Hi – I am Matthew Whittall. I was born in Yorkshire, England back in 1967. In 1991 I moved to Germany. I have always felt that I was an Englishman – or to be more precise, a Yorkshireman. But in January 2016 it occurred to me that I had probably spent more time in Germany that I had in England. I checked out the exact number of days and it turned out to be true. As of January 9th 2016 I had spent more than half my life as a resident of Germany.

I originally moved here in 1991 to work for a manufacturer of paragliders and hang gliders based in the small village of Seeg in a part of Bavaria called the Allgäu (pronounced Al-goy). It is a beautiful village at the foot of the Alps and close to the famous Neuschwanstein (Fairy-Tale) castle. It’s also very close to the place where Steve McQueen famously tried to jump barbed-wire in “The Great Escape”.

After 8 years in the Allgäu, I moved to Stuttgart in 1999 and have lived close to the city ever since. In the meantime I got married, became a father to 2 girls, worked for an English plc and started my own business with my wife. But all of that will become clearer as you read the blog posts.

I still go home to Yorkshire a few times each year and I still love it. But I love living here too. Having said that there’s plenty that gets on my nerves in both places. So – read the blog and find out what.

Apologies to my German friends for writing this in English. I have already started and abandoned several private blogs and I know that the extra effort of thinking in German would doom this blog to failure so I am afraid you are going to have to live with English.