Germans are remarkably restrained when it comes to biscuits (that’s cookies to any readers from over the pond). For eleven months of the year, that is. As soon as Advent comes around, this changes. Traditionally the Germans bake “Plätzchen” … a wide...

This week I went with my visiting father and my youngest daughter to Wuppertal and took a ride on the Schwebebahn. My grandfather lived in Wuppertal around 1911 – and he had told my father about the marvellous “hanging railway” which runs along the...

Today was finally time to pick the rest of the grapes. The vine grows all across the pigsty, which I use as an office… and across the front of the barn. In fact, if I don’t cut it back soon, we might actually lose the house. So out came the ladders…...

This is exciting! I was invited this week to be – get this – a special guest star on Graham Tappenden’s weekly News Quiz. Graham records a podcast of his quiz every other week under the name “Truly German” – though in picking me as his guest, I think...