We have started house hunting. In the years to come we will visit what feels like to be countless old pubs, former workplaces of carpenters or other trades and farmhouses. We will learn about how houses were built here, the region of Westphalia and Münsterland, which is so different to where we have been living so far, in southwest Germany. …

There is something special to a pen-pal relationship bridging the enormous distance between Germany and Australia. The nations are different in so many aspects, the most obvious of which are climate and history. Both shaped everyday life in the respective locations.  It appears that there is some preconception in the sense that the more distant or farther away something is, …