Happy Birthday

Today was not only my birthday but as well the birthday of my new  Domain. The old address used to be very difficult to find, i. e. http://palmtrees4ever.blogspot.com/  but now it is a proper .com address. Easy to find and easy to remember : http://www.4everasia.com/
By now we had over 2000 visitors and I hope the interest carries on. Join our Mailinglist (over 50 Members so far) and if you have any questions about moving to South-East-Asia and how to prepare your move, please contact us.

Important News: Today, 30.12.2010 we have given our notice for the flat to the 31.05.2011; step forward!! (We are defenitely leaving) 

Last Winter in Berlin

 

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Our visit to the UK

We have just returned from an eleven day visit to Bolsover and Chesterfield in England.(see Photos) As usual we enjoyed the beer, food and company of Pete and the Flower  Family. The weather was ok for November with some rain and some freezing cold days as well as some gales, not bad for England :) Oh sorry I forgot, we did see the sun too.
Thanks Pete and Sue once again for the chauffeur service from and to the Airport. All in all we had a good time and were happy to see all of the family. We are certain some of you will visit us in Asia and we are already looking forward to it.
One last thing to all who might go to Bolsover though: Do not miss the Blue Bell, a Pub with good beer, excellent food and a great Landlord (Kev). Check out their Homepage for more information.

Thank you

Just a little thank you to all of you who follow this Blog. Yesterday we had our 1000th visitor. We hope you enjoy this site and I promise it will get even better and more interesting once we have arrived in our new destination. There will be information where we are, how we live and lots of interesting pictures. Keep following us.
Thanks Pete & Ali for the Party!

Better Photography

We have at last decided to buy ourselves a new camera. After a lot of research our decision fell on a Panasonic Lumix DMC TZ10. It has a brilliant Zoom, a Wide Angle Lens, GPS and a stabilizer plus many more fantastic features. With the GPS you will be able to see exactly where we took pictures on a map and trace our journey. This will come to a test the first time when we go on our holiday to the UK where we shall take some photos with the GPS system and then put it on the blog. A first example of the quality of the pictures the camera takes you can see on the left. This makes a very nice desktop wallpaper, just double click, then right mouse, 'set as desktop wallpaper'. If you are interested in geotagging here are the links to two programs I will be using. Firstly there is Geosetter and secondly locr where I will store some pictures for you to see, as well as picasa what you might alrady know from my other picture links.
One more thing I would like to point out to you is my brother's Homepage
He is about to make a fantastic motorbike journey through India by himself. This will be extremely interesting to watch, as he is a good photographer and he writes in English too. Check out his site and please pass on to anyone who ist interested in travelling.

Little Update

Well, not much happening here. We are still selling our stuff wherever we can and yes, quite happy with the results so far. For selling books we can recommend Momox (if you can read German), just have a look. For all other little stuff around the house we use Ebay-Kleinanzeigen and Quoka.
Best news yet is: Fiona has stopped smoking, (hoorraayyy) but unfortunately I am too weak to do the same :(  Charly the old devil has settled in fine with our neighbors. He is in a good place to get old comfortably. We ride our bicycles a lot (going to the Post sending Ebay parcels off) shopping etc. We have not used our car in ages. The picture on the right shows a Sand Dune in the Grunewald, it is huge and only about 10 minutes bicycle ride away from where we live. We shall go to UK soon for about 11 days, let's just hope the weather is fine.

Step Forward

Well, July has been a difficult month for us and yet very successful. Firstly I sold my beloved Honda. CBR 1100 XX Super Blackbird, that already hurt and secondly we found a new Home for our Charly. An older couple on the 5^th floor in our house was looking for a new cat after theirs had died, but they did not want a kitten but one around 10 years old, so perfect. We know they will look after him well, but it was still hard to part with him. The flat seems very quiet without him, but it gives us more independence for traveling.

To take advantage of this, we went for 4 days cycling and fishing in Deetz, a little town about 1.5 hrs away from Berlin. We found a lovely place to stay with our camper van and caught some fish too (Of course we let them free again)

The last few days we have been rather busy sorting our cellar out and are slowly getting ready for our first flea market sale.

Freedom at last

If you're drunk & you're happy clap your hands.............is a note I found from Fiona this morning 

Fiona has had her last day in work yesterday and today we are feeling faaantastic. FREE, FREE, FREE:) We are starting a new chapter in our lives and we are looking forward to it. The last 7 months were not easy for Fiona, but she managed and I am proud of her. Now this is all water under the bridge and we can concentrate on the important things.... us!
The next steps are: a week holiday in the UK to visit family and friends, a bike trip for four days with Clive, Lutz and David, then some trips to Poland (Seaside and Lakes). In between we are going to sell more of our household on Flea Markets, Ebay, etc.

We had a nice surprise two weeks ago, when very unexpectedly Pat B. from Cyprus arrived in Berlin and paid us a visit. We decided this is a good time to have some people round for food and drinks, as it coincided with Fiona only having two more weeks to push. (pffft, only...) We hope everybody enjoyed it, we certainly did (see pictures)
If you need Fiona's email address or mobile phone number, please write a mail to 4everasia@gmail.com
So far so good, please stay tuned as now we are really going to start with our preparations and living a free life.

Wild boar in the woods

This might be interesting for our friends in the UK.

Approximately 20meters below our balcony is a resting place for a wild boar. It sleeps there nearly all day, gets up in the evening looking for food and returns in the morning. It is a biiiig one

We shall definitely miss all the wild life we have around here when we finally leave Berlin. I think our flat is very unique when you think it is in the German Capital and yet we have nature right round us (Deer, Woodpeckers, Boars etc.)

Click to enlarge pic

NO BIKING POSSIBLE YET, ahhhhh, I hate the winter

Sexy and practical

Spotted these lovely slippers on offer and thought what a great joke to give as a present to Udo! Well, he hates cold feet and moans daily that he is bored and the snow is keeping him from his bike. So I thought what a great idea to clean up all that spare bum fluff lurking in the corners of the flat. After showing this advert to Udo, we creased up, and THEN he pointed out they only came in ladies sizes 36-40!! So now I am pissed off ! Any suggestions?!!

More snow

As you can see it is february and we still have about 30 cm of snow. I think I can forget riding the bike for another month at least. Everybody is right fed up with winter, but the good news is, Fiona only has to work aproximately another 50 days, so not too bad.
Klara, we hope you are better soon.

Charly needs a new home

Hi my name is Charly, 10 years old and I am looking for a new home before 2011.


I suppose that is what he would say if he could talk.

Unfortunately we have to find someone who would like to take Charly before we are off to Asia. It is not easy for us, as he is part of the family. He is not one of these cats that want to be cuddled all the time, but has his own personality, which we love about him. If you know of someone who would like to take him and give him a good home, please let us know, (4everasia@gmail.com) as we do not want to leave him in an animal shelter. He is a great cat and if we could, we would take him with us.

Our plan in short

Well, we have just been to Marina’s 50th birthday, great food, lots to drink and good company. Thanks Marina and Bob.

I had some mails from people asking how we are planning our move to Asia, so I thought I let you know, what we would like to do.
We want to leave early 2011 and it does not matter which airport we fly to, as we are going to have a lot of time on our hands (Singapore, Phuket, Bangkok etc) we just need a cheap flight.
Wherever we arrive, the next step will be to make our way slowly, in fact very slowly to Langkawi, an Island off the coast of Malaysia where we would like to set up a new home for the time being. We are hoping to find an Apartment or little Bungalow for about 100 to 150 Euro per month. From there you can take a ferry easily to Thailand to renew the 3 month visa if need be. We shall find out all Visa possibilities this year by going to the different Consulates in Berlin. As there is an Airport on Langkawi we can plan all other trips once we are settled. So far the plan. We are fully aware we might, or surely will experience problems and that it is not going to be easy, but we are fully prepared to take the risk. We think it is a real chance to get away from the rat-race and to start living. Let’s hope for the best and a smooth running.

Thanks to Evelyn, I have added a Currency Converter on the right hand side.

A Good Start

Well, we have received our passports and sold some of the furniture with a profit. Fiona has been on leave over X-mas and new year (bad back and flu, omg what bad luck) and is now preparing for the last few months in her job. God am I glad when she is out of that place. To all who read this, a happy new year and may all your expectations come true. We are looking forward to 2010 in order to prepare for our adventure and when you look at the picture, who needs 20cm of snow on ones balcony. (Click on the picture to enlarge)