Mauer Park on the Sunday.
39:08
We'd spent the whole weekend there.
39:11
You know, I was learning about the Berlin Wall because I hadn't
39:13
didn't really understand it fully back then.
39:17
And we're in this park and we're sat in this Amphitheatre, which
39:20
is just built into the side of the park, this stone
39:22
Amphitheatre. And there's just St. performers
39:25
performing that, you know, magicians and, and things like
39:27
this and and jugglers and whatever in the middle.
39:29
And we just sat around, and then there's a guy coming round with
39:32
a crate of beer, and he's like, cold beer, €3.
39:35
And you're like, yeah, give me a cold beer.
39:37
This is great. You know, just sat in the park
39:38
there, chilling, watching these people.
39:40
And then as we were leaving, there was a band playing in the
39:43
middle of the field. And all of their instruments
39:45
were powered by, like, car batteries.
39:46
So they have this huge trolley that they were pushing through,
39:48
and they were just playing in the middle of the field.
39:50
And I was like, oh, I get it now.
39:51
I get it. This is Berlin.
39:53
It doesn't matter what it looks like.
39:54
It's the feel of the place. And I think what I took from
39:58
that is, you know, when I go to these different cities that do
40:01
look the same as I am looking for that.
40:02
OK. What's the feel of this place?
40:05
Really? What?
40:06
You know, we went to Cologne at the Christmas market this last
40:10
year and we were in the city by the Dome and it was, you know,
40:14
just dominated by terrorists. It was horror was I don't want
40:17
to be here. My wife's like, well, there's
40:19
this other Christmas market that's like a pop up Christmas
40:22
market. It's a train ride away.
40:24
It's on the outsides of Cologne. I'm like, yeah, let's go.
40:26
And we went there and it was amazing.
40:28
Like everything was screwed together by plywood.
40:30
Everything was made out of pallets.
40:32
And, you know, and again, I said, oh, it's that, that feel
40:35
of Cologne, it's this diversity of, of people and experience and
40:39
having fun and everybody's like chilled.
40:41
It feels different. So I think that's kind of, you
40:44
know, the ugliness of Germany took me by surprise or the
40:46
sameness of it. But then, you know, once you
40:50
really get into the culture, it's, it's about how it feels.
40:54
I think Berlin is the less German city that there is in
40:57
Germany because they the multi. The internationality of the city
41:01
is impressive, at least for me. Yeah, I got served in English in
41:04
every place I went to at Berlin. Absolutely.
41:06
And there are places exactly. And there are places which which
41:09
they are not even able to speak German.
41:10
So in the restaurant Donuts and the the people serving the
41:14
table, they're not able to able to speak German.
41:16
I think that's that's impressive.
41:18
It's nice. It's also impressive talking
41:20
about Christmas markets. I have, I have a thing I don't,
41:24
I don't enjoy big cities. I was AI was a grown up villager
41:30
in Romania. So I, I, I relived every once in
41:33
a while, studied and so on in the big cities.
41:35
But I was never a huge fan of the big cities in Germany.
41:38
I was never a big fan of the big cities because most of them,
41:41
like you say, they are Disneyland, because most of them
41:43
were this completely destroyed after the Second World War and
41:46
they were rebuilt. So nothing in there is authentic
41:49
anymore. But I learned to enjoy small
41:51
cities and we discovered some interesting places.
41:54
Most probably your wife again knows, knows them.
41:56
I don't know if you if you know, but but for example, Rothenburg
41:59
of Der Traubot, Yeah, which is an amazing.
42:02
It's a city. What what gives me a a different
42:05
feeling. Of course, now is full of Asians
42:07
and a lot of tourists and it's not that fun anymore.
42:10
And it's nicer to go in during the weekdays, not do during the
42:14
weekends because in the weekends it's just crazy.
42:17
But I like the this closeness of the city, the fact that you can
42:21
walk that on that wall around the city all the time.
42:25
And talk about Christmas markets, man, I don't know if
42:27
you have seen the Christmas market.
42:28
There are two amazing one in Germany that I've experienced at
42:32
this. I'm a huge fan of Christmas, my
42:33
wife as well. So we are fanboys of Christmas
42:36
markets. The first one is in Goslar in
42:40
the northern part of Germany. And the second one, which is
42:44
really nice, again a small 1 is in Badvinfen, which is not that
42:47
far away from Stuttgart. I haven't haven't been to either
42:51
of those. The thing that one thing that's
42:55
very nice about Germany, really nice about Germany is most
42:59
weekends there's always kind of something going on in these
43:02
little villages. You know, I live in the wine
43:04
region, so every town around here is a wine town.
43:08
So there's like. There is a fish. 10 wine towns
43:10
and each one has a wine festival.
43:12
So that's ten weeks of the year I can walk into one of these
43:15
towns and being a wine fest. And it's kind of similar with
43:17
the Christmas markets and I always kind of like that, but I
43:20
don't like the over touristy ones and these bands.
43:23
Christmas market is very pretty. They're on the marketplace.
43:27
But again, yeah, you need to catch it on a weekday.
43:29
You know, if you can get off work early and and go down there
43:32
at 4:00 PM on a on a Thursday, it's much better than trying to
43:35
do that at 4:00 PM on a Saturday.
43:38
Absolutely, absolutely. But I think that's, that's the
43:41
pain that every tourist this touristic city has to has to
43:45
take. Like we see the the big and I
43:47
think it's ever not only in Germany, I think the the, the
43:51
fact that people are forever and so easy to travel these days.
43:55
And I think that makes it complicated for every like
43:57
Barcelona has a has huge issues, issues with tourism, like the
44:01
whole Spain. And I think that's a general, a
44:03
general topic. But besides the the festivals,
44:07
what's a what's a local tradition that you you grow to
44:09
appreciate? I think we sports is, is
44:18
something that unites the, you know, Germany and, and England,
44:21
you know, we, we work hard, we love our sports teams.
44:24
We, we drink beer and we sing songs and, you know, we're very
44:27
similar people in that, in that regard.
44:29
And actually, I truly believe that culturally England is more
44:35
similar to to Germany than than most other kind of European
44:39
countries. 100% hundred. Percent, yeah, we we, we work,
44:42
we, we work hard. We play hard.
44:44
It's family. It's yeah, yeah, football and
44:48
and and music and things like that.
44:51
But for for me is it it's not really going to answer your
44:55
question because, you know, culturally it's these thrines.
44:59
So you know, everything in Germany, it has a club.
45:03
You know, I have a friend who's in a beekeeper club.
45:06
There's the garden clubs, the, the weed clubs that they have
45:11
here, the football clubs. And then I'm in a baseball club.
45:15
And so that's my kind of cultural integration is, is
45:18
joining this for EIN where I, I pay like 300 year, €300 a year
45:23
to be a player. I play baseball and softball in
45:28
a league and then I have to volunteer as well.
45:32
So I have to volunteer, you know, 30 hours a year or
45:35
whatever, either helping out in the kitchen or behind the bar or
45:39
helping with the field or with the video streams and things
45:42
like that. So, you know, really my cultural
45:44
integration I think comes from those fines than than the more
45:48
than anything else. It's so interesting that you
45:52
said, but is it the same in England as well?
45:54
Do you have these clubs in England as well?
45:56
No, not really. Everything kind of centres
45:58
around your local pub in England basically.
46:03
Yeah, down toward like. Is every village has a pub, you
46:07
know, we'll have bowls clubs and and things like that.
46:10
But the the way that it's structured here and sometimes
46:13
it's insane, you know, like the club that I am part of has like
46:18
700 members, but it's run like a business.
46:21
You know, it's got like a CEO and a CFO and a CMO and, and
46:25
like all these different and everybody takes it super serious
46:27
like. It's absolutely, absolutely
46:30
everyone has it on the LinkedIn profiles as well, like.
46:32
And for me, like, I just want to turn up, have a few beers and
46:34
play baseball. And, you know, these guys are,
46:37
you know. Where there is a, there is a
46:40
football, a football for right in my village.
46:42
I live in a village and it's happening.
46:45
So the football field is nearby pizzeria.
46:49
So basically you know the drill. Like usually they have the
46:53
football field and nearby there's a restaurant like
46:55
directly near home it's called. It's either a pizzeria, either a
46:58
sport club or however it's called.
47:01
But what made it interesting I ordered a take away pizza 1
47:04
evening and I do it was the for some long of this sports for 9
47:07
man the looks that I got when I entered the pizzeria together.
47:12
You're not a member of our club. Yeah, right.
47:21
Yeah. And and they, I mean, it's good
47:24
because it means that everybody, everybody gets a fair crack of
47:27
the the whip and. And it's, it encourages you to
47:31
be a part of something and things like that.
47:34
But for me, sometimes it's a bit too formal.
47:35
You know, once you started volunteering, they expect you to
47:38
volunteer every week. And I'm like, actually, I just
47:40
want to watch baseball and drink beer.
47:42
I don't want to operate the camera tonight.
47:44
And and they, they, they kind of sometimes feel insulted by that.
47:47
And you're like, I just, I want to hang out.
47:49
I didn't join this club to do more work.
47:52
You know, I'll volunteer but like, I didn't join to do more
47:55
work. I would say then the direct in
48:25
the words they use, they get to the point very quickly.
48:30
But I think I've learnt a bit of a bit from them In that case,
48:35
you know, I'll say, hey, you know, I don't want to do that.
48:38
I just want to hang out and, you know, they're, they're annoyed
48:42
or whatever, or, you know, that they're OK with that.
48:46
But if I do something wrong or if I'm, you know, helping out
48:49
and I roll the cables up wrong, you know, they'll tell you super
48:52
directly and you just say, and you're not used to it.
48:54
In England, people would either let you do it or be like, well,
48:58
not quite right, but, you know, let's have a look at that again.
49:00
Whereas here, like, that's wrong.
49:02
You need to take it out and you do it again.
49:03
And you're like, oh, yeah, exactly.
49:06
Yeah. I picked up some off of my
49:31
father-in-law that that he says all the time, which is, you
49:34
know, something's going wrong or you're frustrated by something.
49:37
He gets younger, younger, younger.
49:39
And so I do that all the time. Like, you know, somebody will be
49:41
in front of me on the Autobahn and the unrestricted doing 120
49:44
and I'm like younger, younger, younger.
49:45
Come on. So yeah, it'd pick up a little
49:49
bit of that. But really some, a lot of the
49:51
stuff that I picked up is the, is the kind of cultural stuff.
49:53
You know, instead of going to a pub, you'll go to a supermarket
49:56
and buy a bottle of wine and put, you know, 2 plastic cups in
49:59
your rucksack and cycle down to the rain.
50:02
And you'll sit on the rain and drink your bottle of wine and
50:05
talk and it's all pretty chilled out.
50:10
What else do I do? Ride my bike a lot more.
50:14
A lot of the cities here are quite, quite bike friendly.
50:16
However, however, I ride an E bike and no E bike ride is
50:22
complete without a German shouting at you for something.
50:27
Right, right. Either you've, you've ridden on
50:30
the path or you've gone down the wrong the, the road the wrong
50:32
way, or they feel that this part of the forest is for walkers
50:35
only, or they've got a dog and they're shouting at you and
50:38
you're like, I can see the dog, I'm looking at the dog.
50:40
I'm not going to run over your stupid dog, you know, But yeah.
50:44
And you try and. Yeah.
50:58
Yeah. Well, the the jokes that I have
51:05
is the the car drivers hate cyclists, walkers hate cyclists,
51:10
and cyclists hate other cyclists.
51:12
It's like the, the cyclists are just the enemy of everybody.
51:19
Oh, they'll do it to you. Like in England.
51:20
We'll just tut and like walk past, whereas they will
51:23
remonstrate with you in the street.
51:25
And this only happened a couple of months ago.
51:28
It was hot summer's day. We live on the hill that goes
51:31
into mine. It's very steep hill and there
51:33
was something happening in the in the city.
51:35
So all the trams had stopped. So they're all backed up.
51:37
So it's just the whole Rd. is just trams all the way up the
51:40
hill. So I can't go down the road on
51:42
my bike. So I'm riding on the path
51:45
slowly. And as I get halfway down, I can
51:48
see the guy. You can see them a mile off that
51:50
He's like, well, he's not going to move because he, you know,
51:53
this is a footpath. And as I get close to him, puts
51:56
his arms out like this. So I don't understand what he's
51:58
saying. And I'm like, the trams are
52:01
stuck in the road, you Dick. And there is a guy in the store
52:06
who obviously spoke English just burst out into laughter.
52:10
And I just rode past this guy. And I'm like, I haven't got time
52:12
to deal with Germanness today, like.
52:36
Right, yeah.
52:49
And the, the, the particularly funny is, and I always remember
52:52
this is 1 St. in Frankfurt. It's a one way street, so you
52:54
only have to look one way and it's a single lane.
52:56
So it's, you know, 2 1/2 meters across and it would be red and
53:02
like there's nothing coming. And I would just go across and
53:06
every time like, oh, and what do they say?
53:08
Something about the children where they've grown up Go, the
53:10
children go or something, they'll shout something at you.
53:13
And I'm just like, well, I'm going to use my own survival
53:16
instinct to traverse this, you know, real tricky, dangerous in,
53:21
you know, gas. So, yeah, I, I, I get it.
53:25
I've, I've, I've had my fill of that as well.
53:29
It was great. We were, we've drove, we drove
53:36
from England to my wife's parents and I'd never driven in,
53:41
in Europe before, across Europe. So, you know, we, we drive into
53:45
Belgium, Belgian drivers are the worst.
53:47
By the way, if you're Belgian and you're listening to this, be
53:50
ashamed of yourself. We drive through Belgium, we go
53:54
into the Netherlands and then or you clip France and into the
53:57
Netherlands and then we're in Germany.
54:00
And I've been driving in Germany about half an hour and I think
54:03
to my friend, I'm like, wait, are we on the Autobahn?
54:05
She's like, yeah, I'm like, like there's no speed limit.
54:08
She's like, yeah, like, bang, like, nailed it right away and
54:11
took my VW Passat all the way up to, you know, I don't know, 100
54:15
and 210 kilometers an hour or whatever it was, you know, which
54:20
was amazing to me. But I drive on the Autobahn
54:22
every day to get to and from work now.
54:25
And for the most part, Germans are very orderly.
54:28
You know, they'll move out of the way and you move out of
54:31
their way. And that's great for the most
54:33
part because when you go back to England, people feel like it's
54:36
their responsibility to police the lanes.
54:38
So if they're doing 80 in the fast lane and you want to do 90,
54:42
they'll just be like, Nope, I'm not moving, I'm doing 80 and
54:45
you'll just have to stay behind me.
54:47
And that's infuriating. But at least in Germany, for the
54:49
most part, they'll move out every way.
55:18
Yeah, yeah, I see it everyday,
55:43
everyday, everyday. They'll check the mirror.
55:45
Once the, you know, the, the card looks like it's far away,
55:48
They just pull out. You're doing 160 and they're
55:51
doing 110 in the unrestricted. And then, you know, you slow
55:55
down because you, you have to. And then, you know, they drift
55:59
back in after they've overtaken, not any inkling that they've
56:04
nearly caused an accident or caused you a huge inconvenience.
56:07
Like, it doesn't matter. There's nothing behind you.
56:10
They've pulled out in front. It's in fury.
56:12
And and and I tell you, because I have to do it every day, it,
56:15
it wears on me. It wears on me.
56:17
I, I have to be really disciplined and be like, OK,
56:20
calm down, slow down, get back in the lane and chill out
56:23
because yeah, I'm going to wreck one of these days.
56:31
Yeah, I think particularly being
56:49
British, there's a stigma about Germany and Germans and that
56:53
they're, these are the rules and this is the the, the order and
56:58
these are the laws and, and things like that.
57:01
And we're, we're not taught much about modern day Germany when
57:05
we're at school, we're taught about the war.
57:08
So you kind of just think that I don't know what you think.
57:12
But you, you definitely, unless you're educated enough or you
57:15
look into it enough, you know, you assume that everybody was a
57:18
Nazi in Germany, you know, during the that period that
57:22
everybody was a Nazi. And that's just, that's not
57:24
true. You know, that it was the
57:25
governing party and then and the armies and things.
57:28
But I don't think people in my country receive the level of
57:31
education that they should, you know, about modern day Germany.
57:36
And I think at the moment they're going through a bit of a
57:39
renaissance. They're going through a bit of a
57:41
OK, we're, we're a powerhouse of economy.
57:44
We have responsibilities to defense responsibilities in, in
57:48
NATO. And, and they're stepping up the
57:50
kind of shedding that skin like now is the time to be proud to
57:53
be German and and to go for it. And so I think there's a
57:57
misconception that these the the German people of this very rules
58:03
followed, which which they are, don't get me wrong, they, they
58:07
are very much about following the rules and, and, and order
58:11
and things like that. But actually it makes for a very
58:14
nice society. I think the the fact that, you
58:20
know, people will move over for you in the the, the lanes, the
58:26
people respect noise ordinance. So at night when they, at 10:00,
58:31
everybody will generally be quiet.
58:33
And if they're not, you can actually call the ordinance and,
58:35
or the police and they'll come out and tell them to keep the
58:38
noise down. And so everybody's kind of
58:41
respectful of each other, sometimes a bit weary of each
58:45
other, but for the most part they're very respectful of, of,
58:50
of each other. So I kind of like that.
58:52
And I, and I think that, you know, I noticed that in
58:55
Americans, I noticed that in British people that less and
58:58
less we're becoming kind of less tolerant of each other or less
59:02
respectful of each other. You know, if there's a party
59:06
going on in your house, in your street in the UK, that thing can
59:09
go on all night and there's nothing you can do about it
59:11
really, because there's no real laws or rules that prevent it.
59:17
And if they are, they're not enforced.
59:18
But here in Germany, they take that very seriously.
59:19
So the rural site on Sundays where everything's closed is a
59:25
time to connect with your family, is a time to go on
59:28
walks. It's not a time to go shopping
59:31
or anything like that. So you know, as a people that
59:35
they're very family orientated. They build friends earlier.
59:37
They have a close network of friends and they stay close
59:41
through the the rest of their lives.
59:43
They work very hard and they're very respectful to each other.
59:46
And I really like that about Germany.
59:49
You mentioned Sunday time, do you have this in UK or
59:54
everything is open on Sunday? Everything's open.
59:56
The supermarkets have shorter opening hours.
59:58
I think they're open like 9 till 10:00 PM or something.
1:00:02
It took a huge amount of getting used to at first because you
1:00:06
actually have to prepare in advance.
1:00:08
Anything you don't have on a Sunday you are not going to
1:00:10
have. But actually I kind of like it,
1:00:13
and I think probably over the years it's saved me.
1:00:16
Thousands and thousands of pounds or EUR.
1:00:18
Because when it's a Sunday there's nothing else to do.
1:00:22
You know, you go down the shop, so you go to the Town Center or
1:00:26
you know, you go wherever and you spend £20 there, £100 there,
1:00:29
£150 here. But you can't do that on a
1:00:32
Sunday. So you have to be more creative.
1:00:33
So it's for bike rides, it's for walks, it's for sitting by the
1:00:36
river and things. You can, you can, you can have
1:00:39
an ice cream, but it's best so in the in the in the summer.
1:00:43
But I don't know if you know the story of the Sundays.
1:00:46
It's an interesting one in Germany.
1:00:47
So it started somewhere in the 60s or 70s, if I remember it
1:00:51
correctly. And it was started by the, let's
1:00:55
say, as a kids movement. And it started as a behind the
1:00:59
premise that the Sundays belongs to my father.
1:01:03
And that's why that's why they had this.
1:01:06
They have this, this action which is which is happening,
1:01:10
which is lasting until today. And I think it's amazing.
1:01:12
I come from Romania, which everything is open almost 24/7.
1:01:15
So. And I know what you mean by
1:01:18
getting a habit and getting prepared ahead of time.
1:01:20
Like, yeah, but you still have the local bakeries open on
1:01:23
Sunday, right? So in the morning.
1:01:25
At least Sunday. Most restaurants are open on
1:01:27
Sunday, but little else beyond that.
1:01:29
Yeah, yeah. That's that's an interesting, an
1:01:32
interesting piece. You talk about restaurants,
1:01:34
Paul. What's what's the what's your
1:01:37
favorite local food? I mean, it's hard to be a good
1:01:42
donor after you've been out. You said before about Italian
1:01:47
and Asian, I want to say, but we move to a different point.
1:01:50
You have to measure the donor because I think it's the there
1:01:54
is a special thing in the German donor.
1:01:58
Yeah, and I and I joke that, you know, whilst I can't have a
1:02:02
conversation with my landlord in German, I can order the perfect
1:02:07
doing a combination whilst drunk at 2:00 in the morning.
1:02:10
And I kind of think that's that's more important anyway,
1:02:13
so. Is it dinner?
1:02:17
Is doing it for like in the cities?
1:02:21
Yeah, yeah, I am. I mean, I'll eat.
1:02:25
Very rarely will I eat them sober, but yeah, I'll have.
1:02:28
I'll have a dinner sandwich. And usually, usually when you
1:02:32
are drunk, you always order sharf.
1:02:34
Like really really Sharf. Yeah, sharp ambition.
1:02:37
Yeah, no, a lot. I will regret it tomorrow, but a
1:02:41
lot, yeah. Can you share an experience or
1:02:46
have you had an experience maybe at your local for I know when
1:02:50
you said OK, I do feel that I'm German now.
1:02:55
No, there's, there's, there's certain things that I can do now
1:02:59
that I couldn't do in England that shows me that I'm German.
1:03:01
Like I can open a bottle of beer with another bottle of beer.
1:03:05
Like, come on. I mean that should be
1:03:07
naturalizing. Amazing.
1:03:09
Absolutely. I don't need the language
1:03:12
skills. I can open a bottle of beer with
1:03:14
another bottle of beer. No, but I mean, I've written a
1:03:18
book about my experiences in Germany.
1:03:20
It's called There's nothing Wrong with Germany.
1:03:23
But here's 50 things you'll notice.
1:03:25
And it's all about the things I picked up through the years of
1:03:29
living here. Like back when they used to be
1:03:31
like cigarette advertising on billboards and things like that,
1:03:34
that you you weren't used to seeing the, the weird toilets
1:03:38
where you, you poop on the shelf and then, you know, you flush it
1:03:41
away into the, the water in front.
1:03:43
It might not be a bad Wuertenberg thing, but it's an
1:03:45
older toilet thing. It's quite, quite a lot of those
1:03:48
around. You didn't have that in UK.
1:03:53
No, no. But we had that in Romania as
1:03:55
well. Oh yeah, no, no, we don't eat
1:03:57
that because we because we don't eat as much cold and raw meats
1:04:01
as Germans do, so as as Europeans do, I guess.
1:04:04
OK. Yeah, so there there was that
1:04:06
one same Prost was looking in the eyes, you know, making sure
1:04:11
that you make. Eye contact that's that's a
1:04:13
dangerous one. Yeah, Yeah.
1:04:18
No, there's no, there's no moment where I ever really felt
1:04:23
like I've arrived. You know, Germany is, is a place
1:04:29
where I live. I wouldn't say it's home.
1:04:31
It doesn't feel like home, you know, Home is wherever my wife
1:04:33
is, really. But yeah, I mean, I, I like it
1:04:40
here that I like the safety, I like the security.
1:04:44
But it is a hard place to really feel fully integrated.
1:04:47
And people will tell you, wow, that's because you don't speak
1:04:49
the language. And I don't think if I spoke the
1:04:52
language it would make a huge amount of difference to be
1:04:53
honest. How do you handle homesickness,
1:04:57
Paula? I haven't been homesick in a
1:05:00
long time. My father sold our childhood
1:05:05
house about 10 years ago and I think since then that kind of
1:05:08
epicenter of, of, of my family has has disappeared.
1:05:14
I remember on my 40th birthday, I'd lived in Viesband for five
1:05:19
years and then we moved to Stuttgart.
1:05:22
And my five years in Viesband, probably five of the best years
1:05:24
of my life, it was when I first became a radio presenter.
1:05:28
I was a full time radio DJ, which like that wasn't even a
1:05:31
dream. That was like a fantasy of mine.
1:05:35
Yeah, I got my first radio contract.
1:05:37
So I was, I was working in radio.
1:05:39
I was like a minor local celebrity.
1:05:42
Everybody knew me that, you know, Paul the Brit is what they
1:05:46
called me, you know, when they saw me out in the streets and
1:05:48
stuff. And that was that was amazing.
1:05:50
So you know, when that contract ended because of, of budget cuts
1:05:54
and it and things like that, I took a job in Stuttgart.
1:05:58
And when I came back to these bands for my 40th birthday,
1:06:02
which coincided with my best German friend's wedding.
1:06:06
And it was the first time we'd been back to these bands since
1:06:09
we left. And I just remember going to the
1:06:12
same restaurants that we always went to.
1:06:14
Everybody was so friendly. We sat outside this one summer
1:06:19
night on the Cobblestone St. and we ate and we drank.
1:06:22
And right at the end of the night, the owner was sat with
1:06:26
us. He knows one of us and we told
1:06:28
him it was my 40th birthday. And he's like, oh, that's
1:06:31
amazing. Like and he ordered like another
1:06:33
bottle of wine and we and we drank that.
1:06:34
And then at the end of the night, he's like, I don't want
1:06:37
you to pay anything. I just want you to tip the
1:06:39
waitresses. And that's it.
1:06:41
This is all on me. Like happy birthday.
1:06:43
And I say it's amazing. And I remember going back to the
1:06:46
hotel after all of that and I got really emotional.
1:06:53
I couldn't figure out why it was.
1:06:55
And it like, it welled up in me and I kind of like, you know, a
1:06:58
feeling kind of happiness and gratitude.
1:07:01
And I realized it was the first time I felt like I was at home
1:07:06
since I'd left home in the UK Like that, that feeling, I'd
1:07:10
missed it for so long. I'd had hadn't experienced that
1:07:12
feeling in in so, so long. There was quite emotion.
1:07:16
It was quite overwhelming. And that was one of the reasons
1:07:18
for choosing to come back to the region.
1:07:20
You know, I learned from that, that this is this is a place
1:07:22
where we feel where it feels right.
1:07:25
And we moved back here. So yeah, that was that was
1:07:29
powerful. That's an impressive thing from
1:07:33
someone, from a German, from a German person.
1:07:36
I have to say it like like you must have been a bigger
1:07:40
celebrity than you thought locally if if you decide to do
1:07:43
that. Yeah, I, I mean, I, I was on AI
1:07:48
was a British, you know, a British guy on an American radio
1:07:51
station in Germany. So a lot of the people who knew
1:07:53
me were Americans. But yeah, I did have Germans
1:07:57
that that listened to the show and made friends with and they
1:08:01
would listen in during the day and text stuff in and stuff was
1:08:04
done presenting and things. It was a really nice time of
1:08:07
life. You know, I felt that I'd
1:08:08
achieved a dream that I didn't dare dream.
1:08:13
And yeah, it was. It was a wonderful time.
1:08:16
You must know that I have to do a small exercise, but you must
1:08:19
know the What's the name of the Rob Green from Big FM?
1:08:24
Yes, yeah. Yeah, who's doing who's doing
1:08:27
this? I think it's it's the first
1:08:28
person that I heard, I heard speaking the perfect German and
1:08:33
the perfect English. I don't know if it was the
1:08:34
perfect, but it sounds the the best from a person that I've
1:08:37
heard it. Yeah, he's still.
1:08:39
Going, isn't he? He's still still one of the
1:08:42
Morning show presenters. He's not doing the morning show
1:08:44
anymore since some years. I think he I think he actually
1:08:47
said I'm sick of of being awake. The.
1:08:49
Morning. Yeah, I was the morning show
1:08:50
host and yeah, it gets old. It gets old eventually.
1:08:54
He's doing, he did. I think he had like 1:50 PM or
1:08:58
Sunday afternoon show or something like this.
1:08:59
But he's doing it. He's still, he's still going on,
1:09:02
Yeah. Cool.
1:09:06
How did living abroad change your your perspective, Paul?
1:09:10
I think everything you just mentioned, you lived your dream
1:09:13
more more than a dream. But besides that.
1:09:16
Yeah, when I left England I grew a beard and I followed my radio
1:09:21
dreams, things that I wouldn't have done if I'd have stayed in
1:09:23
Swindon because, you know, all your mates would have taken the
1:09:26
piss out of you and you know, whatever, you never live it
1:09:29
down. So, you know, I, I think working
1:09:32
with Americans, they have a very kind of infectious can do
1:09:38
attitude and a very aspirational, you can achieve
1:09:40
anything kind of attitude to things in England.
1:09:44
We don't, you know, if, if you have a dream of doing something,
1:09:47
people are like, how would you want to do that for, or you
1:09:50
know, you can do that or whatever.
1:09:52
You know, it's, it's not so aspirational.
1:09:54
So leaving the country allowed me the freedom to reinvent
1:09:57
myself completely. You know, I think if I'd have
1:10:02
stayed in Swindon and never left, I may have been one of
1:10:06
those Brexit voters, you know, 'cause I, I would consumed that
1:10:10
media. I was surrounded by people that
1:10:12
had that kind of mindset. Very small, non aspirational
1:10:17
town in Swindon full of working class people.
1:10:19
You know, I, I think that leaving England completely
1:10:24
broaden my horizons, made me see that, you know, we're all kind
1:10:27
of same, whatever country you come from, we all value similar
1:10:31
things. And I feel, you know, probably
1:10:34
identify more as a European nowadays than as an English
1:10:38
person really. And and that's, that's what I
1:10:42
picked up in the last, I think thinks 13 years since I left
1:10:46
England so. Quite a lot.
1:10:49
How was the how has your relationship with your home
1:10:53
country changed in this in this 13 years?
1:10:59
I'm no longer as blindly proud of it.
1:11:04
You know, I think people, particularly Americans, when
1:11:07
they hear the accent, they assume that we're all, you know,
1:11:09
well educated and things like that.
1:11:11
But you know, really it's when I, when I go back there, I don't
1:11:16
necessarily miss it. You know, I was back there a few
1:11:19
weeks ago and I was driving around to see my, my brother and
1:11:23
my father and we had to go out through, through the West
1:11:27
Country and we're driving through these tiny villages and
1:11:29
they're so picturesque. You know, the only thing in is
1:11:32
that it's got like a pub, It's got a chip shop and it's got a
1:11:34
cafe. And that's perfect.
1:11:37
Like this is amazing. I could live here, but then I go
1:11:39
to my hometown and it's dreary and everything's changed.
1:11:45
And there's buildings where there weren't buildings before.
1:11:48
And you know, the, the, the culture is now so international
1:11:53
that you know that there's, there's parts of the town where,
1:11:56
where you can walk through and you're the only white person.
1:11:58
And that's, you know, that is what it is.
1:12:01
But to, to me, I, because I haven't grown with that change
1:12:07
it, it, it's odd to me. And you think, wow, OK, this,
1:12:10
this, this whole area is different to what it was when I
1:12:14
was, when I was a kid. For, for, for better, for worse,
1:12:17
for good or bad. I don't, I don't really care.
1:12:21
But because it's, because I've taken a 13 year break and I only
1:12:24
go back every one or two years. It's always very stark.
1:12:30
Yeah, I think, I think what I'm trying to say is I'm less proud
1:12:32
to be British than I probably would have been if I'd never
1:12:35
have left Britain. You know, I think we're, we're a
1:12:38
bit, a bit full of ourselves. I think that's that's that's
1:12:42
stays or that's the case for everyone living only in their
1:12:46
home country. That's the case for everyone.
1:12:48
And I think that's the secret of all the extreme right parties
1:12:53
making a breakthrough everywhere.
1:12:55
And I think that's that's quite such a pity.
1:12:57
But what advice would you give someone considering the same
1:13:03
move that you have done? Don't expect anything to be
1:13:07
easy. You know you'll get through it,
1:13:11
but don't expect anything, anything to be easy.
1:13:14
Going to the bakery, it's going to be hard.
1:13:17
Trying to buy a new bike, it's going to be hard.
1:13:19
Dealing with German politics or the bureaucracy to get your
1:13:24
health insurance or whatever, it's going to be hard.
1:13:25
Getting a dentist appointment, it's going to be hard.
1:13:27
Like everything's hard. Everything's just slightly
1:13:30
harder than it needs to be. And I say this to my wife, it's
1:13:33
like when I, if I'm going to go to the post office, I know
1:13:40
through experience now that my post office doesn't take, it
1:13:44
will take cards, but it will only take EC cards.
1:13:48
And my card isn't an EC card. So I had to learn that the hard
1:13:50
way. I had to go there with all my
1:13:52
parcels. And they'll be like, oh, the
1:13:54
card doesn't work. And then you're trying to have a
1:13:56
conversation in a language you don't speak.
1:13:58
And you know, and German's their second language as well, you
1:14:02
know. And so now every time it's like,
1:14:06
you know, when you see the the sprinters getting ready to
1:14:08
Sprint and they're warming up and they're bouncing and they're
1:14:10
stretching their legs and they're like, that's me.
1:14:14
Every time I have to do anything going to the post office, do I
1:14:17
have my EC card? Do I have my passport with me?
1:14:19
Do I have the right package? Have I like I now buy my postage
1:14:24
on my mobile phone before I go to the post office to limit any
1:14:27
interaction. All I have to do is show them
1:14:28
the phone, they beep it and they take the box like great.
1:14:32
But everything's just that tiny little bit harder.
1:14:36
But those tiny little interactions that are a tiny
1:14:39
little bit harder add up. And so life is just that little
1:14:43
bit harder because every tiny thing is to tiny little bit
1:14:47
harder. So that's what I would say to
1:14:48
when you're coming over here, you'll get through it, but
1:14:52
everything's going to be harder. Such a good point and such a
1:14:56
good nice memories. I I smiled while you are telling
1:14:59
the stories because I know exactly what you mean.
1:15:01
I think first of all I think none of the listeners that are
1:15:04
outside of Germany have any idea what an EC card is because this
1:15:09
just typical for Germany. And besides that like building
1:15:14
your building every sentence that you plan to use at the
1:15:18
bakery, building pre building everything in your head, pre
1:15:22
building every question calling to someone.
1:15:25
I do remember the experience having at work calling to
1:15:27
someone, to a colleague that had a 100% German name prepared on
1:15:32
my speech in my head in German. Then I got the Romanian, a guy
1:15:36
answering in Romanian to me because he saw my name, he
1:15:38
understood that I'm Romanian. He was, he had Romanian heritage
1:15:41
as well. And I got frozen.
1:15:43
I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't say anything because everything
1:15:46
prepared in my head was in German and I couldn't say a
1:15:48
word. It got stuck.
1:15:51
Yeah, absolutely, totally right. You, you know, the words that
1:15:54
you're going to say in the right order and then it's
1:15:58
transactional German. You know, you'll say, yeah,
1:16:01
Ichabein packet. There's some abholen and they'll
1:16:05
say, yeah, OK, Velshus name Naama or whatever.
1:16:08
And you're like, Naama is Hughes ha OK, ha ES.
1:16:12
And they're like, OK, and then off they go.
1:16:13
But if they say something like we don't have that packet, the
1:16:16
driver hasn't been here yet. You're just like bitter nachmao.
1:16:23
Yeah, OK. Have you seen Lang?
1:16:25
Zaman Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I fully get what you think.
1:16:31
What's the funniest thing that's ever happened to you in Germany
1:16:34
since you moved here? Oh, wow, that's a good question.
1:16:40
I, I don't know if I have one experience for you.
1:16:51
You know, there's always been like the language faux pas where
1:16:53
I'm telling somebody that, you know, this, it's on the floor
1:16:58
over there, but I'm saying ceiling because Decker and
1:17:01
Decker, they they're the wrong way round in my head, you know,
1:17:04
and they're like the the what? But I remember I did make my
1:17:07
mother-in-law laugh when I very when I very first met her, I had
1:17:13
no idea that they called cell phones handies because I'd only
1:17:18
been speaking with my wife and my wife just called it mobile
1:17:20
phone or cell phone or whatever. And so but she was saying we've
1:17:24
always mine handy. And I think it's just, I said
1:17:29
it's on the end of your army. And she laughed her ass off.
1:17:33
And I was like, oh, I like that joke.
1:17:34
I'm keeping that. That's a really funny one.
1:17:38
That's a really funny one, I have to say.
1:17:42
Is there an? I would not call it a
1:17:45
misunderstanding, but there are some misdeals.
1:17:48
We talk at the beginning, but there are some misdeals of, of,
1:17:50
of a German German, of an English of English words.
1:17:55
And for me, the funniest is still becoming because the
1:18:00
German, the German version of becoming is I'm receiving and
1:18:08
the English doesn't mean the same.
1:18:09
And I think for everyone watching this and for me, I'm
1:18:13
still still having my head. The sentences from the
1:18:16
restaurants, the sentences from work.
1:18:18
I'm becoming a baby. I'm I don't know, I'm becoming
1:18:22
doesn't it sell? And I still think they are
1:18:25
extremely fine. Do you have something which
1:18:27
which is stuck in your head? My.
1:18:28
Mother-in-law says that all the time.
1:18:30
So it's like, yes, I, I become the jam or something.
1:18:33
You're like, what? He, he became it.
1:18:37
Yes, I, I get that a lot. No, I, I think for me, the, the
1:18:43
biggest struggle I have is is trying to connect with my
1:18:45
father-in-law. You know, I can listen to a
1:18:49
conversation. I can understand what they're
1:18:51
talking about. I can understand if they're kind
1:18:53
of, if it's a good or bad and I can get the overall.
1:18:57
But when he speaks, I do not understand a single word.
1:19:01
He can like often, you know, would you like something to
1:19:04
drink? And I'll be like just looking at
1:19:06
my wife, like what she's like, do you want to drink?
1:19:08
I'm like, why can't I understand him?
1:19:11
Like that's the most basic thing because because he makes every
1:19:13
sentence sound like one word and he uses these weird colloquial
1:19:18
words that I can't understand. And I it makes me feel bad
1:19:23
because then he'll, after a weekend, if we're spending a
1:19:25
weekend together, you know, he's super frustrated because every
1:19:27
time he says something, I'm like, and it's something simple
1:19:30
like, Are you ready to go? I'm like, why can't I understand
1:19:33
him? So yeah, those those issues are
1:19:36
real. Struggling Absolutely,
1:19:39
absolutely. And I think the IT it's, it goes
1:19:42
both both ways. And I think it goes from Germany
1:19:45
and English and from English and German.
1:19:47
I think this Austin's translations moment, I think the
1:19:51
for a so exact language as a German language.
1:19:54
The fact that they are using for example, for broachans, for for
1:19:58
the small breads, they are using seven different words depending
1:20:01
on the area, region and the way in which they phrase it.
1:20:05
I think that makes it complicated for everyone coming
1:20:07
from outside of this culture. And I think, I don't know if you
1:20:10
if it's happening in your area as well, but.
1:20:12
My my my worst thing is the thing with with Z where it can
1:20:16
mean she or they. Yeah.
1:20:19
Yeah, which can mean her, but you would you see if you're
1:20:22
saying like, yeah, I mean, even now I'm confusing myself like
1:20:26
that. That drives me crazy because
1:20:28
when I'm trying to think of it, I'm trying to say she's on her
1:20:31
way, you know? That's fine.
1:20:33
ZZE Salvatenbeg But like it's hers is not that's, you know,
1:20:40
you can do it both ways. And so I never know where I am.
1:20:43
And so I say it, and then I'm like, am I saying that right?
1:20:46
I think the fact that you don't have this, this formal, this
1:20:50
formal way of saying things in, in, in, in, in English, that
1:20:54
makes it confusing for you. For me.
1:20:56
For me that was easy because we have it in Romanian as well and
1:20:59
I was able to make the to connect things in my head and
1:21:03
that's why I was able to sing to use it as well.
1:21:10
What's the most unexpected way in which living abroad changed
1:21:14
you? I think like I alluded to
1:21:30
earlier, if I'd have stayed in my town, you know, maybe I'd
1:21:35
have been a Brexit voter. So I think that how liberal it's
1:21:44
kind of made me, you know, in regards to immigration, in
1:21:48
regards to, you know, gay rights and, and, and things like this.
1:21:54
And, and that's, I wouldn't say necessarily surprised me, but
1:21:58
it's, it opened my eyes that we're all humans together on one
1:22:03
planet, whichever culture you come from, you know, we laugh at
1:22:07
the same kind of things and we enjoy the same kind of things.
1:22:10
We value the same kind of things.
1:22:13
And I've become, yeah, much more liberal and, and open.
1:22:17
And I want fairness and inclusivity and healthcare and,
1:22:23
you know, all this, all this good stuff.
1:22:27
Not that I was right wing back then.
1:22:29
You know, I've always been pretty open minded.
1:22:31
But I think coming into into Europe, living in these
1:22:34
different countries, experiencing different cultures
1:22:36
all the time gives you a much kind of more global mindset,
1:22:40
much less isolationist than than people that don't leave their
1:22:43
countries out. And I think that's quite
1:22:45
surprising. Paul Why would someone why
1:22:52
should someone consider Germany when moving abroad?
1:23:01
As far as I know, you know, there's good schools, there's
1:23:04
high employment here. I, I would say that I wouldn't,
1:23:10
Germany probably shouldn't be top of your list if you, if you
1:23:12
don't speak the language and you want to move somewhere and, and
1:23:15
do a job. Because even if you Google
1:23:18
English speaking jobs, you know, they'll say they want you to
1:23:21
have excellent English and they want you to be fluent in German.
1:23:24
It's buried in the job description.
1:23:26
And you'll read this job and you'll be like, oh, that sounds
1:23:28
great. Oh yeah, I can do that.
1:23:29
I can do that. Or I might apply for this year.
1:23:31
Must have, you know, fluent German.
1:23:34
You're like, well, why didn't you put that at the top?
1:23:35
Because this whole adverts in English.
1:23:38
I looked for English jobs and yet you still want German.
1:23:43
So you know, that's, that's going to be, that's going to be
1:23:47
tough for anybody. Like if you speak German, come
1:23:51
on over, it's going to be great. You'll, you'll have a great time
1:23:53
here. But there's a lot of things that
1:23:57
the older generation of Germany are, are taking, taking
1:24:01
advantage of or are so set in their ways about the, you know,
1:24:05
I read lots of horror stories about landlords and expectations
1:24:09
around housing and money and things like that.
1:24:12
That can be really, really tough.
1:24:14
And also the I think the the landlord topic is a critical 1.
1:24:17
I don't know if it's the same in UK, but in general it's it's,
1:24:20
it's, it's so crazy. Like when you go to get an
1:24:23
apartment, it's it's worse than a job interview.
1:24:26
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're lucky.
1:24:28
And I'll say this. And like, I've noticed white
1:24:34
privilege because I'm a white immigrant.
1:24:38
They, I've noticed that I don't have as many issues as other
1:24:41
people do. You know, that's when you go to
1:24:45
anywhere, you go to, to offices or you go to supermarkets,
1:24:49
they'll assume that you're German.
1:24:51
And then if you don't understand them or, or whatever, then you
1:24:55
know, they're, they're normally a bit nicer to you.
1:24:56
But you know, I've, I've seen first hand how they'll treat
1:25:00
people that, that have a different skin color to them.
1:25:02
Not, not, not all the time, but I think they have a much harder
1:25:06
time of it than I do. Like that there's a there's a
1:25:08
white privilege that that I have enjoyed here in Germany.
1:25:12
You're lucky son of a gun. I my my face is not saying
1:25:17
German, it's saying Turkish 100%.
1:25:20
I got spoken in directly into Turkish so many times.
1:25:23
Right, Yeah, yeah. Now it's, I remember being at a
1:25:29
the job centre and this was when I was receiving an unemployment
1:25:33
benefit and they stopped it. So I contacted the office and
1:25:37
said, hey, I don't have my unemployment money coming
1:25:40
through anymore. And they said, oh, you need to
1:25:42
come in. And I said, oh, shit.
1:25:44
And that doesn't sound good. So I grabbed my German friend
1:25:47
and said, can you come with me? Because they only speak to you
1:25:49
in German in these offices. It's like a legal requirement.
1:25:52
And so we get in there and she said, I sent you these emails to
1:25:57
tell you that you need to show me what jobs you're applying
1:25:59
for. And you didn't.
1:26:00
And so we've stopped your benefits and that's why you're
1:26:02
here. And so I've been in a German
1:26:04
course for the last month. I've been learning German and
1:26:08
she goes off the lady there that I'm not meant to be doing that.
1:26:11
Like they're paying me to look for a job.
1:26:13
So I'm not meant to be. And so she's telling me this,
1:26:16
but she's telling my friend and my friend's translating.
1:26:18
He's like, yeah, you're not allowed to do that.
1:26:20
You can't go and learn German whilst you're meant to be
1:26:23
looking for work. That's all you're meant to be
1:26:24
doing. I was like, I genuinely thought
1:26:27
I was doing the right thing. I genuinely thought, you know,
1:26:29
doing a three hour German course is going to help me integrate
1:26:31
and it's going to help me find a job.
1:26:33
And then she switched to English and she said, look, you didn't
1:26:37
tell me any of that, OK? You didn't tell me any of that.
1:26:41
We'll start the benefits again, keep looking for for work.
1:26:46
But you know, you shouldn't have been doing that.
1:26:48
And then she signed my forms and she let me leave.
1:26:51
Now, I think that if I wasn't white European, that I don't
1:26:56
think I would have gotten quite as much leeway with that.
1:27:00
Maybe that's completely incorrect, but I definitely
1:27:04
felt, you know, that there was a kinship there that I got away
1:27:08
with it. I do think you're right.
1:27:15
I don't think that nobody would have believed you if you said
1:27:17
that. I do it when all goodwill.
1:27:19
No you didn't. Yeah, exactly.
1:27:23
Both discussion with you was a pleasure because I, I, I, the
1:27:26
reason why I start doing this is that I, I want to, let's say I
1:27:30
didn't want to admit that I was the only one going through all
1:27:33
these experiences. But and every time when I
1:27:36
discover someone that went through the same experiences and
1:27:39
half of the things that you, you, you, you, you, you told the
1:27:43
story about, I was laughing because I was I was just seeing
1:27:46
myself going through absolutely. I do remember my first bank
1:27:51
experience. I think I was going I was there
1:27:53
with my wife and then the lady was I was not speaking any kind
1:27:57
of German and we were in spark. I say so the most German banks,
1:28:01
that bank that exist in in Germany and the the lady was so
1:28:06
nice. She was struggling to speak
1:28:07
English and half, half into the sentence while she was
1:28:12
struggling to form a centre, said fucking high school
1:28:15
English. I had so many, so many
1:28:20
experiences and I, I love when I hear people having all
1:28:23
experiences the same things. Before we, we wrap this up, I
1:28:29
have some, let's say, some standard questions that I'd ask
1:28:31
at the end and also some rapid fire questions.
1:28:34
I have usually the, let's say the rapid fire questions I
1:28:38
tailored based on the guest and I will start with those ones.
1:28:42
And then I have the standard questions that are finishing the
1:28:46
discussion. The first German word you learn
1:28:51
and use correctly. Canal probably yeah, that sticks
1:28:55
in my head as as one very early on.
1:28:59
I picked up because it's it's just it sounds better than
1:29:02
exactly exactly. It's too hard to say with canal.
1:29:04
Yeah, Canal. Definitely England Canal.
1:29:09
Yeah, cans canal, currywurst, Bratwurst or neither.
1:29:18
Brat first. I like Curry worst, but a lot of
1:29:21
the time, nearly all of the time, the sauce is too sweet and
1:29:25
I don't like that. Like I'm used to Curry British
1:29:27
Curry, chicken tikka masala and and things like that, but.
1:29:31
You actually know. You actually know how good it is
1:29:33
like. Exactly.
1:29:35
And then they put this sauce and I'm like, oh, it's like a weird
1:29:38
sweet, not spicy ketchup. Yeah, so I've had some good
1:29:42
Curry verse, but brat first on its own for me.
1:29:44
Absolutely makes sense. What's more intimidating, biking
1:29:48
in Berlin or driving on Autobahn?
1:29:52
I recently biked in Berlin for the first time on like one of
1:29:57
those lime lime bikes and I did OK.
1:30:01
I didn't have too, too many issues.
1:30:04
So I'll I'll say the Autobahn because it's never it's never
1:30:08
relaxing. I don't know if you've ever
1:30:09
taken an American road trip and you've been on those long
1:30:12
highways where you put the cruise control on and you
1:30:14
basically just to chill out for seven hours.
1:30:16
Whereas 7 hours on the Autobahn is you are dicing with death.
1:30:20
You have to be switched on, eyes in the back of your ass, like
1:30:24
moving over, like the signs and everything else.
1:30:26
So I'm going to say the Autobahn is more stressful for me.
1:30:29
I never realized that, to be honest.
1:30:31
I had the, I had the road trip in the US last year withdraw
1:30:34
from, I would say the complete East Coast from near to Miami
1:30:38
and back. And I have to say the, the
1:30:41
experience was really relaxing. Like you said, the driving was
1:30:44
kind of boring on some businesses, but also on the
1:30:47
same, the same time, I have to say the auto one is impressive
1:30:51
because whenever there is no speed limit, there is that your
1:30:54
full attention there you have no, you have no, you are not
1:30:59
tempted, tempted, tempted to touch your, your phone.
1:31:02
You are not tempted to do something else because you are
1:31:06
in your pants and you are completely focused on driving.
1:31:10
I think the biggest difference is that the trucks in America go
1:31:13
as fast as the cars. So, you know, the trucks are
1:31:17
doing 80 miles an hour, whereas here they're all doing, you
1:31:20
know, 110 kilometers an hour and you're doing 190.
1:31:23
So it's like the disparity and the speed causes a lot of the
1:31:26
friction. But yeah, it's just not
1:31:29
relaxing. But you know what scared me in
1:31:30
the US? The fact that this, you know,
1:31:32
you have this rule in Germany where the fast lanes on the left
1:31:35
side and. Oh yeah.
1:31:36
In America, just. This was for me a a crazy chaos
1:31:42
and especially when you have the areas where you have 678 lanes
1:31:49
of the on the auto on the highway that was in that was
1:31:51
even more impressive. Right.
1:31:55
What German habitat rule surprised you the most?
1:32:05
I mean, we've already mentioned the traffic light one.
1:32:07
Correct. But there was, yeah.
1:32:09
Oh, I, I know what it is, is the, they don't have many of
1:32:13
them, but in, in Germany, roundabouts, rotaries as they
1:32:17
call them in America sometimes that you don't indicate when
1:32:20
you're staying on the roundabout, you only indicate if
1:32:23
you're coming off. But in England, you indicate to
1:32:26
show that you're coming around and you indicate to come off.
1:32:33
Yeah. So.
1:32:33
So the first month I was like, this idiot, why is he not
1:32:37
telling me he's staying on the roundabout?
1:32:38
And my wife's like, they won't like if they're not indicating
1:32:41
they're staying on the roundabout.
1:32:43
And I'm like, Nah. So yeah.
1:32:45
I have to say I'm surprised you haven't mentioned once recycling
1:32:48
hoof. Oh God, yeah.
1:32:53
These are those different. Bins I have in my kitchen.
1:32:55
It's ridiculous. I think at the moment we have we
1:32:58
have plastic and glass fund. We have glass to throw away,
1:33:03
then plastic rubbish, normal rubbish and then mixed rubbish.
1:33:09
So I have 5 bins in my house. My kitchen's not even that big.
1:33:13
You, you, you have to be happy you're not living in Bodom
1:33:15
Wuttenberg. We have 4 different kind of
1:33:17
plastic, OK. OK, I used to live there, but
1:33:20
yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you have to separate the
1:33:22
egg cartoons from the milk cartoons and the milk cartoons
1:33:25
and yeah, ridiculous. Exactly, exactly.
1:33:30
Crazy interesting. I usually, I usually like to get
1:33:36
an A recommendation at the end, the book recommendation, movie
1:33:39
recommendation and a music recommendation.
1:33:42
And especially for me, because you're coming from a radio
1:33:44
world, by the way, are you still in the radios?
1:33:47
Yeah, I'm, I'm basically the head of the radio network now.
1:33:50
I look after the radio product in eight different countries, 15
1:33:53
different radio stations, 30 something different
1:33:56
broadcasters. So yeah.
1:33:57
Oh my God, you're above the dream now.
1:33:59
So like the dream was. Yeah, yeah.
1:34:02
It's like when when the, you know, in Top Gun, when they
1:34:04
stop, he's no longer a pilot. Now he's the the person that
1:34:07
looks after the pilots. And yeah, it's, it's fine.
1:34:09
I I miss being on the behind the microphone.
1:34:11
I do get the chance to do that sometimes, but yeah.
1:34:14
I have to make say again, Chapo, it's not.
1:34:17
I have all my respect. That was all my live stream to
1:34:19
get in a radio. Oh yeah.
1:34:21
And the fact that you got to be the boss of the radios, that's
1:34:26
more impressive. Thank you.
1:34:28
To come back on the recommendation SO in which order
1:34:32
you want, feel free book, movie or and music.
1:34:37
The book recommendation will be my book.
1:34:39
There's nothing wrong with Germany, but here's 50 things
1:34:42
You'll Notice by Paul Hughes. I will link it.
1:34:46
I will link it in the front of the description.
1:34:47
Thank you. Yeah, it's it's it's my story
1:34:52
about how I ended up in Germany. It's all the things that I
1:34:54
noticed and then like a collection of articles that I've
1:34:56
written about Germany. So there's that.
1:35:00
The let's do the music recommendation.
1:35:06
I'm into a lot of different music and the one album that
1:35:10
sticks with me, I just had my you might have had this too.
1:35:13
If you're on Apple Music, it will give you your last 10 years
1:35:16
playlist of the songs you played the most.
1:35:19
And mine are mainly by a band called The War on Drugs.
1:35:24
And their album, A Deeper Understanding is very kind of
1:35:27
mellow, kind of trancey rock. But they're they're amazing.
1:35:32
They're a band that it's almost impossible to describe them as
1:35:37
another band. You know, if you say like, oh,
1:35:39
some 41, they sound a bit like Blink 182, but a bit angrier or
1:35:42
the Offspring or an even angrier Blink 182.
1:35:44
You can compare them to two other bands.
1:35:46
Whereas the War on Drugs is very hard to say.
1:35:48
They sound like X wonderful band.
1:35:51
A Deeper Understanding I would recommend and then a movie.
1:35:59
I don't know. I haven't I haven't watched
1:36:02
anything good in a while. I think the last really good
1:36:07
movie I watched was Top Gun Maverick, and I watched it in
1:36:10
the theater. Oh, it makes it nice.
1:36:13
And it blew me away. I had a smile on my face from
1:36:16
ear to ear the whole way through.
1:36:18
And I went, went and watched it on my own because my wife would
1:36:19
have ruined it because she wouldn't have got it.
1:36:22
And it was just epic. It was just epic from start to
1:36:26
finish. It was how an 80s action movie
1:36:29
brought into the 2025 exactly should have been.
1:36:33
So yeah, going. If you haven't seen Top Gun
1:36:36
Maverick, then watch the first one and then watch the second
1:36:38
one. Because you mentioned movies,
1:36:41
not because I asked you to mention movies.
1:36:42
But I just realized one thing. What?
1:36:44
What was your experience with watching dub movies?
1:36:49
Yeah, so there was how to sell drugs online fast.
1:36:53
Absolutely. When that first came out on
1:36:55
Netflix, we we started to watch it and we watched it dubbed and
1:36:58
we watched the first episode and I was like, I hate this.
1:37:02
I hate this because we don't have dubbing in the Uki was
1:37:04
like, I hate this. Let's go back, let's watch it
1:37:08
and let's watch it in German with the subtitles and it it
1:37:12
improved my enjoyment of the show remarkably.
1:37:15
Like the how for all the things that German are behind in their
1:37:21
cinema is ahead, you know, in sometimes and now how to sell
1:37:25
drugs online fast was absolutely bang on the pulse of the TikTok
1:37:29
generation. It spoke to the the the
1:37:33
millennials in me and yeah, I hate dubbed stuff.
1:37:36
I can't do it. I'd rather watch it.
1:37:38
And, and sometimes that helps you pick up things.
1:37:40
When they say something on the screen, you're like, well,
1:37:42
Germans say it like that and it, it helps your language.
1:37:45
I wouldn't say you could learn by watching it, but you
1:37:48
definitely pick up some words or pick up some interesting kind
1:37:51
of, oh, I heard somebody say that.
1:37:52
That's what that means kind of thing.
1:37:53
This is how I learn English so but I have a as in as we are
1:38:00
both non-native German speakers. I have a recommendation for you
1:38:05
and that's the the Krang Kangaroo Chronicle.
1:38:09
OK. I don't know if you know it.
1:38:11
No, it's it, it, it was first a book which was read, read live
1:38:16
by the author in in the presence of a live a live audience.
1:38:20
So that's was the audio book. That's how I get in contact with
1:38:22
the Kangaroo Chronicles. And and since I think 3-4 years
1:38:27
there was a movie that there was a movie coming out, which is
1:38:31
also in German, is written by a good famous comical in Germany.
1:38:34
I don't remember unfortunately his name, Han Uwe or something
1:38:39
like this. OK.
1:38:41
And it's a it's a fantasy fun story.
1:38:43
It's extremely funny, extremely funny.
1:38:47
And it has an easy German that it's easy to understand.
1:38:50
Kangaroo Chronicles. OK.
1:38:52
Yeah. All right.
1:38:52
I'll check that out. Yeah, that's an, that's an
1:38:55
interesting one. The last question Paul, how does
1:39:01
happiness look like for an expert from UK living in
1:39:04
Germany? I mean, I genuinely don't think
1:39:12
I've been happy in a very long time, if I'm brutally honest
1:39:18
with you. Sometimes I'm in survival mode
1:39:22
and I'm just surviving. Sometimes I'm in a kind of this
1:39:28
is safe, it's secure, it's comfortable, but I don't know
1:39:35
what happiness looks like. I think it's probably going to
1:39:38
be easier if you can meet a native speaker and fall in love
1:39:41
and marry them. I think that's going to get you
1:39:44
the closest you can to to happiness as an expat is is
1:39:48
marry a local. That makes sense.
1:39:54
I had the I had Priyanka in one of the previous episodes and she
1:39:58
she moved from from India to UK. And she has something that's
1:40:01
stuck into my head that I think I mentioned it a few times along
1:40:04
the episodes already. She said there's an expert you
1:40:07
belong everywhere and nowhere. And I think that's that's
1:40:11
actually true. And for whomever was an expert
1:40:14
cannot completely relate to this because that's that's the
1:40:17
feeling that you have. Yeah, I I say it like this.
1:40:21
I'm a permanent stranger. I'm a stranger when I go home.
1:40:23
I'm a stranger at work because I work with Americans.
1:40:26
I'm a stranger in my home city. A permanent stranger?
1:40:31
That's the title for your podcast.
1:40:32
There you go, permanent. Strength this is going to be for
1:40:34
sure. Absolutely.
1:40:35
I was just about to say that Paul, thanks a lot for your
1:40:38
time. I did appreciate the talk a lot.
1:40:41
I liked it and man you are doing my dream job haha.
1:40:45
Yeah, yeah, it's sorry to say, but it is everything you dreamt
1:40:49
of. It's like more putting the knife
1:40:53
in, turning around, getting out put you get to this again.
1:40:57
Thank you for that. Do appreciate a lot.
1:40:59
Yeah. Thanks for having me mate.
1:41:02
This has been fun. I think I've done a few podcasts
1:41:04
recently and it's we've kind of struggled to figure out where we
1:41:08
hang the conversation because I've I've LED such a crazy life.
1:41:13
So this was fun to really share my experiences as an expat.
1:41:15
So I appreciate it. Thank you.
1:41:17
Thank you so much, Thanks for your time and I hope we do this
1:41:21
against one day. Yeah, why not?
1:41:24
Enjoy, have a nice one. Thanks mate, Bye.