Category: Property

Update on Trobolo and Switzerland

Trobolo is not shipping to Switzerland directly, but only available via resellers.

A quick update on my Trobolo(R) shopping experience. Being a good citizen and potential buyer, I gave the company a call to ask, if their numbers on the checkout page were a mistake or indeed intended.

A nice lady called me back and told me, that – despite being able to select Switzerland as the destination country – Trobolo(R) is not shipping to Switzerland at all. And then she added, that this was currently “just not their priority”. Always good to see a prospering company that can freely choose its customers.

And then she added, that there are two resellers in Switzerland that sell this product:

Different Countries – different Pricing

Today, I was looking for a composting toilet for a small shed I am building and came across a promising company called Trobolo. Quite pricy, but hey! we are doing something for our planet right?

After some quick checks and comparisons I came to the conclusion, that IndieBloem(R) should be my next toilet, which would set me back 689 EUR incl VAT (or 520 GBP excl VAT when ordering from the english website).

After selecting an additional liquids container, I went to the checkout page and saw a total price of 718.90 EUR incl VAT (which is a 114.78 EUR by itself):

Checkout for Germany with 19% VAT

When I was about to enter my billing and shipping address in Switzerland I was quite surprised to see what happened. The checkout did correctly recalculate and set the VAT to 0% (as this would be a shipping to non-EU country), but the net price of the goods stayed the same (689 EUR for IndoBloem and 29.90 EUR for the container).

Checkout for Switzerland with 0% VAT

This is actually funny, as now the seller (Trobolo) not only adds the complete burden of shipping cost (which is “free” in Germany) on the buyer (me), but also sells its goods for an additional 19% profit (nice margin by the way), as he does not have to deduct VAT upon receiving the payment; plus I have to pay the Swiss VAT/customs of 7.7% upon import of the goods into the country.

Let me think about this … for not too long. Maybe it will not be an IndiBloem after all.

Scotland at its best

Scotland has done everything to make up for our last trip. The weather has been really nice, warm and sunny and Caithness has turned out to be a much more welcoming place than one could think. The countryside is breathtaking and the heavily peated river reminds me of why Scottish Whisky is the best.

Our neighbours have kindly taken us under their wings and are making sure we don’t miss out on the sites, one has to visit up here. Having travelled a lot, they are giving back some of the kindness they experienced themselves while abroad. We could not have had better luck.

To round up a beautyful day, I was able to attend a choir rehearsal in St. John’s Church in Wick. It was balm for the soul to be singing in this wonderful old church with sweet and kind people who made me feel, like I belonged.

But the most heartwarming moment was not even the music but really the teatime with some members of the choir afterwards. It was so refreshing to be part of that group of smart and witty women. Thank you for letting me be part of that!

First night on the loch

So we made it up to Caithness. The road was good. We were once more surprised at how serious the Britts are about those traffic cones. They not only mark the way with them, they litteraly build walls with those things…

Before arriving in the UK, we have been worried about the fuel shortage, we read about in the news. This is why we decided to first leave the bigger cities behind us, before trying to find diesel. Turns out, there was no problem really. The very first gas station we tried, had fuel and not even a line of waiting cars. So we took that for a favorable sign and continued our journey north.

Loch Watenan welcomed us with some rain but also with the most heartwarming hello from our neightbours.

Having learned from our last trip, we did NOT try to drive on our plot by night without knowing the state of the ground. This is why we stayed over the night on the parking space south of the lake.

The night was calm and clear, allowing us to see an amazing starry sky.

(OK, you might need some imagination for that one…)

And right now, the day is breaking in a breathtaking manner on Loch Watenan…

We made it – Plot acquired!

Today marked a milestone in our effort to move to Scotland. The contract was signed and we are the prowd owners of a plot at Loch Watenan!

View from our plit

The plot is on the east side of the Loch, but hidden from the street. An absolutely lovely view. And from the highest part we can even see the sea.

Loch Watenan from the South Side

Now we have to wait to get the paperwork finished and returned and prepare for our first trip to our future home.

First baby steps

Well then. We made our first baby steps on the road to Scottish landownership. The obvious ones: We drove along the coast and looked for property for sale.IMG_4511

But whenever we saw a house for sale it was either too far away from the sea or too ugly or too small or simply not what we looked for. That continued for quite a time. We also walked into a real estate shop and asked for a register but the ladies were not really helpful saying that there is no landowner register or anything like it in Scotland. A little dispiriting, but well. There we were. Driving through the beauty of the Highlands enjoying the trip anyways.

Our holiday might have ended on that note, if it wasn’t for that extraordinary sight we run into outside a very small, very remote village on the north coast of the mainland.

There it was: the well-conserved ruin of a beautiful old stone croft house situated on a small strip of land between the beach and a loch. Paradise. We drove nearer and soon saw that not only there was no for sale poster, but there was also a stationary caravan near the ruin and a lot of construction material. So somebody else had had the same idea – and faster. Damn.

The next logical thing to do: Talk to the guy and offer whatever illusionary amount of money it would take to buy him out. That’s what we tried. But: there was nobody home.

We sat around for quite a bit, waiting for somebody to show up, but after almost freezing to death because of the cozy Scottish summer we abandoned the idea and decided to ask at the next house for information about the owner. We knocked on the door of a house in view of the ruin and waited. Again nobody.

We knocked and waited… This is when our story takes another course. A neighbor saw our car and thought that we might need help. He drove by and gave us the opportunity to ask him for all we wanted to know. He had an important piece of information for us: There IS a register!

He gave us the tip to look up the crofts for sale on http://www.hspc.co.uk/

Now we are talking. Instead of driving miles and miles, we would now sit in a nice pub drinking beer and looking for our property. And there it was: A croft in a lovely little bay. Just what we had dreamed of!

Great. Let’s buy it!IMG_4535

Hm. Well. How do we do that? Call the agency? It was a Saturday evening, so we had to wait.

Great time to update ourselves about the legal requirements of such an undertaking.

First of all: What exactly is a croft?

All you need to know about crofting in Scotland you will find on:

http://www.crofting.scotland.gov.uk/

For instance, we learned that to you actually have to live on your croft land. Well, that’s another turn to the story…

Should we do that?

Here we are …

This is the beginning. Or actually, it is not. It all started maybe in August 2004, when I have been to Scotland (yet another time). And during that trip I really convinced myself that – one day – I would move to Scotland’s north coast. Ok, twelve years later I have not yet managed that. But a week ago we have been to Scotland again and we reassured ourselves that we *MUST* secure a small portion of paradise for us.

And this is the story along the way. Maybe we succeed, maybe not. Let’s find out.