Happy New Year!

Hi, Y'all! 

From the bottom of my heart I wish you a happy new year filled with peace, joy, health and also success in any form. Spend time with your loved ones, don't put off anything you want to do and enjoy life to the fullest - nobody knows how long it will last.  

Our New Year's eve was pretty lazy at first, and then we had a nice dinner. Not the usual suspects like raclette or fondue, no - this year we had vegetarian cabbage rolls with dumpling filling and mulled wine sauce. It was quite elaborate thus we won't have that every week. But absolutely delicious!  

Why elaborate? Well, you start with the dumpling filling, that means, you fry garlic and onions in a pan with herbs de Provence and add some plant based milk to heat it slightly. Add all these ingredients to some diced stale bread. Mix in an egg and some grated carrot and let that rest for half an hour. Season thoroughly because the filling soaks up spices like a sponge.  

Fry some mushrooms, season them as well and set them aside. In case you still have some leftover bread, dice it and fry it, too, and sprinkle it with some sea salt. Set aside too, will be needed for serving later. 

Remove the stalk of the cabbage and carefully separate the single leaves - they should stay more or less intact. That might get more difficult the closer you get to the center of the cabbage, because the leaves are more folded then. But with some patience one can manage that. Then I blanched the leaves in boiling water and cut the middle ribs of the leaves which were too thick. You could have done that before, but I didn't want them to fall apart in the water. After that you layer two or three leaves and brush the inner leaf with mustard. Place roughly a tablespoon of dumpling filling in the middle and add some of the fried mushrooms. With all your light-fingeredness you can muster fold it into a roll and fix it with some kitchen yarn or toothpicks. I then put all my rolls into a large dutch oven, added some vegetable stock and let that simmer for 45 minutes with a closed lid.  

In parallel, I fried some diced mushrooms, onions and carrots, deglaced them with mulled wine (normal red or even beer would work as well) and filled up with veggie stock. That simmered also for 40 minutes with a closed lid. The recipe called for sieving the sauce and thicken it with flour afterwards, but I couldn't stand to throw away the perfectly fine veggies. Thus I blended them in the sauce and saved me the thickening. 

For serving I first poured some sauce onto the plate, then placed the rolls on top and garnished them with the croutons and some roasted sunflower seeds. You could offer mashed potatoes as a side dish, but the dumpling as filling worked fine for us.

For Christmas we had our traditional potato salad and wieners on Dec 24, and on Christmas day we were invited by neighbours/friends. Thus on boxing day I had enough leisure time at hand to prepare a vegetarian "meatloaf" - which also couldn't be done in a haste... 

Not sure, if I mentioned it before, but basically you have to fry some onions and garlic together with some diced mushrooms until they are soft. Mix them with grated cheese (the more mature, the better), cooked wild rice, cottage cheese and chopped nuts. Season with thyme, sage, salt and pepper and stir in four eggs. In theory you could substitute the eggs with chickpea flour and water, but I haven't tested it, yet. Fill the dough into a loaf pan and bake it in the oven for an hour. Serve it hot with a roux or cold with a mayonnaise or tartar sauce. Equally yummy!

A few days before Christmas we went to Msida to get our Maltese IDs. They informed us we could collect them and we agreed on 23 Dec. What they didn't tell us was that the three remaining admin clerks had a Christmas party, thus no IDs for us, but a nice bus trip through Maltese pre-Christmas chaos instead. Well, we will do that again on 2 Jan and let's hope the New Year's party of the admin staff is over by then... Oh, and by the way: According to the bus schedule, Msida is only one stop after Paris. Everything is smaller here - even the distance to France! :-)

And what I also wanted to mention: Unlike in Germany, there are only orchestrated fireworks here in Malta. Organised by highly skilled specialists with a licence and with fireworks which weren't thrown together in some eastern European backyard with highly dubious ingredients. Usually it takes place in the capital, Valletta, but this year they made an exception and transferred it to Mellieha. That came in very handy, because after our dinner it took us only five minutes of walking to get to the spectacle. And it really was spectacular! Although not very long (appr. 20 minutes or so), but there was some music, some drinks, nice temperature outside, no-one got hurt by fireworks, the crowd was manageable and everybody was in a good mood. Community service took care of the cleaning up, and neither days before nor after people were disturbed by stray fireworks. Children with a light sleep and frightful animals definitely appreciated that. I like! 

With that said - all the best for 2023 

- it will be exciting for sure!

What am I doing here???

Hi, Y'all!

You may be asking: What is she doing now she's in Malta? Fancy drinks are pretty nice, but you can't live on fancy drinks alone. And watching the sea never gets boring, but there has to be more... Especially, since I am used to going to work every day for more than 30 years (unbelievable, right)... 

Now what? OK, grab a drink, make yourself comfortable, I will explain. 

Hubs has always been busy looking for something to complement his deep tech nerdy part, something hands-on and practical. At first he was intrigued by bisons and seriously considered opening a bison farm by the north sea. But I vetoed this because with me those bisons would have been only petted to death. They are living beings, and I doubt that I would have been able to part from them. I would have named them and that would have been the end of selling bison steaks... 

OK, no bisons, no living creatures. And if you know the hubs, you also know, that he lives mostly on coffee (at least during the week). Thus it was likely to delve more into that subject. And now he is a certified barista. OK, the trademark "The grumpy barista" is still to be registered, but I am thrilled about the idea of opening a café or coffee shop (well, not the dutch kind, if you know what I mean). 

So we were busy making plans and are going to open a coffee shop and even roast our own coffee beans! Then you can drink the coffee right in our shop or take a bag (or two or three) of roasted beans home to have that barista feeling at home. And once we've roasted and bagged the beans, why not sell them online? Well, we combined his tech knowledge and my creativity and created an online presence. 

Then we had the online shop but neither a physical counterpart nor coffee roast to sell. It's work in progress, but it takes time. And in Malta, the clock is ticking differently (even literally*). We are interested in a particular location but the permits we need still have to be granted. 

In the meantime it would be a shame to abandon the online shop, hence I had the idea to sell some beautiful things which go with the same vibe. And anybody who knows me or this blog will know that I am fascinated not only by good food and drinks but also by things to present said good food and drinks. These things make me very happy, and thus it was only logical to offer in our shop the prettiest accessories to set a beautiful table. 

I did a thorough research to find suppliers to provide me with items which I like, that are special somehow and make a pretty table decoration even more pretty. And I found them, yay! Therefore you can find in our shop beautiful napkins and napkin rings, placemats and table runners, bowls, carafes and and coffee makers from all over the world for you and your home. We've overcome some difficulties and are now able to ship to Europe and Germany respectively - that was very important to us!

Surely our baby needed a name, and after a nice evening by the sea and an excellent Maltese red, it was named 

The A3

(the-a3.com)

In case you are wondering how we came up with this, here is the very simple answer to your question: 

                              

A lex and  

A lex 

A lten

A3

And this is how it looks if we need our logo handstitched on a table runner for the trademark registration! With the wine in the background, it's an insta-worthy picture, don't you think?

Soooo, if you are in shopping mood or looking for extraordinary and beautiful accessories for your dining table, what are you waiting for?! Chop chop, over to the-a3.com and most importantly spread the word! 😘

As always stay safe and sane, Y'all!!!

* Maltese churches always have two church clocks, and at least one of them shows the wrong time 

- in order to confound the devil 😉

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Hi, Y'all! 

It's been exactly one month today, since we've come here to Malta, and I can say that it feels completely right! But in the meantime I've noticed a few more things which are smaller than in Germany: paper towels, toilet paper rolls, our mop, the ironing board and even Christmas trees!

I guess, I already mentioned that our flat is completely furnished including even a Christmas tree. When our landlords told me about it I was pretty happy, because I gave back our former tree to the original owners (my sister and her hubs) and thought I'd have to buy a new one. But last week, our landlords (fun fact: Mary and Joseph) came by and surprised us by personally delivering our tree!

Compared to the wine shelf you can see that it is on the smaller side... But don't look a gift horse in the mouth... Thus I took all the ornaments that made it into our moving van and busily decorated for an hour or so. And this is the little one all dressed up:

Cute as a (very small) button, right? But as I was in the mood for decorating, I decided to make some more ornaments. And because I packed only two boxes of Christmas decorations, there was room for some more... Thus I took some very old and scattered school books and recycled them into beautiful ornaments. In theory I could have hung them into the tree, but due to its size, I opted against. 

I started with simple stars which I cut from a few pages of the book and adorned them with snowflakes: 

After cutting, I was left with some paper strips which I stapled to heart hangers. Would even be nice for Valentine's day. 

Then I made this cute little Christmas tree which I absolutely love:

But what's a winter decoration without stars and snowflakes? Therefore, I made a few of them in various shapes and sizes: 

As I said, they didn't fit into my tree, and so I hung them as garlands like this: 

And on that note I wish you a happy first advent, Y'all!

The simple things in life...

Hi, Y'all! 

Of course, you can order with Amazon in Malta, but you don't have to. Well, it is possible, but shipping costs are rather high and delivery takes significantly longer than what we are used to in Germany or in the US. Nevertheless you definitely can order online here, you just can't get it at a one stop shop like Amazon, instead you have to find your way through the Malta Virtual Mall unless you find what you're looking for. 

Lately I did exactly that when I needed pet food for Heinrich. Due to the lack of pearly whites he swallows dry food whole and therefore he needs wet food. In Germany we fed him pâté with game in 300 g portions, to which he responded very well. I looked for something similar here and was lucky. But our local supermarket didn't have it in stock, thus I ordered online. Delivery was confirmed for Wednesday until 4 pm, but at 5 pm still no dog food. I called them and was told that the game flavour was out of stock and they had no idea when it will be available again. 

But then I found a teeny tiny pet shop here in Mellieha called Paws'n'Claws - I liked that. Therefore I took my shopping trolley and went to the shop where I was greeted by an English Bulldog girl named Kira - yay! Thus the shop already found my sweet spot. And the dog let me pet her thoroughly and then went down on my foot to sleep and snore :-) I was very tempted to add her to my shopping cart (although she was not for sale!), but then I thought, Heinrich wouldn't be amused... 

The shop owner was very nice and showed my their different dog foods and also recommended some. And I have to say that Heinrich liked it very much and even responded very well to it. I won't go into detail but you know what I mean, Jellybean...

Today I went again to restock, and they remembered me instantly. The pet shop boy asked, if Heinrich liked the food and if everything was fine. I quite liked that. And after checkout he put all my cans in my trolley and even carried it upstairs to street level.

I was very impressed - that was thoughtful, considerate and polite - and that wouldn't have happened if I shopped with Amazon. It's all about these simple things in life, right?

Heinrich did a detailed inspection and was fine with it :-)

Enjoy the simple things, Y'all!

Everything's bigger in Texas, but what about Malta?

Hi, Y'all!

We've been on the island for 11 days already, and I must admit, that I really like it... Sometimes everything will feel normal to me, but at the moment I'm busy comparing things to Germany. But I guess, that's normal, too. 

Anyway, you might know the saying: Everything's bigger in Texas, and for Malta that works perfectly, but the other way round. It's known as a dwarf state, and you often realise that this is perfectly true. To begin with the Maltese streets which are very narrow; therefore people tend to drive small cars. With such a little banger it's a lot easier to drive around. And to be honest: Destinations are not soooo far away here, thus a huge car to cruise endless roads might seem pretty useless.

And when the streets are narrow, the sideways are too - appr. 50 cm. But at least there are sideways at all! But when there is garbage waiting to be picked up, you might have to walk in the street. And no, there are no large trash cans in the street as in Germany, only garbage bags, but at least garbage disposal comes daily - organic waste for example three times a week.

Butter packages are smaller, too. Often I see butter packed in 200 g. The local Welbee's supermarket surely can compete with German discounters sizewise, but most of the other shops are pretty small. The Starbuck's just around the corner consists mostly of a counter and is roughly 20 square meters. (But you can sit outside.) The butcher, the mini market and Tony's bakery are similar in size, but I find that very cute and charming. It's like shopping in someone's living room. And Tony's bread is superyummy. Maltese like their bread with a crust but soft and fluffy on the inside. I can live with that! And in case I need a Vollkornbrot, I can bake it myself - as simple as that.

Even drying racks are smaller here! Please compare mine to the one existing here in the apartment: 

In fact even people :-) Surely you find a lot of expats here, but the Maltese aren't that large - compared to them Alex (1,73 m) and me (1,65 m) are giants! 

But what's totally written in capital letters is religion. When I consider that in catholic Rhineland parishes have to be combined and one pastor cares for three communities, so that there is one mass per week per church. In the church just around our corner there is church service every f...ing day. Our landlords go to service every morning between 6:30 and 7:00 - exactly the time when I go sleepwalking with Heinrich... 

And besides that there are surely a few things which are far from being small and nondescript: Meal portions in restaurants 😋, the landscape and the beauty of nature! Please have yourself a look at how beautiful it is: 

On that note: Enjoy the little things in life!

Malta Life

 Hi Y'all,

we are settled! Which means, hubs and me arrived by air, and the little black dog had his own two chauffeurs, and all of us made it safe and sound to Mellieha, Malta. 

I don't know exactly if all our relocation goods will arrive as safe and sound, but let's stay optimistic. Exactly a week ago, Laszlo, the Hungarian mover came to Magdeburg, and together we played Tetris the whole morning :-) We actually managed to condense all our goods (including my diy stuff and Christmas decoration, especially) to one ton which fit perfectly into his Sprinter van. 

Well, we might have managed to fit in even some more things, but then the van would have been too heavy, and Laszlo wasn't too keen on bribing Italian officials, who like to put these vans onto a large scale. Thus we shipped a few boxes with DHL, but it wasn't that easy to limit them to 31,5 kg, especially, if you have to weigh them on a personal scale. Therefore, one of the boxes exceeded the limit by 4 kg, and DHL refused to transport it. I had hoped to solve that problem by paying an increased shipping fee, but they didn't offer that option. There were only two alternatives: Send back to original address (where nobody lives any longer to receive the package) or dispose/auction the content. Well, I suppose, someone will be very pleased over auctioned bedding and towels :-)

Anyway, Laszlo will arrive on Saturday, and hopefully, the DHL packages will be delivered some time, too. And then we will be very busy turning the apartment, which currently feels like an airbnb, into our home (at least for the next two years). First steps are already made: 

At least we have some bottles to put into the wine shelf, when it's going to be delivered on Saturday. And the Frizzante we tasted yesterday was highly recommendable! 

As there is left-side traffic in Malta, we decided not to buy a car. Moreover, the public transport is not so bad here, and moreover it's completely free of charge since 1 October '22. Thus, I wanted to test the buses - and what shall I say? I chose the wrong day for this experiment! I arrived at the bus stop only to read a note that due to construction the main road is closed today. I had to change to another bus stop within five minutes walking distance. 

While I was digesting this, a red minibus drove by and the driver shouted: No bus today, I drive - it's free, it's free! As he didn't mention the destination and I don't hop on any bus just because it's free, I walked to the makeshift bus stop. Bit of excercise is good for me, I thought. There were already a bunch of people waiting and after a short while the first green and white busses came. I knew I had to take lines 221 or 222, and therefore I let the first ones pass. Then 222 arrived and just to be sure I asked the driver if he would pass the supermarket. No, he didn't (was headed into the opposite direction) and I should wait for the next bus. That may happen, if you install only one bus stop which serves both directions. 

The next 222 approached, but didn't stop. That can happen in Malta; in case the bus is too full, they don't let anyone enter. Understandable but nevertheless annoying. Well then, the next bus came - not my line, but I asked anyway. And thank all transportation gods I made the acquaintance of a very nice driver. He told me, he would be headed roughly in that direction and that he would simply let me out near the supermarket. Which he did - I only had to take 500 m uphill on a highly frequented road, but I finally reached the supermarket. Took me only one hour :-)

I braced myself for the way back, but in front of the supermarket there were two guys from Transport Malta who assured me there is a shuttle service which would be there any minute. And who drove by just a few minutes later? Exactly, the guy in the red minibus! :-) Thus it took me only 10 minutes to get home. 

Note to self: Count in a bit more time than recommended by the public transport app, stay calm and you might get surprised.

I've learnt so far, that the Maltese understand rules as recommendations which one can follow or bend if needed. In Germany, the bus driver wouldn't have let me out near the supermarket if there was no official bus stop. But he drove by and he might as well let me out - very pragmatic. 

The same pragmatism they show with other things. For example I noticed that there are a lot of water bottles placed in the streets. And no, they are not supposed to be picked up by garbage disposal (although they come on a daily basis and for free). No, it has a very handy background: If a dog marks his territory, you can use the water to dilute his message in order to avoid all the dogs in da hood commenting on your dog's initial message. In the Maltese heat that could get very... intensive... But instead of getting furious and installing angry signs stating that doggo isn't allowed to post something to read for his fellow doggies, they just provide some water to get rid of any markings (and btw water is pretty cheap here). Simple as that! 

And that were the first impressions about living in Malta. Will keep you updated on our expat life here. 

Stay safe and sane!

eBay small ads - the struggle is real :-)

Hi, Y'all

As you probably noticed, we are in the midst of packing our bags to leave Germany for good, and we took the opportunity to declutter thoroughly. And we didn't stop there - due to the fact that in Malta (and in various other countries) properties are rented with furniture, we had to get rid of all our shelves, beds, cupboards - you name it. 

Therefore, we started early in Summer to list everything on eBay small ads (a service like craigslist or Facebook marketplace) in order to have it sold by the time we're leaving. And believe me, I could write books about it! Here are some real life stories... 

But first something else real life - only for entertaining purposes, and I hope it melts your heart!

But back to topic: First I listed glasses and china tableware, and as it is heavy and fragile by nature, I listed it as "pickup only". Guess what happened first: "Could you mail it to me?" Well, the tea light holders from IKEA might be worth less than the shipping costs, therefore "no, I can't". Now, hubbie's oldest child is happy for her new wedding decoration, and here is where the circle closes, because a decade ago I bought them just for the exact purpose. 

A girl from the Frankfurt area was as charming as she was adamant about my china, and thus I actually packed two large boxes with all the upholstery material I could find in my basement. And miracles happen - a shoutout to DHL who managed to ship a fine bone china tableware set for six safe and sound to Frankfurt! 

Some time in August I listed a small flatscreen tv for 25 Euro of which the remote control got lost or never existed, I can't remember. A guy contacted me very politely (salutation, kind regards, might it be possible, etc.) He lived on welfare and minimum wage, but as he had a very old tube tv with high energy consumption he would like to buy my tv. But it might take some time to save up to gather the 25 Euros - would it be possible to reserve the item for the time being? I was deeply touched by his honesty and decided to give it to him for free. He came with a package of coffee and we had a nice little chat. Very nice experience for both of us!

After we went through our alcohol stash we didn't need our wine shelf any longer. It could hold 54 bottles, was made out of solid wood, and came at a decent price of 20 Euros. Nevertheless I was contacted by someone first questioning the construction of the shelf and then offering to pay 10 Euros. Let's get real: If you can afford 54 bottles of wine, champagne or some other good stuff, you should be able to afford 20 bucks for a shelf, right? We decided to take the shelf with us, as we learned that the Maltese make some good wine, too!

I won't mention all the people contacting me with only one word, for example when I listed something for 50 Euros, they just sent "40", no hello, no currency, no thank you, no greetings or salutations. Or the classic: "last price?" Don't get me wrong, I know that many of the people answering small ads are no native speakers and I don't care if they spell something wrong or. But you realise if somebody has a natural politeness regardless how broken the German they use. And there are these special candidates who never had good manners regardless where they were raised. 

We were very lucky because we only had two or three potential buyers who had exaggerated ideas of the offered items (That's weird - the silver coloured chandelier isn't as golden as I thought...) or simply didn't appear to pick up the goods. I think this is very rude, and in that case I wasn't afraid to recognise them to the eBay system, so they might get banned or so. In my opinion you should invest the minimum amount of time and send an email stating that you're no longer interested, that's the smallest act of politeness.

A few times potential buyers backed out but informed us. I guess, such things happen. But twice it was when selling our kitchen - that was a bummer, I have to admit, because we were under pressure time wise. Our landlord didn't want to take it (I already talked about that), there is no renter after us and the landlord didn't want us to look for a new renter, thus we were solely in charge of selling the kitchen. And what you have to keep in mind: We listed it not at a bargain, but for a reasonable price, and it was an American sized kitchen! Which means tons of storage space, an extra cabinet for cleaning supplies and old school vacuum and such, a breakfast bar AND an island. Surely you would need adequate space to place all these kitchen cabinets; it's not comparable to a normal sized German kitchen. Therefore, it wasn't that easy, but in the end a very nice lady contacted me who wanted to buy it as a wedding gift for her daughter. All for of them (which means her, her pregnant daughter, soon to be son in law and her husband) came to look at the kitchen and were very appreciative about the design and quality of the kitchen and the electric appliances (I thought, mum would have liked the kitchen for herself) and were so excited, that they even bought our laundry dryer! I liked the idea of the wedding gift, and the fact that they didn't even try to lower the price :-)

Afterwards we realised, that we know the daughter, we only didn't recognise her due to her face mask. We met her once with her puppy "Erna" and talked to her for a bit. In the meantime, puppy Erna had her first birthday, but that was a nice coincidence. Tuesday, 10 days ago, father of the bride came with some buddy, and the two of them demounted all of the cabinets. The next day, they came accompanied by three other guys and a truck and removed the whole kitchen. Very nice people, and it was nice talking with them while they were busy working on the kitchen. What I liked most: They were very organised, but at the same time pretty calm, and without any hectic they took apart everything and labeled it carefully. Very nice! For about a week our kitchen without kitchen looked like this: 

But as I got to know these people and found them sympathetic, I am at peace with giving away my dream kitchen. I know it will be in good hands and good use for the next 20 years. 

Are there any lessons learned? Yes! Never offer items with a high demand (washing machine for example) when you still need them! Even if you mention: no pickup before this and that date, people tend to ignore that. When I listed said washer, I had a double-digit list of possible buyers in no time! Next time, I know better.

And I learned another lesson: Never list anything on "Quoka", their security system is practically non-existent. We listed a bike there, three people wanted to buy it, and all of them were scam. First time was a classic: Someone agrees to buy the bike, asked for our PayPal account and sends a faked payment confirmation from Paypal with a significant higher amount than agreed. The difference is supposed for the transport of the bike and we should send the money directly to the shipment company. We informed PayPal and Quoka about the scammer and could avoid any harm. But when the next two candidates send an almost identical text to buy the bike, I deleted the ad, and the significant other of our youngest now has a new bike :-) So please be careful, even (or especially when) someone wants to shower you with money! 

Stay safe and sane if dealing with Craigslist and others!!!