Welcome!

Welcome everyone, to the debut of our blog, Les Deux Petits Cochons, (translation, The Two Little Piggies). In a future post, we will fill you in on the story of the origin of our title, but that’s for another time. For now, we are Bill and Mary, husband and wife for nearly 30 years who were bitten by the travel bug and never found a cure. We have a habit of getting itchy feet if we stay put for very long in one place. We have moved 12 times and three of those moves took us to Germany, where we currently reside.

I (Mary) am the main writer and frequent photographer, and Bill is the graphics and techie guy who is also a great writer and photographer in his own right. We decided to start a travel/lifestyle blog because I was always trying to keep friends and family updated about our wanderings. Then I found myself sending travel information to the teller at the bank who wanted to know about a trip we just got back from. Or someone in a restaurant overheard us talking about our trips and wanted to know more. This started to get out of hand, so voila! A blog is born.

We have a fairly unique perspective on life in Europe. This is our third shot at living here (actually the fourth for Bill, who lived in London for a bit before we met). Our first time was in the late 80s and Europe was a very different place back then. It was pre-internet and pre-Euro, and East Germany was alive and well and enclosed by the Berlin wall. During our second stay (1998 – 2003), we witnessed all sorts of changes. The introduction of the Euro and the opening of European borders resulted in—alas—no more cool stamps in our passports. But hooray! It meant no more eight different types of currency to carry around.

We will be posting about our current travels, as well as some “blast from the past” stories. We hope this blog will enlighten you, entertain you, and maybe even answer some questions you might have about living and traveling here in Europe. Whether you have your boarding passes ready or you’re an armchair traveler, we hope you enjoy the trip with us. Welcome aboard!