Anyone in Germany care to chat?

[Brefugee]

I got a bit (lot) sick of all the German-bashing in that cake thread, some of it comes from just not knowing anything about the place, some of it is a kind of unwillingness to understand that things can be very different in other places.

There was a fair bit of niggling about how Brits might think German directness is rude - but as pp pointed out, Germans would think it rude if you walked into a waiting room at the Doctor's surgery without saying "morgen zusammen"

There was also German Cake Bashing (😂) at one point.

So. Anyone care just to have a long running thread for the expats/immigrants/Germans here who are in Germany, or from Germany and missing/not missing it, or are thinking of coming here?

Why Germans think a coat is necessary at 25 degrees? I have no idea. It is totally baffling. But they like to wrap children up in 73 layers like they are going on an arctic expedition.

Even DS2 is getting assimilated and insisting he needs a hat for all seasons "for head protection".

They typically see British parents as wantonly neglectful in the area of wrapping children up warm. Drives my eldest (coat hater) mad.

DS hates hats in winter but baseball caps in summer are OK. (He now has a cool new Spiderman one from Next.) He despises his "Matschhose" and both kindergarten and now his school have insisted on it. It's been a battle. His reasoning is that he doesn't play in puddles or in the mud and why does he have to wear it?? He's right, to be fair, but I've tried to convince him with the fact that it's not that long anymore. Once he's in Grade 1, nobody bothers to check. (He's currently in Reception.)

I remember the horror when he wasn't wearing socks as a baby and it was 20 degrees. As if his feet might freeze off...
Or a hat when it was 18 degrees outside. "He's going to get an ear infection..." Yeah, no..not really...

Sneaking in at the back. I have been in Germany since 1988. Started out in Hanau, then was in Frankfurt for 11 years (Käse Thomas in the Kleinmarkthalle used to stock Quicke's Farmhouse cheddar, but no longer do) then bought a house (or rather a ruin) in Rheinhessen 21 years ago. It was fine whilst I was working away, but not so good during covid and WFH.
I also have dual nationality thanks to Brexit and was particularly upset that I was too old to need to do the language or written tests as I am fluent in German and was getting 100% in the online practice tests. Oh well.
I was married to a German, but he died. No children, 1 step-son based in Berlin, but I haven't seen him for nearly 20 years.
Not keen on cake of any description, but was very good at German cakes because I used to bake them for the family I lived with as a student. Their family "meal" was Kaffee und Kuchen as it was the only time of day when everyone was guaranteed to be at home.
I wonder if any of you have noticed that the selection of goods in shops and supermarkets seems to vary by area and demographic? Despite being in a rural area the variety and quality of fruit and vegetables, for example, is pretty poor except during Spargelzeit. If I can, I plan trips to Frankfurt so I can browse the markets on Friday and Saturday or wander through the Kleinmarkthalle for inspiration.

I used to be on a German forum called Rund ums Baby, mostly on their Aktuell forum, just to keep up with what's going on in Germany (I've been away for longer now than I lived there) and it was quite good when I first posted there almost 20 years ago. Proper discussions about all kind of topics, but it's dire now. Posters rarely change their names and many talk to each other by pm as well, so cliques have formed. At one point one group set up an account which they all had access to and they used to attack other posters, it was bizarre. Many have left, I left in 2017. Every now and then I check out what's going on and it's still dire.
I went to town (West coast Scotland) on Friday, it was 21 C, not a cloud in the sky, only a moderate breeze, and you could tell the German tourists by their coats and scarves. I was in skirt, bare legs and short sleeves, but as I said, I've been outside Germany for a long time now.

@Minimochi I didn't know the name of Matschhose - we had them when we first got here as the Kita insisted my son wore them on rainy days. He found them extremely humiliating and I'd find them in the cloakroom shoved in some dark corner. Eventually I just took them home but I did manage to get a photo of him in them first.... adorable!

Few of my German friends are on Facebook, let alone any forums. People my age mostly seem to scoff at that kind of thing. I have been on the English-German forum at www.leo.org for decades but don't take part in the discussion much any more.

I love Leo but by gum, some of the conversations in the dictionary definitions are - sharp

I guess it attracts a lot of grumpy old Besserwisser like me :D

It always makes me giggle when my German MIL dresses my daughter up unnecessarily warm. As a baby she would put socks under the baby grow even when we were warm inside

young German women in parkas with huge fur things round the hood at all times of year, it baffles me. But on an overheated bus in the Tunisian desert who shouted "please close the windows i'm sitting in a draft"? (nobody closed the windows)

Well yes, cos they will die if they get a draft on their neck...... the moral dilemma of lüften and drafts......

as they said in Blackadder: The Germans are a funny race. Their operas last for 8 hours and they have no word for fluffy.

hmm anyone still subscribed?

Interesting thread this morning that diverged into a German parenting discussion.

The father-punching thread?

I didn't see that. What was being said?

Germans are cold eyed and shouty (but on the other hand I haven't ever punched anyone).
If ever there was a story crying out for hearing the other side of it, this is it.

Oh OK I've found it now.

So OP (English)'s 6yo DS and this random German girl were annoying each other during the holiday.

German dad of girl allegedly comes over and digs his nails into OP's DS's arm, making him cry.

This attracts attention of OP's DH who shouts at German Dad.

OP then comes over and is overcome with a fleeting moment of rage and punches the dad. Wants to know if SIBU.

People wonder why she has explained that they are German and she says Germans are "strict and tough"

LOL WTF? How absolutely random. If anything Germans seem much more inclined to what British people call "gentle parenting" - smacking has been illegal here since 2000, whereas it's still legal in England. I don't think German parents are particularly strict or tough on children at all - they tend to see children as more capable and autonomous compared to British parents. Very unusual for a German parent to get involved in a child dispute IME.

Though I think there probably is a bit more of a culture of communal parenting in that random adults (usually Omas) will tell children off if they think they are being dangerous/annoying/inconsiderate. But verbally.

yep, my description of German parenting has always been along the lines of you'll be in a supermarket and there's a kid dragging things off the bottom shelf and all you'll hear is 47 repetitions of "Florian, das ist aber nicht nett" and no action to remove him from the scene 😁

I do think they are more prepared (Omas especially) to call out antisocial behaviour than in the UK (I have been shocked over the last 20 or so years going back to UK to see how it is).

I am now the grey haired lady on the train. I was on the S-Bahn a few months ago and a school party got on - maybe 11-12 year olds. And the one near me put his feet on the seat opposite. So i said (absent any reaction from teachers) "take your feet off the seat, this is a commuter train, people want to sit there"

and you could hear dozens of feet hit the floor all around me.

Ah yes, the 'hard-faced and shouty' Germans.

I think things may be shifting a bit on the communal parenting. I was on a train with my youngest and a mother and a boy of maybe 4 or 5 got on. He came and sat opposite us (she had sat somewhere else) and started moving around and putting his shod feet in various positions on the seat and table. I looked across a couple of times at the mum, who was watching impassively, and then leaned forward to the boy and said nicely and non-shoutily 'das ist nicht so schön, hörst du damit auf, bitte?' or something along those lines. He stopped. Several minutes later the mum and child got off and as they did so the mum burst out at me - clearly properly upset - that it would have been nice had I spoken to her first rather than speaking to her child. I said something like oh, I assumed you weren't going to intervene. Then came 'ich habe es nicht gesehen! Ich habe es nicht! Ich habe es nicht!' at increasing volume as she got off the train, leaving me and youngest rather bemused. Either past experience of some kind had made her very sensitive to others admonishing her child in any form or it really is becoming a no-no and she's at the cutting edge of it

In my second career I worked with quite a lot of Germans, I personally really liked their directness but I am of Chinese heritage though BBC and that is also a culture that is very direct. They did also bring in a lot of cakes as did my English colleagues, we rarely ate cake growing up so I just enjoyed the free cake both English and German but my fave was that German gingerbread type cake at Christmas.

@ShoesoftheWorld I would have just said "sure you couldn't see anything because you weren't supervising him" and left it at that.

But i don't have small children any more and i have the Grey Hair Of Authority 😂

we have a cake rota at work - it's brilliant.

I wish I had - but by then she was off the train and I was thoroughly

Mine are 18, 16 and 8 - 8yo was with me and is unusually small for her age so wonder if there was an aspect of her feeling embarrassed that this apparently not-much-older child was sitting quietly and then the smug mother told her child off to boot.

She was absolutely one of those 'nun aber, Florian' types parenting-wise.

I like the sound of a cake rota! (I work for myself FH so if I did it it would always be... my turn)

Someone on the 'I punched the evil German' thread was talking about how German children aren't taught to share - I'm not sure that's entirely true - they are taught to share, but not at all costs, and they're supposed to stick up for their own interests. Youngest is quite quiet in a group of children and used to be the youngest, as well as the smallest, in her Kiga group and there was a lot of emphasis put on her learning to stop the others treating her as the group doll. I did think at the time that it might be nice if the others could be told to stop picking her up and carrying her around when she doesn't want it, too, but it kind of served her well - she's willing now to hold her ground verbally and state when she doesn't want or like something, even if she still finds it a bit excruciating.

Wow! I know a lot of German Dad’s , none of them would have behaved that way. All very very hands on and use gentle techniques. Everything revolves around the kids, much more so than where I’m from.

The other day I saw a random woman decide to advise an adult (studenty sort of age) man that he should not bring his bike onto the tram, because it was crowded. He very politely responded that he actually was perfectly within his rights to bring his bicycle on the tram, and that it is only prohibited during peak hours (which he had handy to quote at her!) She was clearly perturbed by this and stopped for a while, then kept coming back every few minutes with a new objection. First it was that I had a Kinderwagen (to which he pointed out that he was already allowing me to occupy the Kinderwagen space) and then it was that she wanted to use the ticket machine, which he was blocking. He duly moved to the side. She sort of half pretended to use the ticket machine and then gave up and repeated her same arguments again, at which point the man's patience started to crack just a tiny bit and he pointed to the Kundenzentrum out of the window and invited her to go in and enquire about bicycle policy. She was upset by this, but basically reverted to tutting loudly until she got off.