Moving to Mühlhausen
The pages of this section are all about not just my actual move from the UK to Germany, but even more the rather unusual decision to build myself a new home here - not figuratively but quite literally. I would never have attempted anything like building my own house in England. Friends of mine had told too many stories of their nightmare experiences with builders. Here they have a saying: Geht nicht, gibt's nicht, which means there's no such thing as can't be done. And far from being a nightmare the whole process had me fascinated from the beginning.
Moving house from the UK, in my case the south, to central Germany is something a whole lot of expatriate sites give plenty of advice about, though they seldom refer to that part of Germany beyond where the Iron Curtain used to lie. Since I came to Mühlhausen I have seen only a handful of British here,and I know of only one who actually plans to live here, but not till he retires, apparently.
I looked at three local removal firms and chose one on the basis of personal recommendation. As I was taking some fairly fragile old furniture I made sure that the van would be driving all the way with the same team and not passing my property on in a container to another shipping company. Winchester Removals were a family firm and very pleasant to deal with. All the packing was done for me. As I soon learned, that is quite a science, much better left to professionals. Two of their men drove the huge green van all the way over to Mühlhausen without a hitch, caused a minor sensation by blocking the narrow street where I had a temporarily rented flat, and delivered all my bulky bits and pieces including about 30 boxes of books by the afternoon of the next day. No damage was done to anything and the final bill was lower than the offers from the other firms. The entire business of moving the contents of a five-bedroom home with the accumulated contents from 60 years of family life cost about £3000.
By the way: I shall make a point of referring by name to all firms who have worked for me. This is not so much for advertising purposes, although if it does serve to get a good firm more business, then that's great. No-one is paying me to mention them. I just happen to think good workmanship deserves appreciation.