My first year in Hamburg was interesting, to say the least. Obviously (or maybe not so obviously) living in a place as a permanent resident is a very different kettle of fish to spending a few weeks there each year as a visitor, even though I was never really in Hamburg as a tourist. But I have to say that there were far more positives than negatives.
I had to do all of the usual tedious but necessary things, like arranging health insurance and signing up with a doctor and a dentist. And I didn’t have to wait too long for my first experience of German hospitals. At the end of March, less than two months after I made the move to Hamburg, I was rushed into hospital by ambulance with chest pains which, although extremely unpleasant at the time, turned out to be caused by the long term effects of excess acid.
I was taken to the Bundeswehrkrankenhaus in Wandsbek Gartenstadt, which is a military hospital but also the nearest to where we live, being less than five minutes away by road. That hospital, together with the other hospitals and clinics I have seen in Hamburg, is clean, and efficiently run, which is unfortunately more than I can say for many hospitals in the UK.
Following that little episode, my doctor arranged for me to have ultrasound, a scan, and a gastroscopy – in that order – within a matter of weeks. It was the gastroscopy that found the problem, and the remedy was fairly simple – tablets daily to suppress the production of acid. I don’t like to think about how long that would have taken in the UK.
In April I had major dental work done. This was basically an operation to remove a large chunk of metal in the bone over several of my front teeth – the result of botched dental work by an NHS dentist many years previously that subsequent dentists in the UK had either failed to pick up on or simply didn’t want to bother with (my dentist here in Hamburg was horrified).
It probably goes without saying that my teeth are in far better shape today than they were when I first arrived in Germany.
In May 2011 we acquired our Ford Escort cabrio, which is Gatti’s pride and joy. Gatti had purchased an old Honda Civic towards the end of 2010, shortly after she secured our flat, both to use as a "runabout" to get from A to B, and so that she could set up a new auto insurance policy within the seven-year limit set by her German insurance company (otherwise we would have had to pay an excessive amount for a new policy). We sold that car in April (I believe it was exported to Africa) and started looking for something a bit more up-market.
The car is still going strong, despite being well over twenty years old! It has been to both England and Denmark several times, and has never given us any major problems. Gatti found the car through the garage she has used since learning to drive and acquiring her first car, and who still do all of our car maintenance and servicing. They secured it for us for €2700.00, which I would say was a bargain!
There was an incident involving the car in September that same year when we were on our way to visit friends in Kassel, which is about three hundred kilometres south of Hamburg. It was getting fairly late and already dark. A lorry some way ahead of us on the motorway shed a tyre which we, along with several other vehicles, ran into.
Luckily nobody was hurt, thanks to Gatti’s quick reactions, but our poor car suffered major damage to the front end and we had to leave it at the nearest service station to be collected by a local garage for repairs. Our friend Wolfgang came all the way from Kassel (about a hundred and fifty kilometres) to pick us up, and a couple of days later drove us back to Hamburg, which was really nice of him.
Most of November 2011 was spent with friends in South Africa, and when we returned everybody was gearing up for Christmas. It was not my first Christmas in Hamburg, but the first as a full resident. That December, we also acquired a new family member called Tine – a rescue cat who had been through a fairly wretched time for the first two years of her life.
Tine spent her first few days with us under the sofa, and wouldn’t come out unless we were well out of the way. Gradually, she grew a little bolder each day and started to exhibit the personality traits we have come to know and love, like her penchant for occupying any and all empty receptacles – bags, boxes, baskets and even cupboards! Tigger, however, was not so impressed with this pesky newcomer . . .