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!

Hi bebe! Your excursion sounds like lots of fun! I'm terrible at directions and usually get lost whereverI go. I'm glad you're up and running again but do take it a bit easy.

You can get DVDs at www.amazon.de - most of them will have English as an option and www.amazon.co.uk also deliver to Germany very cheaply.

Not all supermarkets will have maple syrup but it's not uncommon here. Aldi has special on it a couple of times a year as do Penny and Lidl. You just need to get lucky and stock up. I would think Tengleman would have it - maybe by the jam and honey or possibly in some kind of international or natural foods section. You never know where they're going to put it. Sometimes you have to scour the whole place to find things.

Must cathch up on the rest of the posts from this week soon!

I would second Amazon for DVDs - the delivery rate for DVDs from Amazon.co.uk is quite a bit cheaper than it is for books.

The toothache is bearable but still niggling, and I'm wondering whether I can put up with it till next Tuesday. Am a bit wary of going to see a new dentist but the one my normal one recommended on her answerphone message has a very professional and reassuring looking website, so I may just go for it. The only problem is whether DS will be well enough to come with me; the dentist is only there this afternoon, so I can't leave it till tomorrow.

Toothache are very terrible. Hopefully you can get it sorted quickly. I hate going to the dentist. It makes me literally ill, though that's psychological now as when I was younger they gave me massive doses of penicillin before hand to counter act the bacteria released when cleaning the teeth (because I had a heart murmur) and I'm actually mildly allergic so I'd get a bad stomach.

Just managed to get der Waschmaschine going...had some confusion as to why it said Gorgeous Kitchen (Koch/Bunt) on one side
And then when I opened the soap tray it was verschimmelt and had caked on soap... I was cursing away under my breath. My pet peeve is mold and mildew in a washing machine because then the clothes end up smelling of it.

Canella has the ice/snow let up yet?

whoo hoo i've been to the shops!! in the car!! it snowed for hours and somehow (altho i cant work out how) that made everything less slippy!! and its a bit warmer - just below freezing now so think thats also helped! so thanks for the offer of salami from austria but we have some now! and yoghurts - think my kids could survive on salami, youghurts and cucumbers!! they dont moan if anything else runs out!

Welcome E320! i'm a bit east from you - well about 2 or 3 hours probably but in terms of the whole of germany then relatively near!! think there was another newcomer recently who's out your way - ashamed to say i'm not sure who!! will read back and find out!

Linzer - what have you decided to do?

it was a poster called "neverbeenthereneverdonethat" i think!

Glad to hear you've made it out and weren't stuck indoors for three weeks after all, Canella!

Yuk at the washing machine, bebe - and lol at Gorgeous Kitchen. They seem to like using the word "funny" in product names here, obviously not realising that it can have negative connotations too.

Well, I phoned the dentist and the receptionist said they weren't taking on any new patients until the end of February and that I should go to the Zahnambulatorium (about half an hour's drive from here). When I explained who my normal dentist was, however, it turned out they could fit me in today after all as this dentist is her Vertretung. So I now have an appointment at 5.30, although the receptionist said there might be quite a wait - at least I'll only have DS with me, as the DDs have gone to a friend's. Am hoping I won't need a filling, but will definitely be having a local anaesthetic if I do!

Does anyone know how I find out what is recyclable/compostable/proper rubbish here in Munich? I've been searching but cannot figure it out. Is there a good place to look for this info? It doesn't seem to be in the phonebook either. I don't want to get in trouble for tossing the wrong materials.

there are 4 different types of waste where we are - yellow bags for all types of packaging, brown bin for compostable stuff, blue bin for paper and a grey bin for the stuff that doesnt fit anywhere else. So we've got 2 double bins in the kitchen. But i'm not sure if thats the same for the whole of bayern or if its different in local areas.

Are you in a flat complex? There must be a Hausmeister who could help. Or you need to go down to where they keep the bins and see what is there. There is a schedule that the councils provide as to what rubbish is collected when and what can go in each bin.

ps for the bio/compost rubbish we buy bio bin bags to put the stuff in before we put it in the outside bin - think it would stink otherwise!

Yeah we're in a massive neighborhood of apartment buildings, big and small and medium a few houses on the side. I cannot figure out where the outside bins are. I kinda found some way far away (when I was walking back from my getting lost this morning), but it's just one big dumpster/skip and it didn't seem right (there was nothing in it).
In the flat there's a black bin and a brown bin side by side, but both are quite small. the brown bin had some coffee grounds in it, but I'm not sure if that was coincidence or not.
The only bags in the place was some clear ones that I've been putting everything but the recycling in so far...
How do I figure out who the Hausmeister is? will there be something on his letterbox or outside buzzer?

Try amazon.de for dvds as well since they would probably have English on (then free postage). Or Müller drug stores normally have a reasonable DVD section and I would guess that many children's shows are exported/imported.

However, check amazon.co.uk for their prices as it can be cheaper to pay the extra postage, especially with the current exchange rate.

We also have yellow bags for recycling (plastic, metal, tetra paks, etc.), a blue bin for paper and grey bin for everything else. No brown bin here, but we used to have one before we moved and also a yellow bin (not bags). Where we are now you have to get the yellow bags (free) from the council offices or certain shops. Glass has to be taken to a bottle bank, but watch out for deposit bottles (beer, fruit juice, yoghurt, milk, water). You can take these back to the supermarket which may have a machine to stick them in (toddler fun guaranteed). Most plastic bottles also have a deposit.

Hello

We are currently in Belgium and may be moving to the area around Weisbaden - not definite yet but just wanted some advice about schools and places to live. I would really like to be in an area where I would be forced to learn german so somewhere not dominated by english and would want the children to go to a german speaking kindergarten/ school. Any advice anyone could give would be much appreciated.

Hello, awrightchuck, sorry I'll be no help as only just moved to Munich. Hopefully one of the other ladies will be able to help you.

Managed to get registered at the town hall so we can get a German Bank account (and Dh can get paid), and hopefully that means we'll have Germn health insurance soon too. One of Dh's colleagues said he'd translate and met us at the hall. And even tho we some how have lost our marriage certificate!! in the drive from home they accepted that we were married in part because my passport still has my 'father's name' on it as well as an amendment with my married name, and 2 visas (one expired) which I used to get into the UK which stated I'm married to Dh and thus allowed to enter the UK.
-So something worked for us- Yay!

My littlest sister had a baby last night. A lovely little boy, via c-section. They're doing well apparently. :)

Hope everyone has a really good day.
Linz-did you mange to get your tooth sorted?

That's wonderful news about your sister, bebe - do you know when you'll get to meet your new nephew? Glad to hear that you managed to get registered and that things are starting to fall into place for you. How are you feeling now? Do you have any antenatal appointments lined up?

Hi awrightchuck, I'm not much help on the Wiesbaden area I'm afraid as we're in Austria, but hopefully someone else will be along soon with more advice. (Do we have anyone on the thread in that area?)

It turned out that my toothache is being caused by an impacted tooth just in front of one of my wisdom teeth, so no quick fix... The dentist said that one option would be to remove the wisdom tooth (which is up behind the impacted tooth), which sounds a bit scary so I'm hoping it will settle down soon. I'll make an appointment with my regular dentist next week if it hasn't improved by then.

It's a big day here today as the DDs are getting their Zeugnisse - DD2's first. Actually, I'd rather it wasn't so much of a big day and that there wasn't so much of an emphasis on grades virtually from day 1. It's alright for those who can boast about getting lauter Einser, but I don't like all the comparisons starting at such an early age. DD1 is already quite upset that DD2 will probably get a better grade than her in the first year and is complaining that it's "not fair". Mind you, maybe it's spurring on a bit as she told me a few days ago that she's going to work very hard next semester so that she gets all 1s! (Her problem isn't that she doesn't work hard enough, though...)

Oh linzer, I know how it is, we have the exact same thing. Dd works so hard but she doesn't get better grade sthan her brother who doesn't lift a finger and is quite happy to coast along and get 2 or 3. If he put in a little effort he'd get 1s. A friend who is a school social worker in south Germany that you have to really praise the things dd can do well and not emphasise on the bad grades but it is difficult for them isn't it.

Bebe, wow amazing that they accepted anything other than the marriage certificate. Usually they are very fussy about that sort of thing. Dh has had many an angry discussion in those kinds of offices! One was about birth certificates, he said as long as he had a passport it should be enough because he wouldn't have got the passport if he hadn't shown his birth certificate at some point...no way, he had to show the birth certificate!

How are you coping? Did you manage to sort out the recycling and did you figure out the deposit system on certain bottles? Took me ages to get used to those things so you're better than me! If you can't find teh Hausmeister I would ring and ask the agent. We used an agent once to find a flat and he said when you move just call and we'll tell you where the nearest doctors, schools, play-grounds etc are. I though well, atleast they could do that for the huge amount of money they got just for showing the flat and sending the contracts to be signed!

The original thought on a visit (before being pregnant and before thoughts of/moving to Germany) was I'd (actually Moo and I) go over during the 'second wave' so around April. But now I'm thinking I may be a little too harassed to be able to handle and 2yr and a preggy belly on a plane, and that I'd also not be as much help. So now it's not so certain. It may not be until our yearly trip in November (for Thanksgiving) :( But these are the knocks when you live far from the rest of your family. We might wait and see how this pregnancy progresses and if I'm feeling ok/secure we might make plans anyhow.

As for how I'm feeling. Well the sun helps. :) I've cut the dairy out and that actually does seem to have made some difference with the terrible cramps. I'll have to slowly introduce it in again and see if they come back.
I still have been having random sharp pains and last night when I turned over in bed I felt like I had ripped something and have had some spotting again. This morning I felt quite rough and dreaded the walk to the town hall, but actually it went ok and I seemed to loosen up as I walked which was good. Though I opted not to come back via the grocery store because I was feeling very drained. I need to still go out though because dd has drank all the juice again (she not liking the no smoothie and I need to find a substitute quickly as she's very surly). I'm going to look for maybe liquid yogurt drinks? Do they have such things here? We get them for her at home (in the US) because they don't have much smoothie either. All of the negatives aside I do feel over all better. Thank you for asking.

OOOOh impacted teeth! My deepest empathy. I had all my wisdom teeth out because I had one and on further inspection the dentist said I'd likely have more over the years. It was a painful painful thing! Having them out went better then expected and I took care to do just as they said to clean my mouth after every meal etc. until the holes had healed and the healing actually went very quickly. (I did however pretty much live on mash from KFC and homemade french toast (eggy bread with cinnamon) for about a week. Hopefully you can get it sorted quickly, but in the mean time some ibu/paracetmol alternating drug taking and hot cold compresses hopefully will help. xxx

GAH I just put the cheese in the dishwasher and then turned to stupid thing on!!! Is that how they do things in Germany? Have I picked up on some local custom thru osmosis? Pregnancy stupidity!

Hope the dishwasher - and the cheese - are OK, bebe! Not a custom I've ever heard of. As for yogurt drinks, you can get Actimel and the like here so I'm sure you'd be able to get them in Germany. It's hard being so far from your family, isn't it? Even now that we're "only" a 2.5 hour flight from the UK, it still takes us the best part of a day to get back to where my parents live.

admylin We try to praise DD1 as much as possible, but she inevitably compares herself to the other children in her class - and to DD2 now as well. She wasn't too happy about DD2 getting "sehr gut" and I can see her point of view in a way. We used to spend hours practising reading with her (the teacher gave us an additional book to do at home with her), but I very often haven't bothered to get DD2 to read her Leseaufgabe as I knew she wouldn't have any problems reading it in class - and she still gets a higher mark. Anyway, DD1 got a mixture of 1s and 2s and said again that she would work extra hard next semester so that she would only get 1s. OTOH she said she didn't want to do any "learning" with DH over the holidays. I do feel a bit sorry for her sometimes, with the amount of extra work that DH gets her to do, although it's good that he makes such an effort to help her.

DD2 has lost her skiing gloves - just in time for her skiing course next week... We thought she might have left them in the school gym after ballet on Wed afternoon, so I went back into school with the girls when they were let out at lunchtime. They weren't there, though (but we did see another girl coming out of school wearing exactly the same gloves, which I'm sure must have been a coincidence but I was still a bit ). Anyway, the DDs suggested we go out through the main gym door rather than back through the school, so we went out only to find that the gate to the road was locked! I ended up having to lift the DDs over the fence and somehow managed to scramble over myself, although it wasn't my most elegant hour.

I can see the mtns from our flat! !

I am also relieved that Zeugnisse day is over. DD1 (2. Klasse) does not get marks. Apparently, teachers do not have to give any marks for the first 2 years of primary school. After that (ie 3rd and 4th year)they have to. So, at the parents evening in the school, us parents and teacher agreed that there would be no marks, just a written commentary. I am happier with this approach. DD1´s teacher suggested a KDL (forget what it stands for, but basically DD2 and I spent 20 mins with the teacher going through the work they had done and getting verbal feedback). DD1 report stated that we had done a KDL but strangely there were two marks, one for Religion and Werkstatt. Whatever....I wonder if the same rules apply in NÖ, Linzer. And whether the teachers would accept the no marks reports as a possibility?

I get frustrated because the comparisons with other children are so difficult to avoid. Even though DD1 gets no marks, the children will compare who gets a Stempel and who does not...one little wise soul threw the teacher´s Stempel in the bin :o

I hope your DD1 is really proud of a mixture of 1s and 2s, Linzer. You can tell her a total stranger on mumsnet (ie. me) is proud of her. :) And glad to hear you did not have to spend the Semesterferien locked in the school!

bebe - cheese in the dishwasher?! Good to hear that the things are falling into place and hope you can have a relaxing weekend...maybe head out to those mountains you can see, or just admire them from your window! (I wish I could see mountains from my flat).

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

Are you all on half term now in Austria? we haven't got any breaks now until Easter. Going to be a long hard term.

Bebe, glad things are settled and by the way - just incase you hadn't noticed everything is closed down in Germany on Sundays so if you need anything for the weekend get it today! When you get used to 7 day shops open it can be a surprise coming to good old fashioned Germany!

Just spent 2 hours trying to get the dc's laptops back online. They went off last night and it's taken me ages and a very expensive call to the customer hotline. Still no idea why they went off but they're working now.

Yes, it's the Semesterferien next week - here in Niederösterreich and Vienna at least; the holidays are staggered, so my SIL and her DC have to wait another two weeks before they're off school.

Glad you got the computers sorted out in the end, admylin - mine always kept going offline for no apparent reason and it was very frustrating, not to mention time-consuming. DH phoned the hotline and they recommended we install a later version of the software, and it's been fine since then.

I much prefer your school's approach to Zeugnisse, bananas. I think the school has a certain amount of leeway in deciding when/whether to include grades, as a friend of mine has DC at a school in another town in NÖ and they don't get grades in the first year. I also seem to remember that DH's niece and nephew (in OÖ) didn't get any grades at all in primary school, although I'm not sure how that would work with secondary school admission - maybe it was just for the first few years. I'm not sure how the parents here would feel if there were no longer grades in the first few years, as a lot of them seem to quite ambitious, shall we say. (They seem to make as much of a big deal out of the grades as the children do.) I used to feel quite inadequate as DD1 couldn't ride a bike, swim, ski and ice skate at 4 - although DH pointed out that it's only in this town that it's seen as normal for children that age to do so, and it's quite different where he comes from.

I must have been in Austria for too long, as the Föhn is giving me an awful headache today - I had to stay in bed all morning. Actually, it was DH who pointed out that the Föhn could well be the culprit; I'm normally quite sceptical about things like that, but my headache was certainly far worse than it's been over the last few days.

well done on the Zeugnisse Linzer and the non-zeugnisse approach bananas!! Hope you all have a fab week off - hope the kids enjoy the skiing!

We dont have to wait as long as Ad's kids for time off but its still another month till dd's week off! seems like a long time!

Cant make up my mind if i feel well enough to go to my german course this morning - had shocking diarrheoa yest eve and had to go and lie down after it - slept for 10 hours but have woken up a bit achey/shivery. Also felt a bit sick but have eaten something and taken some paracetamol and dont feel so bad. Actually now that i've written that down it sounds like i really shouldnt go in case i'm infectious! decision made!

Morning everyone.
Hope you had good weekends.

:( Canella -diarrhoea I wouldn't go in especially if you're still shivery, it would suggest a fever yet to me.

Has anyone seen Tallpoppies lately? Have I missed her in my moving/settling fiasco? I hope she's doing ok. When's her lo due again?

We went for a drive south of Munich yesterday and saw some lovely mtns. We even made a brief foray into Austria. (It's very mind boggling to me how easy it is to cross borders...and that I'm going from one European country to the next like many people back home only think of going from state to state!)
Saturday we went into Munich. It was SO busy! I cannot imagine what it will be like when the tourists come swarming!

Hope you all have a lovely day. The weather seems like it'll be nice. xx

had a wee snooze but still feel shivery so glad i didnt go! and both things we had to do this afternoon have been cancelled due to illness so its an afternoon in for us which is maybe the best thing!

Bebe - sounds like you're finding your way around now!! i also find it amazing how easy it is to go to different countries from germany! we were at a wedding not long after we moved here, in a german town that borders austria and we had to go to austria to get petrol - we found this so bizzare!
I also find Munich very busy!! i grew up in the suburbs of a city but havent lived there for 14 years and have been gradually "countrified" in that time! so to me Munich is just crazy busy!! makes me happy to get back to my wee village!

Havent seen Tallpoppies on here for a few weeks - hope all is ok!