I'd been looking forward to today for ages. Rhiannon's back at school now and today, Tim returned to work after another long public holiday weekend. For the first time since 9th March, I was truly free.
FREEEE! Oh yes, I was extremely happy this morning.
The weather perked up again although the temperature remained chillingly low and I decided to take Kita for a long, exploratory walk around our area.
We found a stunning new lake, but couldn't find a path that went all around it. Beautiful houses, mansions really, edged most of the lakeside and we had some fun playing in the new area. Then we rambled down some pretty tree-lined streets, admiring the lilac trees in full-bloom. I spotted a rather nice gym. Not a lot of use to me - I don't 'do' gyms. Everything else is houses. Some are offices, but in general this is a wholly residential area. The architecture is absolutely stunning though - no two buildings are the same. Some are ultra-modern, others boast traditional styling. All are gorgeous.
Still no post office though, despite them being marked on Google Maps. I desperately need access to a post office so I can continue with my fairy letter writing business called "Dear Fairies"; Fairies would write letters to children (and some adults). I really enjoyed the escapism from reality this provided and the glowing feedback from happy customers was fabulously uplifting.
We were out for a good couple of hours and on my return found an email from someone telling me where the parcel-delivering post office was. Oh well, better late than never! Apparently not all "post offices" deal with parcels. It was in the opposite direction from today's walk, a couple of kilometers away. A couple of kilometers? Wow, that's a bit far to keep popping out to, but at least there is one.
I decided to investigate further - looking for how-to-use-the-post-office guides - and to my horror, discovered that the cost of sending parcels from Germany is astronomical. This threw me in a flat spin and I asked on Twitter for further advice. I was given a couple of other, private companies to try. But they were only relevant for bulk business use. My little company just couldn't afford it. Postage would cost at least as much as the item. No customer would pay that. And I couldn't absorb the cost.
I can't believe it's more expensive to send a parcel from Germany to the UK than it was to send an express mail parcel all the way from Japan to the UK.
I took another walk and found the post office, and sure enough, the postal charges are incredibly high.
Therefore, I have had to come to the very sad decision to close my little business. It was just starting to really take off when the earthquake in Japan struck. The mail system naturally went into disarray so I suspended trading for a while, then of course we moved here.
I had fully expected to reopen as soon as I could with a sparkly new website. Thank goodness I held fire on creating that. It would have been more expense down the drain. As it is, I still have all my stock, paper, special boxes and everything, now to be unused. I thought about reopening again once we leave Germany, but that's too far ahead and so I've given it all up - domain name and all. It's very upsetting.
And that leads me on to the next depressing section: trying to transfer domain names from one provider to another - nightmare! Something went wrong, of course, so now I'm waiting for a reply from the provider which I doubt will happen soon.
To pile misery on more misery, I haven't been able to set up my outgoing mail server as the SMTP details we've been left don't work. Or perhaps we've purchased the wrong package.
All in all, you could say I am mightily depressed this evening and more than a little frustrated. And once again, looking for a way to earn some money.
Does anyone need a freelance magazine layout designer / writer / proofreader / editor? Well, it's worth a try, isn't it?!