Schenk ein den Wein - as autumn comes to Germany and Austria

[LinzerTorte]

Der Nebel steigt, es fällt das Laub;
schenk ein den Wein, den holden!
Wir wollen uns den grauen Tag
vergolden, ja vergolden!

A thread for all those living in Germany and Austria, and anyone else who would like to chat.

Always good to have an excuse to open some , and this poem seemed quite appropriate!

Sounds good - I always dread booking a hotel and it not being suitable or in a 'bad' street. We'd much rather turn up and walk into a hotel in an area we like and ask for a room but I guess you can't go that spontaneous way with dc!

Vet has been, she thinks the surviving gerbil is in mourning and the click noises, that I thought were breathing problems, are her way of calling for the lost one. Seems so sad but otherwise she's healthy. Cost 22 euro including house visit fee.

Anyway, I need to go to the Baumarkt/gartenmarkt and get a nice big pot and a plant to put outside on the balcony to bury the gerbil in. Dd won't have it in 'the old witch landlady' garden so it'll have to be a plant pot.

Yes, we never used to book hotel rooms pre-DC but I can't imagine not doing so now. As long as you read the reviews on a site like tripadvisor or holidaycheck, you should be OK; I should really have done so before booking the hotel in Erding, but at least we won't be spending too much time there.

So sad about the gerbil being in mourning, but it must be a relief to know she's healthy.

Am hoping to finish the translation I'm working on while the DDs are at their piano lesson so that I can make a start on tidying up the chaos before my friend arrives. I really need to declutter but just don't seem to have the time at the moment.

Linzer Glad you had a nice time in London. Which MNetters did you meet up with? Other FLYers? I haven't been managing to keep up with it much, but I seem to have internalised some of the principles, such as doing a bit is better than nothing, so I'm definitely better off for it.

admylin Sorry to hear about the gerbil. Hope the other one cheers up soon.

C4ro Hi. I remember your name from before, but otherwise not much else about you . It sounds like you've just moved to Vienna. Hope you're settling in okay. How old is/are your DC?

I stayed at friends' with DD this weekend and switched to bribing her with gummibears to use the potty as they were more portable than the sticker chart. They are definitely a much better motivation, so she will now come to the bathroom every time I ask her. However, I'm probably now taking her too often, so she isn't getting much opportunity to tell me herself when she needs to go and when she does ask to go, it's usually in order to get a gummibear rather than to relieve herself . I think it's going in the right direction, though, and if I can work out how to explain it to DD, I might start only giving her a reward when she has asked to go instead of every time.

I am out of date again, just been trying to catch up!

Admylin I am so sorry to hear about your nephew, so sad when anyone dies before their time, especially when they have young children :( Also sorry about the gerbil - seems odd of me to mention it in the same post but the death of pets can really matter to children. I do think it is in the long term one of the good things about keeping pets though, as a life lesson, but hard at the time.

C4ro and orientier hello. Seems to have been a bit of an Austria fest recently. I am in Bavaria so know nothing about M&S in Bratislava, but am somewhat jealous! We live "near" Munich but not near enough to make participating in the various ex-pat/ English speaking groups there practical, which was a big disappointment to me when we first moved (we moved in a hurry due to circumstances of the job DH was offered, and the in-laws found the house for us, I hadn't quite understood the georgraphy before we moved).

Well done on the potty training moving in the right direction silken - I used sweets (smarties I think) as bribes for poo but not for everything. They both "self weaned" from the bribes as eventually they forgot to ask - though annoyingly for a while dd used to remind ds!

I am sitting outside as baby ds2 fell asleep in the buggy when we went for a walk an hour or so ago, he doesn't usually nap this long in the morning so I think the cold fresh air is helping - plus he was awake from 3am to 5.20am this morning, which is not great when I have to get up with dd at 6.15am! But I guess he is in need of a longer morning nap than usual! I know if I get him out of the push chair he will wake, but I am quite enjoying the (cold) sunshine and autumn colours in the playground by the house. DS is in his snowsuit so I shouldn't get told off my any passing Oma Police! LOL

Sounds like you're in a similar situation to us 5more, as although our town is X bei Wien, we're not really close enough to take advantage of all the expat activities and meet-ups. It was feasible when I only had one child who hadn't yet started kindergarten, but virtually impossible now that they're all out in the mornings and are busy with homework and various activities in the afternoons. I do have one English friend who lives about half an hour away who I used to see most weeks when the DC were younger, but now it's more like once a month at the most due to various afternoon commitments. Ironically, now that I'm feeling quite settled and integrated here, I finally have some expat friends in our town!

silken Good news on the potty training. I met up with two MNers from my Couch to 5k thread; you may know one of them (WhoKnows) as she's on the FLY thread too. I've been struggling to keep up with the thread recently too and also feel a bit of a fraud posting on it when I'm not really doing any FLYing, but I live in hope that I'll have more time to declutter etc. one day!

Just when I thought I'd finally have a chance to start tackling the chaos, some more work has arrived. I also have the two school English lessons to prepare and teach by Thursday, so housework will have to take a back seat for now.

Linzer I haven't joined VBC- for the reason DD is 15 months and my first assumption was babies=

C4ro Yes, Vienna Babies Club is a bit of a misnomer - I didn't join until DD1 was about 18 months old as that's when we moved to Austria.

DD2 also says nee sometimes, which she must have picked up from school, and also ne/nuh (or however you write it) at the end of sentences whenever she spends time with a German friend. DH isn't terribly keen on it, but I suppose it works both ways - I remember being laughed at by German friends for saying na (meaning no). There are also a few words I feel silly saying to Germans (e.g. Sackerl, Bub) so will switch to the "normal" German word if I'm speaking to a German!

Canella A parcel of DVDs is winging its way to you; I just put 10 or 11 in it so that it would fit through the slot (it did, so only cost a couple of euros to send). I don't mean to sound stingy, but I'm still recovering from the shock of having to pay nearly ?15 to send a normal-sized paperback!

Sorry about the gerbil and I hope the other one gets stronger again. Strangely, when one of our rabbits died, the other one took on his characteristics for about a week. It was really odd!

I love this discussion about different dialects in German as it reminds me of stuff I can talk about in my lessons! I have a really small group at the moment, but they are interested in learning about German as well as how to speak it.

I don't think not speaking too much at 15 months is a problem at all, especially if she has lots of languages to contend with! Your job sounds very exciting, do you mind me asking what you do?

You also have a lot of work at the moment Linzer! You may not be doing much FLYing at the moment but you did inspire me earlier to go and clean out my sink (I didn't get much further than that on the website as I didn't really get the 'get dressed to lace-up shoes bit!)

Well done on all the potty training and sleeping! If I could convince ds2 that he doesn't need any night feeds, that would be great! I hope everyone is ok.

Linzer wasn't Buchersendung an option for sending a paperback? That's 85 cents for a normal size paperback. Don't seal the envelope, you need to use those clips... butterfly clips are they called? I use the book swapper site somebody on here recommended and have sent out 5 or 6 books that way.

c4ro I am married to a German - we met 11 years ago in the uk and married and had dc1 in the uk, but dh got offered a transfer here 4.5 years ago, when I was heavily preg with dc2. Somebody in the Munich office had been fired and they asked dh if he would transfer, but it had to be immediately or they would advertise the job as it couldn't be left vacant. I was childminding at the time and we owned a house, as well as having an 18 month old, so I stayed in the UK with to wind down the childminding and sell the house, dh worked a hand over in the uk then moved over and started work immediately, and the in-laws emailed a pic of a house "near Munich" to us, which looked nice, so due to the hurry we agreed with their offer to arrange for us to take it - I was afraid that otherwise we'd end up living with them, and I'd have to bring baby 2 home from hospital to their house, which I was absolutely not happy to do! House is nice but in basically a hamlet - nearest Kiga, school and village shop are 5km away, Munich is a 45 min drive or 35 mins by train, but you have to drive 10 mins to the station first, and it's the very end of the S bahn line.

A couple of years ago I knew a little boy who had a Bulgarian mother, Scottish father and lived here - he didn't speak at all til he was 2, the doctoor started the rubbish they spout here, telling his mum they should stop speaking anything but German around him, but she and her dh stuck to speaking their own languages and he started speaking all of a sudden, and made incredibly rapid progress in all 3 languages and was using sentences very soon, didn't really mix them up at all either, so I am sure your dd is ok at 15 months with 4 languages to sort out!

Ooops better get moving for Kiga, ds doesn't want to go, he doesn't like staying longer after all, think it would have been better in summer as he loves outdoor time and they stay out all afternoon in summer... ho hum :(

5more No, unfortunately we don't have that option here - it's all done by format, with no reduction for printed matter etc. I wouldn't even be able to send a book within Austria for 85 cents. Fortunately the MN bookswap club I joined at the start of the year seems to have ground to a halt, and I was able to hand over the last book in person when I was in London - I might as well buy a new book to send on each time otherwise!

Jenny I think most of us on the FLY thread ignore the lace-up shoes babystep (as well as quite a few of the others). I've obviously been in Germany and Austria for far too long, as I feel quite awkward wearing shoes in (British) friends' houses but taking them off doesn't seem to be the done thing either!

C4ro Two of my three weren't speaking much at 15 months either; I'm sure she'll make up for it later (DS made really quick progress at about 20 months IIRC). 15 months is still quite young and I often used to hear that bilingual (let along quadrilingual or whatever the word is) children tend to start speaking later, so I agree that you don't have anything to worry about. Incidentally, my (monolingual) brother didn't start speaking until he was 3 but started using full sentences more or less straight away - he was obviously storing it all up.

DS is very clingy at the moment and needed to be prised off me at KiGa again this morning. I hope he'll be OK at the Martinsfest on Friday; a few of the Vorschulkinder are going to be doing a Laternentanz and he's very proud of the fact that he's the only boy doing so - I just hope that he'll go with his group and not decide that he wants to stick with us the whole time...

Canella, thanks for sending the DVDs - just got them today as I forgot to check the letter box! Dd said your mum must be really nice to do all that recording linzer!

Anyone with a Lidl nearby, you can stock up on baked beans and cheddar from tomorrow, it's British food day again. I just got 2 blocks as they'd put them on sale today early.

We might have found a gerbil at school where dd got them from in the first place. Her teacher said to bring her mouse in and try to find a friend for her as they have plenty. Thank goodness as up to now I've only found a shop with 2 gerbils to be sold together and I only need 1.

5more, sounds like quite a trip just to get into Munich. Are there any medium size towns nearer than that? I suppose the closer you get to Munich the higher the house prices too though. I dread dh getting a job there (he has applied before but didn't get it) as we'd never see him if he had to commute far.

c4ro, weekends are so short when you work full time during the week, hope you make it to M&S this time, wonder why they don't open a shop in Germany. How do you compare life in Austria with Amsterdam?

Morning!! having a morning of catching up on emails (hate writing big ones!!) and now its time for a MN catch up.

admylin - sorry I only posted the DVDs on Monday. I forgot to take them at the end of last week. Hope you enjoy them. Sorry about the gerbil but good news that you might get another one. Saw the advert for british week - will be there tomo for beans.

Linzer - thanks in advance for the DVDs. You dont sound stingy. Posting is an expensive business.

c4ro - 15 months is very young. dont think dd spoke till she was 22 months (but then didnt shut up!). About the dialect - my dd doesnt do it so much but the boys have a proper regional accent and say "ich weiss nett" instead of nicht. But I find it cute and they can stop it when they're with my IL's so its not so ingrained. Yet!

5more - I've also been using that bookswapper website - that "büchersendung" thing is a great idea.

silken - great news on the potty training. She's a star.But dont worry - the gummibear thing will stop after a while - you wont be feeding her gummibears forever!

Good news here is that there have been no lice seen for 10 days now so I think I can safely say they are gone. Had to repeat the treatment (as per instructions) last night but hopefully thats the end of it. But it meant I had to wash and dry dd's hair before school this morning. And she leaves at 7.20 - not doing that again soon.

ds2 is at his grandparents this week - life is so weirdly quiet with only 2 dc here. And because they go to school so early the mornings have been very long. And I havent had to leave the house unless I wanted too. This is what it'll be like next year when they are all at school. Cant wait!

Booked a wee skiing holiday last night - only 5 nights not too far from where Silken lives but thats far enough for us. We want to do cross country skiing again so it seems daft to drive to Austria when we can drive 90 mins and do it there. But the apartment is near some downhill slopes so might try that with dd this year. Dh is banned from downhill since he cannot do it at all and nearly maimed someone the last time he tried it!

It's actually my brother who does the recording - my mum used to do it all when they still had a video recorder, but she can't cope with the DVD player (not sure I could actually; it all seems very complicated).

No British week at Lidl here; I think I shall have to write and complain. I can only remember one since I've been here, although we seem to have had two American weeks in the last six months.

Yes, it's a real shame that there are no longer any M&S shops in Germany and Austria; there used to be three in Vienna, but they all closed just before we moved here. The M&S in Frankfurt was great - it was huge, over five floors IIRC, with the food hall taking up the whole of the basement. Free samples to try too. The food department in Bratislava is tiny in comparison, and hidden away at the back of the store. Rents may be cheaper in Eastern Europe, but I'm sure that customers would spend more money in Germany and Austria. Despite the fact that there was a big sale on, the store was quite empty when we were last there - as was the cafe. Mind you, this may have something to do with the quality of the food, which definitely isn't up to British M&S standards, and the range seems to be constantly decreasing.

x posts Canella - good news on the headlice! My three have definitely all got Austrian accents, although not as strong as DH's; he would tend to say "i waß net" rather than ich weiß nicht. Having said that, he's been complaining that DD1 has started saying Oida (Alter) - I have no idea what it's supposed to mean, but he doesn't like it for some reason!

Just found this on wikipedia: das ?Oida? (Alter) wird auch ohne sichtbaren Zusammenhang fast jedem Satz vor- oder hintangestellt.

admylin Sorry to hear about the gerbil. Thanks for the tip about Lidl. Our nearest one is a bit out of the way, so I only go when it´s English week.

Linzer You must be relieved that ds has been signed off from speech therapy. I´ve been going for 3 years with ds and there´s still no end in sight. At least we can understand what he´s saying now which wasn´t the case when he started.

c4ro Despite what I´ve just said about ds I wouldn´t worry about speech at 15 months. We also have a dd and she´s never had any problems.

Canella Good news about the nits.
I´d love to do another skiing holiday this year, but we can only go during the Winterferien which is really expensive. We don´t get a week in February in Hessen, so that´s not an option. We may go for the odd day to the Harz mountains if we get a lot of snow this year.

German postage can be a bit of a minefield. I nearly bought some bargain Christmas cards in TX Maxx last week, but at the last moment realised they were square, so would probably cost more to post. I asked at the post office and it would cost over 3 euros to send each one to England, so it wouldn´t have been such a bargain after all.

Linzer I caught myself saying "ge" at the end of a sentence at the weekend . The Fly thread was a bit overwhelming for me (very fast moving), but it helped to post about things I'd been putting off for months, since I then got them sorted.

jenny the shoe thing is a kind of trck. It sounds like nonsense, but actually I found I was much less likely to sit down "for a minute" with my shoes on and taking bins out/hanging out the washing became less of a hassle. It does feel funny though, especially after mopping the floor.

C4ro How does that work then with four languages? Do you have some sort of strategy? I'm assuming one of you at least speaks more than one language to her. What an amazing thing to grow up with!
I took DD to a dance class yesterday and there was another mum there speaking English to her dc. She wasn't a native speaker, though, and although objectively I think that's still a good thing for the kids, instinctively it bothered me.

Canella I'm not so sure that DD is a star yet. She needed two changes of clothes at kiga yesterday, but then stayed dry all afternoon with me. She didn't remember to ask for gummibears either while we were out. She had an accident this morning before we left for kiga, so I went through all the trained kids in her class: "what does C say when he needs a wee" - "Pipi"; "What does Y say?" - "Pipi"; "Who else wears pants?" - "DD"; "What does DD say?" - "Pipi" yeah right . Hopefully it will just click at some point .

That's good to know hupa, I don't send many cards anymore but now I know to watch for size. I'm Ok with e-cards and even my elderly uncle and aunt now send a www.jacquielawson.com/ card from here.

Linzer my dd probably still thinks your parents are great as I once told her that they sent your dc magazines occasionally and she still remembers the time my dad refused to buy ds a magazine when we were visiting because it cost too much (my parents are far from poor)!

Canella, I've also just had dd doing a morning hairwash dash! Not because of nits but she was too tired and late to do it at bedtime and she now has really long thick hair too. Glad you got rid of your nits, was the shampoo kind to your hair? When do you go skiing?

hupa I remember sending a square birthday card when we were in Germany and being to discover it would cost DM 6 to post. Or maybe it was even DM 9. That's put me off buying square cards ever since, even though they don't cost any more to send here.

silken Hearing non-native speakers speak English to their DC bothers me too, even though theoretically I think it's a good idea. There was someone doing so at the doctor's the other day, but she suddenly got much quieter when (I think) she realised that I was speaking English to the DC too. It also bothers me when parents give their DC English names which they then misspell/mispronounce. Or when they give their DC abbreviated English names (e.g. Cathy. No one would christen their DD Kathi, so why is Cathy OK? Or Tom. OK, I'm sure some parents in the UK do this too but Tom with a middle name just sounds silly.) I don't have enough to worry about, do I? DH would tell me that I should reg mich ab. Or reg di ab, rather.

admylin My parents are very, um, careful with their money too - they will buy magazines (although not the most expensive ones) for the DC, but otherwise don't believe in buying something for them just because they ask for it (which is actually a very good thing, but quite tricky as the children are used to being showered with things by my ILs - who have far less money than my parents). I have to be very careful about hiding shopping when I'm back in the UK unless I want muttered comments about what a spendthrift I am. My parents and ILs have very different attitudes to money and I'm increasingly tending towards my parents' POV as I get older, at least as far as buying things for the DC is concerned, but unfortunately DH is more like his parents...

admylin - it wasnt a nit shampoo - its just a lotion you massage in and comb thro then leave overnight. My hair is a bit too soft and frizzy at the moment after all the combing but I dont think its from the nit lotion.

silken - accidents will definitely happen but i'm sure they'll get less frequent over the next few weeks.

We're going to go skiing just after New Year - the dc have a week off after New Year so its a perfect time. Cant imagine there being snow soon tho - its so mild in the day. Got those friends coming in 3 weeks and they are just presuming it'll be snowy. Not sure!

X post again Linzer. Funny I prefer it when people in the UK just christen/name their dc the shortened version. Have friends with 2 dc and both have an official long name that no-one ever uses. Why did they not just call them the short names in the first place? All of mine have long names but we use those 90% of the time.

I suggested that my BIL should speak English to their baby even tho he's German but he said it feels too weird. (his english is great). I can imagine that - baby cooing is such a nice thing in your own language.

We'll have to agree to differ then, Canella. I always call DS by the short version of his name, but he does go by his full name in German; the DDs just pronounce their names differently depending on what language they're speaking.

I was telling a (British) friend the other day that I've noticed that the worse someone's German is (i.e. a non-native speaker living here), the more likely they are to speak German to their DC. It turned out that she speaks German to her children a lot of the time - I hadn't realised as her DC are teenagers/early twenties and I've hardly ever seen them. (Her German is actually very good, though.)

I don't have a problem with people giving long or shortened forms of names in their own language, but I agree with Linzer about German speakers giving their children shortened English names. Danny and Mandy (pronounced "Denny" and "Mendy" of course) are the most common and most irritating I've come across).

Took me ages to get used to dh's family and names. There are 10 of them (brothers and sisters) all with lovely names but they all use a nickname. One of dh's brothers was premature so they wrapped him in cotton and put him near the oven (in India 40 odd years ago) so his nickname is Kotton although his real name is Imran!

We had a German woman who spoke English to her dc in our english playgroup in south Germany and I remember her dd coming up to me with a toffee needing help to unwrap it, and saying 'can you put it off'. I suppose she still had a head start for english when she started school later!

Linzer, same here, I always smuggled shopping straight upstairs when we visited UK and my dad always told me off for buying the dc too many ice-creams and sweets but he forgot that they were on their only holiday of the year when we visited them. Somehow, that's what makes a holiday great, you get ice-creams and go out for meals, it's all part of the treat.

Wow, so much to catch up on!

I hope everyone is well, hello to the new(ish, I'm a bit slack) Austrian residents!

Good to hear the nits have been banished, speech therapy is no longer needed and that potty training is going well.

DS is completely in love with my parents, loves cuddling them & saves his biggest, gummiest smiles for my mum, which she is over the moon about! He's been spoilt rotten & now has a brand new bouncy chair & play blanket thing (Krabbeldecke) & a new microwave appeared in our kitchen yesterday - it's like Christmas has come early here. I think I'm going to start talking very loudly about how I'd love a Mercedes
On a less positive note, I'm slowly giving up breastfeeding :( I seem to have a new blocked duct every day, half of each breast is now rock hard and sore, no matter what I try, even the midwife is running out of ideas. It seems one of the blockages might be infected too - feeding is a nightmare & I can't lift my arms above elbow height. The nipple infection refuses to budge too so I'm pretty much constantly in pain & in tears from the pain & the tiredness. I've switched his last feed before bed to a bottle & have antibiotics, nipple gel & tablets from the Dr to calm my milk flow down a little & the midwife is coming round on Friday, so there is light at the end of the tunnel! He will happily take a bottle & doesn't seem to mind who feeds him as long as he is fed, so it's not all bad. He's also still cuddly & gorgeous :)

It's still fairly mild here, autumnal, as opposed to wintery. Very pretty - we're making the most of walks in the park while it's nice.