leise rieselt der Schnee - for all those lovely people in Germany and Austria or whoever wants to join us!

[Canella]

a new wintery thread in honour of Hupa's first snow of the season!

I hope they find out who did it westvan, if only to put everyone's minds at rest.

I'll have to talk about secondary schools with DH when he gets back; we'd sort of decided on the Gymnasium that is easier to get into, with the Gymnasium in Vienna as a back-up, but I'm now having second thoughts about the Gymnasium here (as convenient as it would be). The friend I met on Monday has enrolled her DD at Vienna International School (c. ?12,000 p.a.), another very exclusive school in Vienna that is notoriously difficult to get into (you need to enrol your child in the second year of primary school to even have a chance) and one or two other schools that are just out of the question for DD1!

Didn't you use to live near Hannover too, admylin? Did you two ever meet when you were there or have any of you met any other MNers in Germany? I read a status update by an (English) friend the other day that started "Am I being unreasonable to..." and wondered whether she might be a MNer!

Wow, drive-in shopping! That will probably be coming to Austria in about 10 years, then. I'm always very envious when I read about people being able to do all their shopping online, but I can't see it happening here for several decades.

DD1 was born 25 minutes after midnight on Boxing Day and I felt very guilty about having to phone the midwife on Christmas Day. She didn't seem to mind, though (I suppose she could hardly show it if she did); at least it wasn't until the evening and she said that she'd just waved her family off, so it was perfect timing.

Dd has recently asked me if we should open presents on Christmas eve or Christmas day (that's integration eh) but then she said no she would like a stocking on her bed and presents after that. So do you do something for dd's birthday Linzer? How do you manage that?

I still live in Hannover and yes have met westvan! Haven't met any other mumsnetters though. There are quite alot of you in Austria now, are you going to plan a meet up?

You'll have to have a good look round on the open days before you decide which Gymnasium is best for your dd. You can get abit of a feeling for the places and usually the tecahers are standing around so you can speak to a few. I spoke to one at the gesamt schule and he said basically the dc aren't 'with it' in the first lesson and the last couple of lessons aren't worth much either! That was talking about the Ganztag system from 8am to 4pm and he said although they aren't meant to get homework they do end up taking some home and of course vocabulary etc, learning for tests.

I must be going mad - I don't know why I thought you didn't live near Hannover any more, admylin! I must have got confused with writing about Berlin and thinking you used to live there. Are you and westvan far from each other? I've met Cinders and we're planning to meet up again soon, but I don't know about Vienna meet-ups... I'm not sure there are that many of us; apart from bananas, I don't think there's anyone else on this thread who posts regularly. I've also met one MNer in the UK (from the postcard exchange), but there don't seem to be many in my parents' home town (or no one interested in meet-ups, at any rate).

We usually have three days of celebrations at Christmas - Austrian Christmas on the 24th (when the DC just open a few small presents), British Christmas on the 25th and then DD1's birthday on the 26th. We've usually had a party for her in January, but she's having it before her birthday this year - on the 23rd, which is the last day of school.

I don't think there are any Ganztagsschulen round here, although they all seem to have Nachmittagsbetreuung when the DC can do their homework etc. I'm hoping that DD1 will go to a school that starts at 8 rather than 7.30; 8 am is just about manageable now, but her primary school is much closer than any of the secondary schools would be.

Admylin and I live about as far apart as you can get and still call it Hannover! We'll not that bad, but where we live is actually considered 'Region Hannover', meaning there are fields and cabbages and sheep all over the place. It's about a half hour ride to downtown on the bus.

My kids' Gymnasium is actually turning into a Ganztagsschule at the beginning of the next school year. But since the upper grades often have afternoon classes anyway, it only affects classes 5 - 7, I think. One nice thing is that they're building a proper cafeteria for them to have lunch in instead of the makeshift thing that's there now and they'll also be expanded the lunch hour from 20 minutes to 45. Ds17 will be finished school by then anyway, but ds14 may get to take advantage.

There's a Real pretty close to us but they haven't started doing the drive-through shopping yet. I think it's only the Isernhagen-Altwarmbüchen one for now. Great idea, I'm sure lots of people are going to take advantage because that place is hopping on Fridays and Saturdays. Dh used the self-check-out thing they have there the other day and he said it took about three times as long as the regular line ups since the machines sometimes malfunction and he put his card in at the wrong time and the two people in front of him didn't have a clue what they were doing either!

When our boys were little they used to open the presents from us, their German grandparents and German friends on Christmas Eve and then the presents from Canada on the 25th. And we had to see the in-laws both days and sometimes on the 26th too because they insisted. Now that the the father-in-law is in the nursing home, we go there Christmas Eve afternoon for coffee with him and Oma and then have the 25th for ourselves. And we've always done stockings on St. Nicholas Day.

Oh all this talk about gymnasiums etc stresses me out at the moment. Dd is in the 4th class so we have to make the decision soonish! There is the local Gymnasium which gets a good reputation and is quite small - 500 pupils - which i think is a positive thing! Its also a language gymnasium which is good for my dd but it also means she needs to do Latin!!!! If she gets in i think we might send her to the Ganztagschule at least for the 5th class and see how she likes it - there is the possibility to swap to the normal school if she finds it too much but at the moment she's enthused!!she still needs to get the grades tho!

Just been to pick up ds2-he's been with my IL's since Friday. They live 90 mins away so we meet half way- well it was a winter wonderland there today!!must have been 15cm of snow!!and blizzard conditions the whole time we were there!!but we werent dressed for it - think i'll drive back at the weekend in my snow gear!

Westvan-glad nothing came of the threat at the school!! Hope they catch the person!

Ernest - nice to see you back!!how's things?have they settled down?

Admylin-we'll be putting up some xmassy stuff at the weekend - first advent and all that!! But not the tree-it can wait a bit!
I keep meaning to ask how the little boy who's mum died is getting on?are u still in touch with them?

Well off to tidy up a bit - only been in the house for 10 mins since 8am!!been a busy day!

First snow on the ground here in Hannover! Dc gone to school early to rejoice in being the first to put footprints on the school yard. Mad search for gloves, where on earth did I put them when we moved in the heatwave of August?

Our school is still at the discusison stage for Ganztagschule. Honestly, I feel sorry for the dc in year 5 and 6 who have to stay all day. They will make a Ganztagschule and maybe build a cantine but they won't change the way they teach so even though they might offer activities like extra sport and a homework session most of the younger ones will be getting home to left over homework, no time for sport club etc, hardly time to meet friends in the week and still having an early start they'll have to get to bed on time.

I think Ganztagschule only works when the whole curriculum is also changed and teaching methods looked at.

Canella, we don't see the father, we found out he is also trying to get benefits but also hiding his other income, he's abit older and I think he's retired but he reckons he has no bank account here in Germany (after 8 years), he has his pension going into a UK account and he didn't want to tell them about his car. Anyway when we told him he had to declare everything if he applied for benefits he didn't like it so he stopped calling so often. Ds is friends with the boy at school and I keep telling him to bring him home for lunch and they can do homework together but they've never organised a day yet.

Wow westvan, your ds will be finished next year! Has he decided what he wants to do? When are his final exams? Is it the new turbo abi as they call it?

ah, here you are...hallihallo! No snow here yet though I think it is forecast...I don´t know where I put the winter gloves and the 2DC have no winter boots yet so I refuse to look at the weather report.

Glad to hear all DC and DHs are safe. That was a silly thing to do at school, I bet he/she did not realise just how daft it was and must be feeling dreadful now.

Reading about all the different schools is rather scarey. I can see the jump from Volkschule to Gymnasium or anything else must be a real shock. Canella, Latin might not be as bad with a German background....I found Latin easy because it is so similar to Spanish but found the idea of cases and different case endings rather hard. With German this aspect of Latin might be easier for your DD.

I have a question...how do you know when your DC need a check up, immunisations etc? In the UK I relied on those reminder notes coming through the door. I tried to ask our Kinderarztin but she was not very helpful, or maybe I did not make myself clear enough. Should I go back to her again?

I am skiving off my course in order to prepare for my C1 exam tomorrow and Saturday (oral exam, on Saturday at 8am? Can hardly sting a sentence together at that time, let alone in German!). Most of the preparation involves cleaning the house (babysitter coming as DH at work) and getting some food in.

Good luck with the exam bananas. 8am is abit early isn't it.

I chose French for my dc (you hav eto sign them up at the beginning of year 5 for which language they will have in year6) but think Latin would have been good too.

I think if they show an interest in langauges they could easily take a course sometime, even at university you can do crash courses in latin. Dd is doing quite well in French despite her spelling problems and ds does well but doesn't enjoy it. He speaks to me in French at home now, just fills in the odd word that he doesn't know and then I tell him how to say it. I think that's one thing that they teach extremely well here, ds is only into second half year of learning and he can speak better French than I could just before O Level!

Morning all,

Hope the exams go well tomorrow and on Saturday, bananas - at least if the oral exam is at 8 am, you'll have it out of the way and won't have any time to worry about it (or not on the day, at any rate!).

I always have problems remembering when vaccinations are due; I usually just ask at the annual check-up, but still managed to overlook our Zeckenimpfungen this year so will have to have them done in the spring instead. Having said that, I managed to forget about DD2's and DS's annual check-ups the year before last (they can only have them done up to two months after their birthday) and it's only DS who still needs to have them now, as the Mutter-Kind-Pass only goes up to the age of 5. There's a list of empfohlene Impftermine at the back of the Mutter-Kind-Pass, but I'm assuming you don't have one as you moved to Austria after your DC were born. There's a similar Impfplan here, but your DC shouldn't need many more now apart from possibly the FSME jab/booster. DD2 had to take her Impfpass into school last month to check whether she needed an MMR booster but she didn't (although I'm sure DD1 had one in her first year); it's much easier now that they have a check-up at school rather than having to take them to the doctor.

I think you always need to do Latin if you go to a Gymnasium here, at least in the Unterstufe (first 4 years), although you generally start with English in the 1st year and then Latin in the 3rd year. Our French teacher was always saying what a pity it was that we hadn't learned Latin as it would be so much help with French. I did a course in Altfranzösisch at the FU in Berlin, but found it really difficult as the teacher assumed that everyone had a good grounding in Latin (which they did, apart from me).

Thanks for the good luck. If my brain is working I shal be fine, if not, who cares? Nice as it would be to have a certificate to show, I still have a long trek on that German learning road. But it is a fun trek...

Thanks for the Impfplan info Linzer. No, I don´t have a Mutter-Kind Pass. I shall go back to the dr and ask properly again. Any snow where you are? Baden was one of our first day trips out of Vienna, lovely weather and we walked up the hill (me pushing DC3 in buggy, puff puff) near the casino and park. We ended up coming to a large opening in the woods with some loungers and a great view. Suddenly felt very Austrian!It was great to be so high up - You have to remember we were deprived of hills in East Anglia and in southern Finland.

I have been doing xmas shopping online and exploring other bits of MN...never a good idea,I now think the 30 day shred sounds great and it is just what I need.

Do you think a tree touching the side of the building at the top would cause damp? Just notced a big fir type tree is touching the corner where the damp is coming through.

I always wanted to learn Spanish, I love the sound of it. Shame the dc won't be doing it, might try to find a course on eof these days.

Could you ask the receptionist at the doctors about check ups? Dd had one recently when she was 10 but I don't think ds went and I have no idea about the vaccinations. What would be on the list for their age group? Have to go and google that now as it's ages since my 2 had any kind of injection.

Oh, dh is getting his conference money back, he got the confirmation but we still don't know if he'll get it in full or with his wage and tax taken off.

I don't know really about the tree admylin, but it's possible I suppose - is that the only area in the flat where you have damp? Great news about your DH getting the money back for the conference; hope he gets it in full.

Baden was actually one of the first places we visited in/around Vienna (before we moved to Austria), but we wrote it off as a place to live as it seemed to be full of old people! There are actually quite a few old people here (although most of them are lovely and nothing like as terrifying as those in Berlin), but lots of families as well - also lots of Zugezogene who moved out of Vienna when they had children. The Kurpark is hard work with a pushchair, isn't it? I always used to have to get DH to push! DH used to miss the mountains when we were in Berlin; now, I miss not being a bit nearer to the sea!

Oh, and our paediatrician used to produce a card/leaflet with all the recommended Impftermine - I used to tick them off once we'd had a particular vaccination!

Hello again :)

I've been very slack about checking the old thread and so I'm resolving to read and post here more often. We've decided to leave Vienna in the summer so I'll only be posting here for another 6 months or so. Onwards and upwards!

Bananas - whenever my ds has had a vaccination I just ask the receptionist what comes next and make an appointment there and then for it.

In fact ds has an appointment at the kinderarzt this morning. He has a red rash around his face and there's a case of scarlet fever at kindergarten so thought we'd better check if it's that or not. He also has a cold and has been wiping his nose all over his face so it could just be that combined with the cold weather. We'll see.

Hi zachsmama, do you know where you will be moving to in 6 months? Nice time to move in summer anyway! Wouldn't like to move at this time of year.

I did move house one year in February with snow and ice on the ground. Was awful and all the grit from outside got brought in on the bottom of boxes and shoes and ruined the flooring in the kitchen... ah memories of the do-it-yourself moves we've gone through!

Hi zachsmama, nice to see you again although sorry to hear you'll be leaving us next year. Do you know where you'll be going to next?

Hope your DS is better soon. I've often seen notices up at kindergarten informing us of scarlet fever cases, but my three have never had it AFAIK.

x posts admylin, I honestly wasn't copying the first line of your post! Must remember to refresh before I start writing my post...

morning all!! shocked myself with my efficiency this morning so not had any MN time! got all the washing done or in the machine, got all the food shopping and put it away and have dinner cooking! not like me!

bananas - wishing you lots of luck for your C1 test tom! i'm sure you'll do really well - did you do B2 already? are they the same kind of format? we had a practice B2 reading test yesterday which i did surprisingly well at! was expecting it to be worse!! let us know how you get on - do you have to wait a while to find out? not any help about the vaccines - my dc are a bit older so have had all of theirs!

admylin - thats sad about the father of the boy who's mum died. but its his life - if he wants to make those decisions then its hard to help him! glad your ds is still friends with the son!
thats so rubbish about the damp in your room - esp as you thought it had been fixed! nto sure about the tree? get that narky landlady to sort it!

well we had quite a dusting of snow in the night - the village looks like a picture postcard but think more is on the way!

the ganztagschule at the Gymnasium seems well set up - they have lessons from 8.00 - 11.15 then they have free time (for sports, music, drama, homework etc) and lunch till 2pm then lessons till 4.15. we live in the sticks so would have to go back to this town in the afternoon for activities anyway if my dd went to the normal school so this way she'll get those activities without me being a taxi driver! but we'll see if she gets there first - she's got a maths test today - never her strongest subject and she makes really basic mistakes - like not checking if its adding or subtracting and doing the wrong one! told her she cant be doing that to get in the gymnasium!

Hello! Mind if I join? DH has been offered a job in Munich which is very exciting but has happened v.quickly so we are desperately trying to information gather before making a final decision.

A key concern at the moment is the cost of renting. He would be working near the Viktualienmarkt so we would need to be accessible for his work and also for a reasonable school. At the moment we live very rurally in the UK and part of the move would be being nearer more of a buzz - so we'd rather not live miles out in the suburbs. Are we crazy to even consider living fairly centrally in a nice family area unless we are millionaires?

School is our primary concern. We have a 2 year old (who I'm not so worried about as she is only just learning to talk so I think would be fluent pretty quickly). But we also have twins who turned 5 in August. From searching the archives here it seems that they wouldn't be required to start school in Germany until next September when they would be 6.1.

Would we have to pay for kindergarten provision for them for the next year? Would they be able to pick up German quickly enough to start school the next year? I read that you can ask to defer - we tried to do that in the UK and were refused - is it easier to do in Germany?

And if they did start school aged 7.1. would we need to fund education for them up to that point or would they just stay in kindy for an extra year state funded?

I really don't want them to struggle. They are bright little girls but are in the bottom group at school here, I think mainly because they are a year younger than a lot of their classmates.

Sorry for this long ramble! I would so appreciate any clarification/advice as I don't feel we can make any bigger decisions until we've sorted the kids and their education out.

hello Hatty! welcome! i'm not any use about living in Munich (altho it looks like a fab but expensive place to stay!) but have got 3 dc and 2 of them are at kindergarten so i think i can help with that stuff!

The state does pay some of the costs for Kiga but we still pay towards it up until the dc go to school. We pay 100? per child per month and they are then in Kiga every morning for 4 hours and that includes them being picked up and dropped back off in the village we live in. But i'm not sure how this compares to Munich since i live in very rural Bayern!

About school - it seems fairly straightforward to have your dc held back a year here! my dc2 was 6 in October and has stayed back and will go next year. We moved here when he was 4.5 and the Kiga, the School nurse type person and us all agreed he would benefit from another year in Kiga. In our village there were supposed to be 10 kids going to school and only 4 went in the end - the rest were held back and quite a few of them had August birthdays. There is also no stigma attached to it - the kids just accept a bit of an age range in the class!

About them learning German - you'll be amazed! we've only been here 18 months and all 3 (they're now 9, 6 & 4) are completely bilingual in fact they are needing to keep up with their English! Do you have anyway to expose them to some German before you move? Do either of you speak German?

Hope that helps!

Hi Hatty. Have you heard how much help the employer offers for the relocation?

I just did a search for flats in the centre of Munich and you'd be looking at around 2000 euro for rent by the look of it. here although that was just with a 2km radius, you could search for 5km or more and find cheaper. 5 rooms means 4 bedrooms in Germany by the way. No idea about schools though.

Thanks so much both, that's incredibly helpful. Owch to property prices! Are there nice places outside Munich does anyone know, where we could get a quick train in?

And so interesting about the schools. I think that's a much more enlightened attitude to look at each child's progress/readiness for school rather than lumping them together by birthdate.

Good luck with the move Hatty!

admylin and Linzertorte - not a clue yet! Somewhere a bit warmer hopefully :) We're looking for jobs at the moment. I'm not ecstatic about the thought of working full-time again (I'm 50% atm) but we'll have to wait and see. We were in Asia (HK and then Vietnam) for 5 years before we moved back to Europe and I think we (well, definitely me anyway ) would like to go back but it's all different now we've got ds and we need to think about how everything works for him too.

Looks like it might snow tomorrow then. I've arranged to go to a Christmas market tomorrow evening so it'll probably be freezing, sleeting and blowing a gale!

Hi Hatty - you should take a look over at www.toytowngermany.com. Clicking on 'discussion forum' at the top of the page will take you to the message board where you can find tons of information on Munich. The specific Munich section is here and there's also a search function so if you put in Munich + kindergarten or Munich + schools or whatever it will come up with a bunch of threads. Just a word of warning - I like the forum some members can be pretty mean to newcomers, especially those who ask questions without searching first so it's best to lurk for a while to get a feel for the place and make sure your question hasn't already been answered.

It's very frosty here this morning, but no sign of any snow yet. Have just been out shopping to get a few bits and pieces for the meal we'll be having with some of our neighbours tomorrow. Our (Austrian - not sure they've ever been to the USA) neighbours decided they wanted to have a Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, but haven't been able to get hold of a turkey so we're having two geese instead - which will be a first for the DC.

It was parents' evening, or rather afternoon, at school yesterday so DH went along while I stayed at home with the DC (plus friends). No problems with DD2; DH said he was only in there for about two minutes. The teacher has somehow managed to find out that DD2 is growing up bilingually (the fact that she corrected the teacher's English probably didn't help) so would like me to go into school to help out with English lessons. Apparently she had already seen me in school as DD1's class is next to DD2's, but hadn't realised that I'm DD2's mum. Not quite such a glowing report for DD1, however; her teacher said that although she's quite bright, she has problems following instructions, has to be told (several times) to do things and if she needs to do a particular activity, she will do the first thing and then stop (she got a 4 in a recent reading test as she only did the first page). DH thinks she's just scraping a 2 in German and will have to work hard if she wants to get into Gymnasium.

admylin, I agree with what you said about the system needing to have a complete overhaul if the Ganztagsschule is going to work. One of the schools we're looking at for DD1 is about half an hour away; it isn't a Ganztagsschule but she would probably need to go to the Nachmittagsbetreuung if she went there as the school bus doesn't leave until 4.30 pm. It would be a ridiculously long day for a 10 year old; she would have to catch the bus at 6.45 am and wouldn't be back home until 5.30 pm.

Hi hatty, I'm no help on Munich or the German school system as we live in Austria, but welcome to the thread!

Good luck with your exam today, bananas!