Die Kaffeestube - German and Austrian cyber Kaffee und Kuchen

[admylin]

Kaffeeklatsch for anyone in a German speaking country or interested in German, Kommt herein und setz euch!

Linzer, what is this mid-late thirties of which you speak? I am only 22! :) But yes. Time is ticking, so I'd best wean him soon. We were very lucky getting pg straight away with him, maybe my odds are balancing out and the next one will take longer. Hope not, ideally I won't have a huge gap between them. Plus the BF thing is probably hampering things. It will be sad for me giving it up, but I am concerned that the longer I leave it, the older I get and the more chance of complications for another pregnancy/baby.

Glad you had a nice time skiing, Hupa, I'd really love to go. And thanks for the welcome to Germany, and tadj for the welcome too!

admylin, once we have done a good stint here, we'd love to spend some time in Canada, America, NZ, Australia - exciting to travel to all these places. And Scotland is where will will probably have our UK base, DH is Scottish, and we'd get a decent property for our money.
Geeze, that poor student, I can't imagine pulling my own tooth out, how awful.

DH is convinced the flat we saw online is not for real, now we've looked more, it is just too cheap for what and where it is, and he reckons some of the images are stock images from fancy home living catalogues. Weird, not sure what's up with this, what they are hoping to achieve. So yes, had a good look for others, and feeling a bit despondent for how little you get for your money. I know I am not used to renting, having purchased a while ago in the UK and just seen the mortgage come down and down, so perhaps I need to readjust my expectations of today's prices. DH says colleagues are complaining though about the lack of available housing, everyone is finding it hard to find something. Oh dear!

Thanks everyone for the replies on my other thread. Will go there now!

linzetorte yes I have 2 DDs aged 4 and 7. The older one is in her first year of primary school having done 2 years kindergarten here, and the younger will start kindergarten after the summer hols.

admylin yes I think we will be here long term, don't know about forever but I think I'd like the girls to grow up here.

We are also in an area which is safe, good schools, health care, proximity to France, Germany, Italy - generally a much better quality of life than I think we'd have in the U.K. We'vebeen here 10 years now.

Morning all.
Bugster wow, 10 years in one place sounds really settled! Dh has applied for jobs in Switzerland quite a few times but never got as far as an interview.

NoHun I have heard that there are some scams online where there will be a great flat or house offered but they then ask you to transfer a deposit before viewing even and then they disappear. Best to be cautious and never pay anything befor ethe contracts are signed. We had to pay almost ?1700 to an agent for our first flat in Hannover which hurt but the cash was handed over as we signed the contract.

jenny I thought Easter can't be a holiday in the US as dh got some official e-mails on Monday and was surprised that they were working in that office!

Got the dc back at school as from today - whoopeee! Both of them were up and dressed at 6:45am! Atthe breakfast table I told them how nice it was and they both just said don't get used to it mum! So it's just the initial excitement after a long break.

admylin I haven't needed to wake DD2 and DS in the mornings since they've been back at school (they were getting up earlier in the holidays than they do normally ); it definitely makes for a more relaxed start to the day, but I doubt it will last! How awful about the student pulling his own tooth out; he must have been absolutely desperate.

bugster I was also thinking that 10 years sounds very settled, although have just realised that we'll have been in Austria 10 years next year - not all the time in the same town though, and we've "only" been in this house for seven years.

NoHun Sorry, I did of course remember that you're in your early twenties - I was just referring to myself. (I'm still in my mid-thirties. In my mind.) As admylin says, you do need to be very careful when looking for flats. We paid a ?5000 deposit on the first house we rented here (justified by the fact that the rent itself was low, but the owner obviously needed cash quickly) and lost it all when the owner went bankrupt.

Jenny I always found it sad to give up bfing, especially when you know it's your last child, but 14 months is an impressive amount of time. A child-free morning out sounds lovely - where did you go? I think DH was just feeling guilty about the amount of travelling he's been doing recently, as he said that he wanted me to benefit from his new job too!

Am going to try to be organised this morning and get ahead with some lesson planning. I've just worked out I have another eight lessons to prepare for each of the groups I teach at home and around another 12 school lessons (6 for each class). I'm so fed up of doing it all at the last minute, so it would be good to get a few lessons planned for each group.

Linzer I also had good intentions about preparing some lessons in advance over the Easter break, but have of course got nowhere .

nohun I have been desperate to get pg again soon for 18 months now . I was on a "ttc while breastfeeding" thread for a while and most posters seemed to get pg fairly quickly once their cycles were regular. A couple needed longer, though, although everyone who had been on the thread when I joined had got pg by the time I stopped bf and stopped posting. I try to tell myself that there advantages to a larger age gap as well, and that I should trust to fate that I will have another baby at the "right" time for our family. It doesn't make things much easier, though, and my cycle is so screwed up that at least I'm not getting my hopes up much each month. So lots of sympathy for having to go through that.

admylin that poor boy, pulling his own tooth out . It sounds like your DH goes beyond the call of duty with his work, what a shame his superiors don't treat him better.

bugster welcome to the thread. I love Basel and the Freiburg area, so quite of you living there. Do you do a lot of English teaching? I worked parttime for Berlitz for years, but I'm currently doing a few hours a week at a kindergarten and quite happy not to be doing any more than that!

ploom you got to Ikea, then. I was there a couple of days ago and bought a tub of beads for you, then I got home and read on here that you'd been there yourself! Oops.

I ordered a wardrobe from Ikea which is being delivered today. Unfortunately I asked for it to be delivered to the new house and when I was there yesterday there was no room anywhere for the boxes to be left. The delivery guy called this morning, though, and said they would be there in the afternoon (supposed to be 7am-2pm), so hopefully the shower cubicles will have been fitted by then and the boxes moved out of the hall. And hopefully someone will still be there when the Ikea people finally turn up... Aaargh!

Morning all. Have your DCs got schoolholidays too? We're in the first week and and have got next week to go, it's a bit hard going as the weather is horrible (after lovely weather before Easter - typical!) and DDs fighting a lot. This is a big problem for me. I've beenreading the book 'siblings without rivalry' and am trying to put some of the things into practise. Have any of you read that book? Do your children fight a lot?

This morning they were screaming and grabbing things from each other, after they calmed down and I was sitting next to oldest DD doing painting, just said to myself under my breath 'being a mumy is a hard work' and DD's face fell, she looked like she was going to cry, so I told her it's mot only hard work, it's also wonderful, sometimes hard work but things that are hard can also be good etc. i feel awful now. Has anything like that happened to you?

So are you both teachers linzer and silken? Do you teach English in the kindergarten silke? What kind of teaching do you do linzer? I'd be interested to hear how the schools and kindergRten are where you are. I work for a language school for adults similar to Berlitz but don't do much because of timetables of DC, just Wednesdays 9.00 - 2.00 and Saturday mornings. Here there are no lunches at school, no Mittagstisch, if you want to work over the lunch time you need family help or kind neighbours. Luckily my neighbour offered to give my eldest DD lunch after school on Wednesdays and the youngest goes to kinderkrippe all day Weds.

linzertorte we've only lived in our village for 6 and a half years, before that we were in the next town. But yes it is a long time! We are pretty settled here. Basel Freiburg area is great, I agreesilken.

sorry for long rambling post!

Should have said practice with a C i guess.

Hi Bugster. I haven't read the book but my 2 have their phases of fighting, mostly ds teasing or laughing at dd but we've entered the teen years so the fights are changing too. More fights about who gets to go in the bathroom! It does get better though and best place for them is outside whatever the weather!

Any one know how easy the London underground is to use? Can or should dh try to book some sort of day tickets for the 4 days he'll be in London? He has a couple of appointments with fellow researchers. Found a bus to Heathrow from Stansted but costs 25 pounds one way so he's going to Liverpool St. for a fiver instead.

admylin Yes, you can get one-day travelcards (valid after 9.30 am, or before if you pay quite a bit extra IIRC) and also weekend travelcards, although the cheapest and easiest way to get around London is with an Oyster card. You can get a visitor's Oyster card posted to you overseas, but it costs more and it would be easier to him just to get a normal Oyster card when he's there. You have to pay a 5 deposit (which you get back when you return the card) and have to remember to "check out" at the end of each tube journey (by going through the barriers, for example), but it's the cheapest way of travelling and you should never pay more than you would for a one-day travelcard.

bugster The children went back to school yesterday thank goodness - the weather is awful here too. They're only off for 1.5 weeks at Easter as Austrians save up all their school holidays for the summer (nine weeks). I must look out for that book as my three are constantly squabbling and it drives me mad. I'm sure I've said far worse to them than "being a mummy is hard work", btw - I wouldn't beat yourself up over it; I heard somewhere it's good for children to see that you're only human and can get upset about things they do.

My "proper" job is translating, but I somehow seem to have ended up spending as much time on teaching as translating. I teach DD1's and DD2's classes English once a fortnight (unpaid) and also got talked into teaching children English at (my) home, which I do three times a week for my sins (I teach 4-8 year olds).

Re schools, our school does have a Hort (until 4pm, I think) and the children who go there are given lunch, but very few do - I think it's about an average of two children per class who go to the Hort.

silken That must be very disheartening, seeing all the others from your thread getting pg, but you're right about there being definite advantages to a bigger age gap. If you were to believe my ILs, five years is the perfect gap and anyone who "only" leaves two years between children is possibly not quite sane. You would never be able to leave the children alone together with such a small age gap, even when they're 12 and 14 (to paraphrase my SIL with only a slight amount of exaggeration).

5 pound deposit, that should say

Linzer thanks for that info. I'll try to explain it to him so he can save quite abit by the sound of it (if he does it properly)!

Dd is falling asleep on her bed! She has hockey at 6pm so she might as well have a rest! Poor ds is still at school, talk about being thrown right in on the first day back 8am to 3:30pm!

linzer you are a saint for teaching classes of children unpaid. I hope your community is suitably grateful.

I love Linzertorte by the way. I suppose it comes from Linz? You can also get it all over Switzerland, don't know how authentic it is but it's very good!

admylin We looked into it before we went to London last November and Oyster cards are definitely the cheapest option - very easy to use too. We got ours from the ticket office when we arrived at Liverpool St but I think you can get them from the ticket machines as well.

bugster Hmm, either a saint or completely mad. And I'm not sure that they really are grateful or realise how much work goes into it; I have the occasional tantrum about it (there's probably a post from around last June complaining about me being ignored yet again at the class summer party.)
Yes, Linzer Torte is from Linz (where DH is from) - Konditorei Jindrak, to be precise. I wanted to be SacherTorte, but the name had already been taken.

Hello everyone!

I am very sleep deprived (no change there then) and the baby will wake any second, and DS1 is acting a sweet but cling 2 (he's usually an about right for his age 4 ;) ) and is asking for (mostly crazy) things constantly, so forgive the fact I will forget almost everything I have read please!

no hun I stopped BFing dd (my eldest) to conceive ds1, but my periods don't come back at all when breast feeding, and like you I was set on a small gap - they ended up with exactly 24 months (and 1 day) between them, but there are pros and cons - they do get on great and look out for each other and can be super sweet together, but yes as bugster (hello!) says they fight too! I have a 5.5 year gap from eldest to youngest (3.5 year from DS1 to DS2) but I don't know how that one will pan out - as he's not quite 1 he's very much more a pet/ toy to them than any kind of rival or whatever, I don't know if there will be fighting involving him as they get older, or how the relationships will pan out. I do know that I have 2 sisters 2 years younger than me (not twins, one was fostered sort of by accident at age 11, long story) and one sister 7 years younger than me, and I probably get on best with the youngest, if that means anything... Though I did resent that my parents expected me to look after her so they didn't have to a lot, but I am sure you wouldn't do that!

Bugster I'm in Bayern with DD (6.5, in the first class), DS1 (4.5, KiGa) and DS2 (nearly 1, home lol) and like admylin mine have heard worse than "being a mummy is hard work" - I have explained to them that I am sorry I sometimes shout or am grumpy at the moment, but babies often don't let their mummies sleep and I am tired which makes me grumpy, but soon DS2 will be a toddler and will let me sleep more in the night (fingers crossed). They wouldn't bat an eye if I said being a mummy is hard work - in fact DD would just start a discussion about it, and before now has told me she is only having 2 children as she doesn't want the hard work of having 3 :o

silken inspired by you I am continuing the night weaning - we've (we being me and the baby) done night 4 - I got through from 8.15pm to 6.15am without breast feeding (my body wouldn't let me go more than 6 hours to start, but managed the 10 hours with only moderate pain last night!) but I am currently getting even less sleep than when I was feeding, as although DS2 is now not crying for more than a few minutes when I pick him up but don't feed, he is currently almost impossible to put back in the cot and the wake-ups are running into each other, with say 45 mins between waking and being able to put him back down (though he'll doze on me in that time) and only maybe 15-30 minutes in his cot before he's standing up howling again. Tell me this will change within the next day or two, please!!!!!

Good luck with the wardrobe/ moving in situation.

Jenny I somewhat envy you giving up breast feeding tbh, but I may feel differently when the time actually comes as DS2 is also my last - my aim atm is to get down to just morning and evening feeds, I guess then he may stop being so fixated (we were on about 10 feeds per 24 hours til I started night weaning, which is lunacy at nearly 12 months, now I am trying to stick to morning, early aft and eve, but it is hard as sometimes it is all he wants and a bottle (which he will now take) or cuddles or distraction or rocking are all no substitute - he makes his wishes very clear!

Linzer well done on being so organised with your lesson planning, I forgot yesterday was the deadline to submit VHS course offerings for Sept and was intending to offer 2 evening courses (currently teach one but you have to hand in the forms each semester, they don't automatically continue) so had a huge stress this morning trying to do them with both boys pestering me (dd is out as usual, the girl has a social life on the whole family's behalf I think, she's only home between 10am and 5pm if she has a friend here too). I am not organised enough to do my paperwork and preparation is always seat-of-the-pants. To compensate though I have found a text book for next semester that comes with lesson plans and extras to photocopy - starters and mixers and everything, so minimal preparation, yay! Hope it works. I am supposed to be going back to teaching one full day a week at a private "Freilernen" Grundschule next Feb though (they have 8-3 school) - now that does need proper organised preparation.

Sorry waffled too long already, can't proof read easily as baby stirring.

*Waves at everyone :)

afternoon all!! hiding at the computer while ds1 and 2 talk to ds1's friend about star wars for hours on end!

thatis - oh my heart goes out you and your terrible sleep deprivation. It is torturous. My ds2 was also a rubbish sleeper and I was back at work so you have all my sympathy. We were just unwaveringly strict with him in the end and just kept putting him back in his cot. Wont tell you how long it took for him to sleep thro but we lived here by then .

jenny - can imagine there must be mixed feelings about giving up BF. I feel sad that ds2 is 5 already and wonder for how much longer I'm going to get such lovely cuddles from him. ds1 is already a bit tight about giving out cuddles.

silken - did the wardrobe come? we'll have to get together again soon to organise the transfer of the hama beads!! Thanks again for thinking of us. The hama bead obsession continues - I have a huge stack of them needing ironed.

bugster - being a mum is hard work. Think my dc are well aware fo that because of my occasional grumpiness and regular moaning about them leaving everything at their bums.

admylin - aw your dd must need the sleep if she's falling asleep. But it'll give her more energy for hockey. I've not been to London for 15 years so I am no use about the Oyster card. Sorry.

nohun - I've got a 3 year gap between dc1 and 2 then 22 months between dc2 and 3. Could give you pros and cons of both sizes of gaps. I've also got friends who have a much bigger gap (7 or 8 years) and they find pros and cons in that too. Hope you and Silken manage to get pregnant soon.

Had a right lazy day with only ds1 at home today. Even had a mid morning nap . He's been doing lots of lego and wishing for star wars lego and I've been playing way to much "draw something". That app is beyond addictive. And its made even more addictive because i've got a friend who's as addicted as I am. But since I'm not addicted to anything else so it seems harmless to me.

I will plan my German lesson properly before I post on here, I will, I will...

thatisnotitatall is your name from the 'Prufrock' poem? ThT's one of my favourite poems.

thatis you'll have me feeling bad for suggesting the night weaning soon! I guess every child is different, but it did work with DD, honest . I really hope it just clicks and your ds2 suddenly starts sleeping.

I was thinking earlier I'd ask you all if you would explain your usernames! I like to understand why, if there is a reason, people chose what they did! Mine, I just thought was clever, with the MN/Hun thing! :)

bugster, do you travel much to France, Germany, Italy etc? One of the reasons we liked to move here was the idea of easy travel between the countries on the continent, I hope we do get out and about as much as we think we might, and not laze too much!

admylin, we thought it might be a scam like that. We won't pay any money upfront. Well, DH's company actually cover the deposit for us, which is fabulous, but only the once, so we don't want to get it wrong!
Does everyone rent? I am wondering if it is worth us buying? Or is renting much more the done thing? It's hard, as though I am sure DH will thrive where he is and they will love him, he is only on probation right now, so not sure how easy it will be to secure a mortgage, plus we are now on one salary, and I don't think we'd get that cash injection of the rental fee from his office like we do for renting. Just a bit frustrated about the shortage of nice homes to rent!
Linzer, ?5000, eek! That hurts! And to lose it! I'd be so hacked off. Geeze.

silken, hope it happens for us both soon. I skim-read a TTC whilst BFing thread or two, I also read a new antenatal thread each month until AF arrived and I'd have to wait for the next antenatal thread, hoping I'd be able to join it! I am not being too despondent, I know the BFing isn't helping, so until I give that up, I accept I am not giving us the best chance of conceiving. I'd like a small gap because I think it will be easier with the homeschooling thing, plus, it's nice for them to be similar ages when Christmas comes, and they believe in the magic of Santa at the same time. But a bigger gap would be ok. I'd just be grateful for a second child, whatever the gap, though I think we may give up when I hit 40 (sadly I am not really in my early twenties! :)).
Thatis, do you have joint parties for yours?
Ploom, thank you for the well wishes!

admylin, I would definitely recommend your DH get an Oyster card for travelling in London, will be cheaper, and easier.

noHun we do frequently pop over the border to Germany and France but don't usually travel very far. Italy for a holiday nearly 2 years ago! We keep saying we must go again. With children I think it often seems easier to stay close to home, but we should make more of an effort!

Bugster yes it is, yay for noticing - somebody else on here did too, was it admylin? I wanted either the measuredoutmylifewithcoffeespoons or andindeedtherewillbetime line but both were taken, but I've never seen anyone post under them.

Nohun NOOOOOO!!! Joint parties are evil (my next sister in age is 2 days under 2 years younger than me and we always had joint parties - I hated it, wasn't allowed to invite as many friends as my friends did because we only got half the number each, plus the parties had to be suitable for her age so always seemed babyish to me, I asked not to have parties any more when I was 7 and asked for an outing!

I don't know if I was a horrible ungrateful child but right through my childhood my birthday seemed to be overshadowed by my sister's - one year we went to Disneyland Florida over our birthdays (lucky us) but on her actual birthday we went to a restaurant, there was a cake with her name on with candles, the staff sang happy birthday and made a fuss of her, my parents said that was our joint birthday (but the younger always gets the focus) on my birthday we hung around a caravan rental place all day as my parents had booked that day to check out of the hotel and pick up a motor caravan for the second half of the holiday.

I know I sound all entitled - after all they took us to DisneyLand for the family holiday over our birthdays! But now my kids have, by a quirk of fate, almost the identical gap I am determined each of them gets to feel 100% special and the full focus of attention on their own birthday, even though it means I do two full on separate parties, cakes etc. within a week :) tbh although my kids get on very well over all, I am lucky, a 4 year old boy and 6 year old girl have nothing whatsoever in common in terms of party theme interest - "Cars" (the film) versus unicorns etc... and they have only one or 2 friendship overlaps, and those are due to the kids being neighbours, mostly their friends would mix very oddly!

7 wake ups (I think) last night but he didn't look for milk ... silken the night weaning might not be a solution but he isn't going to sleep through without being night weaned, so either way it had to be done... I need to work on him self settling (I put him to bed asleep or nearly asleep) but although I must have solved how to do this with the older 2 I can't seem to with Henry, nothing I remember doing with them works for him!

thatis poor you, I don't know how you manage with so little sleep. Do you have black rings under your eyes?

Bugster you're right that it's often easier to stay close to home! Actually now I come to think of it I commented about how great it was to travel around that area because I lived there for a while before having dc! I remember we used to drive over to France for the day or go down to Bodensee and stay over if we felt like it ...those days are over now!

NoHun did you know that home schooling is illegal in Germany? Not sure if the school starting age is 5 or 6 now but from then on you are obliged to send your dc to school here. There has been a few cases in the news in the past of families having to move abroad to home school or even being threatened with having their dc taken into care if they don't send them to school.

By the way my name is the first letters of the dc and my names as I couldn't think of a name that wasn't already taken so just invented one!

admylin I'd worked out your name, but it took me a year or two!

Thatis I was the one who recognised your name - I know someone on here with coffeespoons in their name, but I don't know whether it's Prufrock-related. I was telling DH a few days ago about me revising the wrong Eliot poems for A level and he said, "Wasn't T.S. Eliot a woman?" Umm, wrong Eliot!

NoHun I think my name is fairly self-explanatory! I would have preferred something Vienna-related, but VienneseWhirl had gone too (as well as SacherTorte, which I mentioned the other day) and I couldn't think of anything else. My Twitter name is Vienna-related but I didn't want my Twitter and MN accounts linked - and I'm quite attached to my MN name now anyway, so can't imagine changing it.

Ploom After getting sucked into Farmville, I now avoid any apps or games that sound like they might be even remotely addictive; I spend enough time on MN as it is!

Just back from my run and have finally managed to wrestle myself out of my knee brace. The woman at the Bandagist said I'd probably need some help to take it off, which is fine at the weekend when DH is around, but I usually go out on weekday mornings so am not sure who I could ask then. I was really struggling to get it off on Wednesday and could see myself having to ring one of the neighbour's doorbells in desperation!

Morning!

Nohun Mine was lateralligator as I find that phrase to be massively under-used. After a quick Christmas change I shortened it to Gator. I have no imagination whatsoever so no clever or witty names for me, I'm afraid!
Renting is more common here than in the UK. People don't seem to have the same need to get on the property ladder as soon as possible. Buying a house is more of an investment and people tend to buy where they are settling. (Unlike in the UK where even if you move around every few years, it is still more common to rent). Also, people here are quite suspicious of debt (which is in no way a bad thing). In fact, it's one of FIL's favourite subjects, how he mistrusts credit and how when he was younger you saved up to buy things and how people in the UK and the US have no sense when it comes to these things etc etc etc.

silken & Nohun Good luck with the ttc - I hope it happens for you both soon. Re. age gaps, We were planning on a 2 year gap (ish) between DS and the theoretical next DC. Whether it will work out that way is anyone's guess. I know people talk about larger age gaps not being so great but there are 4 years between me and my brother and we get on like a house on fire. I wasn't happy when I used to have to take him with me when I went out to play, but overall we got on fine as kids. That's just one experience though.

thatis 7 wakings? Sheesh! I would be a full-on zombie by now. Am v. impressed that you're still upright. Good luck with the night weaning & the self-settling.

admylin I thought that must be what your username meant, but I wasn't sure. Hope your DC aren't too knocked out after their hardcore day yesterday

Linzer How long do you have to wear your knee brace for? Is it just for running or do you have to wear it all the time? I hope it's a bit better soon.