Parachute

Mani is visibly relieved. It's the first game of the season and whistle has blown for half time. Our lads are playing down in Rielasingen-Arlen, a village on the Swiss border whose amateurs have been paired against the superstars of Borussia Dortmund. Dortmund can only lose, and Mani knows it. "Close him...tighter...close him down...tighter...tighter...TIGHTER!!!...close him...close …

The Rats

One of the drawbacks of living outside of the UK is that you miss out on all the juicy gossip. Not the personal stuff necessarily --my best mate's Auntie Trisha's radar is so finely tuned that we sometimes think that she knows more about us than we do about ourselves. That kind of news requires …

Precision

Today I took part in a ritual charged with emotion and symbolism; an indispensable step on the road to becoming a German, one which had me in floods of tears by the end of it. I settled my outstanding tax invoice. It's not the first time I've done this but it breaks my heart every …

North And South

I decide to spend the weekend in the capital. Not Berlin, the capital of Germany but Essen, the capital of the Ruhr area. If you're living in the region, the assertion that Essen is the capital of the Ruhr might be news to you. Its claims, you might be thinking, are dubious.  It's not the …