To live in Hamburg (1.77 million inhabitants) it means enjoying the best that a European urban lifestyle has to offer without the high costs of its major capitals. It is the second-largest city; with its new rail connection to the airport you could be in London, Paris, Amsterdam or Berlin in less than two hours, but with so much close to home, why bother?

Financial markets have tanked worldwide, those of us who still have jobs are waiting to lose them, the British Auto Show was cancelled, and Gisele got married. 2009 has been a rough year so far. It’s all enough to get one dreaming of a fresh start and what better way to get one than to start a new life in a new city?

Color associations vary greatly from culture to culture, just as each language or dialect has unique colloquialisms that are often misunderstood or lost in translation. In many Western cultures the feelings of envy or jealousy are commonly associated with the color green. However, in German the feeling is most closely related to the color yellow, as the phrase „gelb vor neid,” or „yellow with envy” suggests.

The original color of St. Patrick’s Day was not green, but blue. It wasn’t until the 19th century that green became Ireland’s national color and eventually the color of St. Patrick’s Day because of its association with the shamrock, springtime and the Emerald Isle.