Mühlhausen in Thüringen
Mühlhausen in Thüringen deserves a section of its own for a whole variety of reasons, not least, that it is a grand place to live in and others may decide to follow my example. This is not only about Mühlhausen but also a personal account of how I came to set up house in a city unknown to most of the people in Britain.
Note on the spelling: either Mühlhausen or Muehlhausen will do on the internet since English keyboards don't have Umlauts like German ones.
When the British retire...
Retired British Teacher Rebuilds Old House in Ancient East German City
Why do British pensioners never think of escaping to somewhere other than France or Spain? Or Gozo? It can't be because of language problems. How many of them speak another language really well anyway? There are people, presumably not pensioners, who buy up farms in Hungary or Romania. But why do so few think of East Germany as a viable place to retire to?
Well, that's what I did in 2004 and I can highly recommend it. I haven't been lonely, helplessly confused or homesick for a moment. It was the beautiful mediaeval city of Mühlhausen http://www.muehlhausen.de/that fascinated me from my first brief visit here in 1994. True, I speak German since schooldays and one of my sons has also moved here, so that I'm not without company. But the main reason for coming here was the wish to buy a house, something I could never have afforded in Hampshire. House prices here are about a third of what they are in Britain, if you want to move straight into a ready-made home. I looked at several but finally decided to buy a dilapidated old building just within the old city walls and rebuild it.
Madness or Mühlhausen ?
Your first reaction might be: quite mad! Or: house-building is tough enough in Britain! Don't know about that as it wasn't an option for me. I can only say that it has been the best year of my life. The house is now, in the Spring of 2006, nearly finished and I have got to know a lot of kind, helpful and genuinely friendly people. More about that in due course. First, a look at the City of Mühlhausen , so that you can see why I wanted to live here.
What you see is an architectural combination of mediaeval Gothic and 20th-century functional building. This tells you a lot about the city. It was, until a few years after Germany got re-united in 1990, a place full of different industries, and during the Middle Ages it belonged to the Hanseatic League, that powerful organisation of rich trading cities that stretched right across northern Europe.