It is now more than three months since I left Scotland, time for an update. I arrived at the end of August. The weather was lovely and everything was new. I had a long list of things to sort out, official appointments that required signed and stamped papers that produced …

We are well into the process of rearranging our lives. It is now also time to work on my digital migration. I have never used facebook and see no reason why I ever would. I do have a presence on linkedin which I don't really use. I don't quite see …

The day has come when I bid farewell to Scotland. I have lived more than half my life in Scotland. I have always felt very welcome here. I love the place, the sea, the mountains and I have many good friends and colleagues. I leave with a sense of betrayal …

After having lived more than half my life in Scotland, it is time to pack our bags and move on. In the summer we are going to relocate to Berlin where I will take on a new position at the Charité hospital. Unsurprisingly, this is a very difficult decision with …

Here we go again, we are preparing for another round of strikes. The issues we have been fighting over have not changed: our pensions are still threatened and our working conditions have still not improved. The three day strike before Christmas was just a warm up for this round. We …

In the small town where I grew up there were essentially two places where you could buy records and CDs. They also sold personal stereos, TVs and washing machines. They had a pretty good selection but nothing unusual. I had to go to the city for a specialist record shop …

Another year in the grip of the pandemic has passed. In many ways it was a very uneventful year filled with work and local walks. We seem to be getting the hang of the pandemic and ended up with 3 1-day self-isolation periods while we waited for our test results …

Despite of the relatively high Covid19 incidence numbers, the UK is returning to some form of normality. The year is coming to an end and the Christmas Market is absolutely packed. We are also preparing for another 3 day strike followed by further industrial action on the Four Fights and …

We are now well over a year into the Covid19 pandemic. So far we, personally, have escaped relatively unscathed: We have our jobs, an income and a large enough flat so that all four of us have their own space. We have technology to access the internet and each of …

Today I have reached another milestone of dealing with Brexit: I have completed the naturalisation process and become a British citizen. For me, the process was as straight forward as it gets: pass the Life in the UK test, fill in some forms, hand over some money, show some documents …