O du wunderschöner Herbst - life in German and Austria thread

[admylin]

It is a wunderschöner Herbst at the moment isn't it. Lovely sunny bright blue sky with a chill in the air. Shame we're stuck in the house, ds has a flu like virus so the balcony is as far as we'll get.

Sorry pointydog, I'm not much help on Vorarlberg as I've never been there (it's the other side of Austria from us). I did ask DH but he said he didn't know it well enough to suggest anything either.

Hope everyone has had a good weekend. I had a lovely birthday yesterday, although we didn't get up to much as the DDs were invited to a birthday party in the afternoon and then DD2 had a friend to stay the night. We did go out for breakfast at the bakery down the road though, which was nice, and then had quite a lazy day afterwards. It was nice and sunny, and even warm enough to sit outside in the garden, although it's getting very chilly in the evenings here now.

Happy Belated Birthday, LinzerTorte!

In answer to your question - my dad emigrated from Austria in about 1954 and I think after the war he just wanted to leave everything behind him and start a new life in Canada so he didn't speak German to us directly, although my parents did have a lot of Austrian and German friends.If I had known I was going to end up in Germany I would have insisted on it! My mother, who grew up in Canada, understands a bit of German but doesn't speak it so that may also have been a reason.

Admylin - dd's birthday sounded nice and I bet they loved the cake.

pointy dog - Hi! My grandparents used to live in Vorarlberg in Bregenz on the Bodensee/Lake Constance so I know that area a bit. There are all kinds of cruises you can take on the lake and the island of Mainau (in Germany) is worth a visit although I suppose at this time of the year the gardens won't be so spectacular. There's also the Pfänderbahn, a cablecar that goes up the Pfänder mountain. Beautiful view from the top of Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
www.pfaenderbahn.at/en/Home/tabid/67/Default.aspx

There's also this site

www.vorarlberg.travel/index.html?_lang=en

We decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner today (the official Thanksgiving date) so I'm busy making pumpkin pie and my kitchen is an absolute mess!

Ahh, pointy dog, I see you say you're going in the spring so Mainau would be perfect.

Hope your Thanksgiving dinner was good westvan!
What else will you be up to in half term? My 2 are enjoying not having to get up early and ds is trying his best to stay up as late as possible. Both my 2 are night owls.

Winter shoe shopping is on the agenda for ds, have done dd already (phew). Just ordered a new sofa yesterday, the old one has done its duty! The car still hasn't passed the TÜV, an air bag sensor needs changed and both front Bremsschlauch need changed plus the tyres are worn out which leaves us with a set of winter tyres but all in all we'll be looking at well over 500 euro to pass the test.

That just goes to show my embarrassing lack of geography knowledge - I never realised that part of Vorarlberg is on Lake Constance. I've only ever seen Lake Constance from the German side (although vaguely remember crossing over into Switzerland for a brief visit too), but it's a lovely area and the Insel Mainau is definitely worth a visit if you're nearby (I also went in the spring).

Hope your Thanksgiving dinner went well, westvan - pumpkin pie sounds delicious; I haven't had it for years. DH has bought a huge pumpkin as a sort of Halloween decoration so I'm thinking about making pumpkin soup out of it, although maybe I could have a go at making pumpkin pie again too.

admylin - I think we'll need to start looking for winter boots before too long; it's getting very chilly here now. Sorry to hear about how much it will cost you to get your car through the TÜV. I don't think we need to take our new car in for its inspection for another couple of years, as it was only about a year old when we bought it and cars don't need to have annual inspections here until they're five years old. So hopefully that will save a bit of money... it always ends up costing so much more than we expect. I didn't think DH's car was in that bad a state, but his last Pickerl cost him over 1000 euros.

I can see ours going up to 1000 too. The hourly rate just for the work is nearly 60 euro. Sure the mechanic isn't getting 60 an hour!

Just popping in - I can be a bona-fide member of the German thread now as we have been in Bonn 2 months now. (You may recall me asking for help with immobilien web-sites in the Summer)

Love it here (so far) although we are doing Germany-lite as my dh works for an international organisation and the dc go to an International school.

Have just stocked up on Winter stuff for the dc but keep hearing conflicting reports about how cold it actually gets here in the winter- I thought it would be mild like the UK but have heard stories of minus 15.

Glad to hear you're settling in. Yes, it gets very cold in winter here. Both my dc wear their long johns in winter it's so cold (from Tchibo)!

The coldest I've experienced it here has been -15°C but that was truly an exception. It can get pretty cold though, and around here the wind is quite strong which makes it seem colder. Then again there have been some very mild winters so you just never know. I talked to my mum the other day and she said she heard that Europe is in for the worst winter in 1000 years, but she tends to exaggerate a bit, And I'm not sure they've been recording winter temperatures for that long either! I guess we'll find out.

admylin - my two are just taking it easy and dds14 is being Mr. Social Butterfly. He had a friend from out of town over for the weekend and then he spent the night at another friend's last night. He was going to to someone else's house tomorrow but they've put it off until Friday which is a good thing since I don't think he's had very much sleep in the past few days. ds17 is using the time to sleep in and go to the gym or play football with his friends.

That sounds abit like my 2 westvan. Although, dd would like to be more of a social butterfly but most of her friends have gone off to visit relatives or on holiday. Ds has arranged a few meet ups and his table tennis club is still on thank goodness!

I get worried when I hear we're going to have a worse winter than last year. I hope they are wrong (as they often are). Remember that really bad winter in Canada where all the electricity went too? Was that on your side of Canada westvan, it must have been over 12 years ago? I remember thinking, well atleast the ones who have fire places can burn stuff to keep warm!

Dd won a prize this week in one of her magazine competions - she was so pleased and reckons she must play lotto as she is definately lucky!

Juststrudel - glad to hear you're happy in Bonn! Would you mind telling me which part you live in now, even if just as a hint?

Surely this winter can't be any worse than last winter? It certainly can't go on for any longer - I remember it being freezing cold for DD1's first communion in mid-May and not being able to wear the outfit I'd bought for it. OTOH we have had some fairly mild winters since we've been here; it does seem to vary quite a lot. I remember we used to have power cuts (or outages, as they called them) on a fairly regular basis when we were in the USA, which really wasn't much fun in the winter.

DD2 has been told to dress up warmly today as they have Verkehrerziehung at school and will be outside for a couple of hours. I bet she'll be the only child without a hat, scarves and gloves on - mind you, she did say her hands get cold when she walks to school but that she doesn't want her winter gloves on yet, so I told her we'd look for some thin gloves for her to wear. I'm in the process of sorting out the DDs' room; apart from having too many toys, they also have too many clothes for the size of their room as my SIL passes everything on (although I only keep a fraction of it as our tastes differ, to put it mildly). We have boxes of clothes in every size going up to 164, which I'm sure would fit me!

Well done to your DD, admylin - what did she win?

@emkana - yes I am south of Bonn in a small town with the initials BG - why? Did you used to live here?

Yes I did, and my family still does!

Ah ha - lucky you and your family - it is a beautiful area. Do you visit often?

I'm also having a sort out of clothes. Dd desperatly needs trousers but she doesn't like the Röhren jeans that are the fashion for girls and it's quite difficult to find a different style.

Treated us to a late breakfast the other day with a selection of rolls from the bakery. We had six different kinds and the plain ones which the sales girl told me are called alt deutsche here. In Berlin they were called schrippen and in the south weckle. What are they called where you all live?

Your breakfast sounds good, admylin. We occasionally go to our local baker's for breakfast at the weekend, but usually DH goes to buy rolls there on a Sunday morning. The round white rolls are called Semmeln here, and anything else is a Weckerl. I find myself saying Brötchen less and less nowadays, and generally only to DH (I like to blend in when I'm out and about!), and am even starting to ask for 20 Deka of something at the supermarket now instead of 200 g.

Never heard of Deka Linzer. Do they have alot of different words? Or is it mostly just the accent that is different?

The sun was so hot today, I went out on the balcony for a 15 minute break at about 4:30pm and came in with a sun burn on neck, face and ears! I'm all red - but it was lovely and warm.

Just sent the dc out to get an hour of fresh air, they've done some French and German today for school but otherwise just kept watching those miners coming up out of the mine and they've had their fair share of computer time too!

It's short for Dekagramm and is also (confusingly) written as dag. It took me ages to feel confident enough to use it without worrying that I'd ordered 10,000 g of Puten Extra instead of 100 g.

The Austrian accent ranges from different to incomprehensible, there are all kinds of different words for everyday things, and even the grammar is different (I now find it quite normal to say "ich bin gestanden" or "ich bin gesessen", but still correct DH if he says das Monat, das Teller, der Butter etc.). If he corrects me, I like to use the excuse that "that's the way they say it in Germany". Unfortunately, I don't get away with it very often.

I think I must be the only person not watching the miners; I haven't even checked whether it's on here (it must be, although we only have two channels), as I could just see myself spending hours watching TV otherwise. I'm trying to limit the DC (DD1 in particular) to half an hour of screen time, but she's already had her 30 minutes of TV and is now watching Peppa Pig in an Eastern European language on my iPod.

Yes I go over near enough every school holiday. It is a beautiful area and so like a holiday for us!

thanks, van. I'v eonly just found this thread again.

Will look up mainau.

Hello, can I join you? Another Vienna resident so thought I had to come in to add to the Austrian team!
Been here over one yr, married to a German, three children. Life in Vienna is good for the family...I am learning the language (help!) and job hunting (double help!)
Learnt so much from skimming this thread, will book a Frauenarzt appointment asap.
Also laughed at the mention of the Austrian habit of not having a local anaesthetic for a filling at the dentist. I went to the dentist last week, she asked me if I wanted an injection, I thought "well, if she is asking then clearly she thinks it will be fine without" so shook my head. OMG, I have never fainted in my life, but I think I was close....two filling later I emerged pale and shaken. I wish I had read the thread before going!
And where is the autumn sunshine gone?!? Please come back, the autmn leaves look so much nicer in the sun.

Hi bananasananas and welcome to the thread - always good to see others in Austria on here. How old are your DC and how are they settling in? Is your move a permanent one? Vienna's definitely a great city for families and there's lots to do with children. We were thinking of going into Vienna yesterday and taking the DC on the Riesenrad, but decided in the end that the weather wasn't good enough - I'm also wondering what happened to autumn! It's definitely very wintery here today.

I just don't understand why Austrians prefer not to have an anaesthetic at the dentist's. DH went a few weeks ago and was very proud of the fact that he'd saved us 15 euros (she has a notice up saying that a "schmerzlose Behandlung" costs 15 euros). We're really not that destitute! And he had all three DC peering over him while he had the filling replaced. Mad, quite mad.

How's everyone else? Did you had a good trip back to Scotland, canella? I've been stocking up on ski wear for the DC today as it's on offer at Lidl this week - DH has decided it's about time that DD2 and DS learned to ski, so he's planning on taking them to a course in the Semesterferien. I have decided I am far too old to learn so am planning on staying indoors in the warm that week.

Hi bananasananas :) Another Austrian inhabitant!

I agree about the autumn - it seemed like we had about a week of that nice Autumn sunshine and now winter has already arrived. Brrrrrrrr

hello! i'm back from very sunny scotland but have had a mad crazy few days so aboslutely no MN time! had a fab time in scotland and came back with all sorts of goodies including haggis which dh and i had on friday night - it was too delicious! also excited with all the hair products i could get in boots (i have wild curly red hair and do the curly girl thing - no shampoo and silicone free conditioner!). i can only find one silicone free conditioner in DM here - in Boots there were loads!

but i agree that winter definitely feels like its here! it was below 0 this morning - i agree zachsmama - brrrrr!

welcome bananasananas - you austrian dwellers are taking over!!! your trip to the dentist sounds like my worst nightmare!! i've to go on thurs - i'll definitely be asking for a local anaesthetic!! and good on you for sorting out the fraunarzt - i've got that as well this week!!

i'm no help with the language - I'm on a downer about my german today! started my Fortgeschrittene course this morning and felt like I was back to square one of not knowing anything! i passed the B1 test no problem but this feels like there's a big difference at the next level! but i want to learn and will just need to put the work in! and everyone else in the class seems to want to learn too so it should be an interesting course! shame its 3 times a week tho! its nearly like having a job! and i'm enjoying too much not having one of those!