After having taken a look at the Hermannsdenkmal last week, I stayed overnight in Detmold, the nearest town. It’s a small, provincial place which, despite its exceptionally well-preserved old centre and attractive castle, has never quite made it into the big leagues of German day-trip destinations. That honour seems – in terms of medieval cities – to be have been reserved for Lübeck, Münster and Bamberg.

Yet, as I found out, the Detmolders are not disheartened, and are making a concerted effort to use the attention that the two-thousandth anniversary of the gigantic Varusschlacht – you know, the one from the start of Gladiator –has focused on the area to try and parley their neat little old-town into a big tourist attraction.

Moving to another country was the first culture shock.  Suddenly I was in Germany, surrounded by another culture and another language.  Then the career change: instead of sitting behind a desk, whether as a student or as a proofreader, I had become a nanny, then an English teacher, then a full-time freelance writer.  Then I blew all the other changes right out of the water and moved into a little wooden gypsy caravan on a piece of squatted land on the outskirts of one of Europe’s most metropolitan cities.

In town, bankers sipped 8-euro drinks and talked about their stock portfolios, while I lived with a bunch of adventurous nomadic types with brightly colored hair and wild dreadlocks, without electricity, carrying water 100-meters from the faucet to my little house or the community kitchen, chopping firewood to fire up the woodstove, reading by candlelight.