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!

Gator that list is soo good and true! It would be good if we were all warned to expect some of it before we arrived then we'd just accept it as normal loval behaviour and not get so worked up!

Nutella I've been here for years and I still need someone to correct my German writing. Now that ds is older and at Gymnasium he can usually correct my endings atleast! Your lucky to have a German dh who can help, mine is worse at German than me as he uses English at work.

Linzer it is expensive isn't it? We're OK for now as the first round of lessons were payed for according to 'Gewährung von Eingliederungshilfe nach § 35 a SGB' (some law) and they pay 42,61? to the therapist.

I think learning with your dc is just part of the school system here. In the US my cousin is a maths teacher and she was shocked at the system here, if dc don't make the grade in her class, she is held responsible and the school gets less funding if the quality of teaching (and results) are low.

Even when the whole class has a low average in a test the teacher here blames it on the dc and not the fact that he hasn't covered half of the curriculum or that it could be something to do with his test being too hard. In ds's last maths test there was 1 question that not a single dc could answer Ds managed to get a 3 and he had one of the best test results in the class.

People here seem to have the attitude, admylin - if a child isn't doing well at school, it's generally the parents' rather than the teacher's fault. I was talking to someone recently who was complaining about the standard of children in her DS's class (from a deprived background, etc.) along the lines of "These children gets 4s and 5s! At primary school!" I proceeded to tell her that, despite extra tuition and the hours of work that DH puts in with DD1, she still sometimes gets 4s and 5s. That shut her up. The prevailing attitude is that children who get poor grades just aren't working hard enough, or their parents don't do enough extra work with them.

The Verabschiedung went OK - all the other classes sang a song or recited something for the 4. Klassen - although I was a little about a poem that one class recited. It was about how much progress the fourth years had made since they'd been at school and one line went "viele von euch stammen aus einem anderen Land" (the next line ended with something like "kein Deutsch verstand") - I was and I heard one mother say behind me "stimmt gar nicht!" Another prevailing attitude here is that if you look different and don't have an Austrian name, you're obviously a foreigner and German won't be your first language.

I sometimes think I went back in time when I moved to Germany and Austria sound the same - about 40 or 50 years :(

phew I'm not being too lazy then :o I'm pleased with how much I understand but still get annoyed when I get tongue tied.

Linzer The help with homework sounds scary! ahhh so much to look forward to :)

We went to an info abend at a local hospital tonight and I was very pleased that I could follow everything and sniggered at some of the questions asked by over anxious parents.... one really odd question (I wondered how they came up with it ) it was something about an antibiotic eye drop thing that they do to newborns and a Dad wanted to know if the baby could receive an overdose

And there was a breast feeding expert who went on and on about the benefits of it and I found her really loading on the emotional blackmail patronising even though I want to give BF a go. She also kept referring to the mothers on the ward as Neu gebackene Mamas... does it get better or worse?

Nuttella when I had my 3rd I was referred to on a ward round handover as a Profi-Mama - which made me think they thought I was breeding babies as a career (to sell?? ) but they did add that we have to speak Hoch Deutsche to this one as she's foreign...

Linzer :o at that line about coming from abroad and understanding no German!

Ooops, been up a while with bouncy early bird boys, but didn't realise that now it is just about time to wake sleepy DD for school - why did she get up at 5am for the first 5 years of her life, and only start to sleep past 6am once she started school? I have to wake her nearly every day now, would have been unimaginable even a year ago, don't think I'd ever needed to wake her in the morning in her life before she turned 6!

Linzer obviously that was meant to be not :o ! in my early morning dazed state I was thinking the : o looked like the shocked face!

EnglishWoman It's always the way, isn't it? They get up ridiculously early for years but as soon as they actually have to be up early, they start sleeping longer. I always, always have to wake the DC up at 6.45 am in time for school. Today, school doesn't start until 8.45 am so I thought I'd let them have a lie in - and they were all up at 6 am!

Nutella Frisch gebackene Eltern is quite a common term, but it doesn't annoy me as much as others. One thing that I found a bit strange is that nappies here are called Pampers, e.g. at the paed, I would be asked to take the baby's Pampers off. I was quite tempted to reply, "Actually, he/she is in a Lidl nappy - do you still want me to take it off?"

admylin I always thought that Germany was slightly more progressive than Austria, although maybe it's similar in rural areas. I also think that we're about 10 years ahead of the area where my ILs live.

We went to a strawberry PYO field yesterday where there's a ban on skirts and dresses. According to the friend I went with, it's because women in long Muslim dress will use the strawberry field as a toilet. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone in Muslim clothing in our town, let alone picking their own strawberries - surely this can't be right?!? She has some strange ideas sometimes, admittedly, but I'm struggling to think of any reasonable explanation.

Linzer I thought you were going to say the skirt ban was because of girls in short skirts flashing thier knickers :o What bizzare thinking!

Kindergarten is closed for a training day today and next door'S 5 year old rolled up at my door 5 mins after DD (and his big sister) left for the school bus. I rolled my eyes mentally at his mum using me as KiGa (she is the neighbour who is always foisting her kids on others) but didn't really mind him being here to play with ds1 til I need to go shopping... but then after he'd been here an hour his mum phoned to ask if I'd seen him, as he hadn't told her he was leaving and she'd only just realised he wasn't in the house!

I was thinking that too TheEnglishWomanInTheAttic! Very strange idea from the friend Linzer although when I was in Pakistan years ago I saw men and women on the road side doing just that covered by their long clothes!

You have nice neighbours englishwoman! Atleast she noticed after an hour !

You both realise that it's only going to get worse with getting up times! As soon as they hit the teen years you can't get them out of bed at all on weekends and they have to have their alarm clocks on full volume to make it up for school!!

Did you all watch the big game last night? Poor Germany. All the balconies that had flags and banners hanging are already back to the normal state, the neighbour has removed his car flags and even the cute außenspiegel covers have all gone over night!

Just as I think I'm getting used to life here and starting to think that maybe it's not all that different from the UK after all I hear more crazy stories on here!

I was really rooting for Germany last night too, admylin. It would have been nice to see them get through.
DS was up and active until 10.30pm though so between us we probably saw about a quarter of the match. He's very clingy at the moment and has started crawling towards me at full speed saying 'mamamamama' when he wants me, which is as soon as he realises he's not on me, which is approximately once a minute. I'm finding this stage far more knackering than the newborn stage, but way more fun too. He's either into everything and making mischief, or crying because he's not on me, arms wrapped firmly around my neck, head buried in my shoulder and suckered onto my face. I wonder sometimes whether he's actually a baby monkey...

Nutella I found that all the other parents-to-be at ante-natal class and hospital info-evenings etc were all far better informed about things like that than I was, and I spent most of my pregnancy with my nose in one pregnancy book or other. They were worrying about things I hadn't even thought about, which just made me panic even more.

TheEnglishWoman Profi-Mama :) The thing that really puzzles me is the people who talk about the UK as something wonderful, then as soon as they hear that's where you're from start talking about everything that's wrong with the UK. Maybe I'm just mixing with the wrong people, but there is certainly a different attitude to foreigners here to what I know from back home.

Linzer Pampers, yes! (Although saying that, the maternity wards seem to have some sort of deal with Pampers here.) I'd never have guessed the strawberry reason in a million years, how strange.

Linzer That is really strange thinking from your friend.

I was another one rooting for the Germans yesterday. I must be becoming more German, because when I first moved here I wanted any team other than Germany to win.

School´s now finished for the summer. Both dcs collected their Zeugnisse this morning which were really good. We´re of to Brittany in a couple of weeks. I´m hoping the weather here improves, so we can go to the Freibad. I find it´s much easier (for me) for the dc to meet all their friends there, rather than coming to us and being constantly hassled for drinkss and snacks.
Apologies if ths makes no sense, but my laptop is deleting random words and sentences.

admylin why would I want to get them out of their beds at weekends? Maybe you have to be a parent of a teen and well past the deeply sleep deprived 5am get up years to understand why you would want to get them up when they are happily asleep and have nowhere they have to be? I'm looking forward to it :) Though not to getting them up for school in the week, but to the peaceful weekend mornings while they sleep in til lunch :)

EnglishWoman The Profi baby breeder :o

Gator I have no idea how this all works and have my nose in several books (including the mumsnet guides because they are so hilarious) but I think I have a limit of how much I can realistically worry about and am trying to realise many things are beyond my control.

I suppose I can live with the Frisch gebackene comments... I liked everything else about the place.

I got DP to ask a question for me about the delivery rooms and the chief Hebamme woman directed her answers to DP starting with "tell her...." which amused me so I butted in an explained I could understand but I was having trouble forming the questions. She made quite a funny surprised face but was really nice :)

if you guys get sick of my pregnant ramblings let me know :o

The weather here today was insane! Sunny and warm until almost 4pm, when I was about to finish teaching my new student, when suddenly a full on thunderstorm started!

Hope everyone had a good weekend. It was far too hot here - still is, in fact (33°-34° forecast all week). We spent Saturday recovering from DD2's birthday party on Friday afternoon; her parties have always been so easy compared to DS's, so I think that made us over-confident about being able to cope with all the children she wanted to invite. We had 23 here altogether, including our own, and have agreed that we'll stick to a maximum of 10 next year!

It was her actual birthday yesterday and she decided she wanted to go to the Strandbad for her birthday outing, which was inevitably packed. We drove DH to the airport in the afternoon, as he's gone to France for a couple of days, and arrived home to find absolutely nowhere to park (one of the disadvantages of living within walking distance of the pool). In the end, I parked in front of the garage and hoped that none of the neighbours would need to drive in/out. No one phoned me, so I assume they didn't.

Have just dropped the DC off at a Spiel- und Sportwoche, which I'm hoping they'll enjoy so that I can sign them up for next week as well. It was a bargain ?20 each for the week, which I think works out at less than ?1 per hour.

Nutella Don't worry about talking about your pregnancy; I enjoy pregnancies and babies vicariously as am too old and selfish to go through it all again myself!

EnglishWoman / admylin I would normally wake the DC at around 9 am at the weekends (not that they sleep that late more than about once a year) as otherwise they're not as tired and can't get to sleep in the evening and would be a nightmare to wake on Monday morning. But like I said, the "problem" rarely arises!

hupa Rooting for any team other than Germany sounds like you could be a secret Austrian. Hope the weather has improved by now; I know what you mean about being constantly hassled for food and drink. I never take the DC to the pool on my own, though; I don't mind it there if I can sit in the shade and read my book, but that's not exactly compatible with keeping an eye on three (or more) children in the water!

Gator at baby monkey. I also found it much more fun once they were mobile; the pre-walking and talking stage was by far the most difficult for me.

Happy Birthday to your DD Linzer !

Waking DC because otherwise they would not go to bed in the even and start a vicious cycle which would affect school mornings does make sense, I hadn't even thought about that! I just remember my dad bursting into my and my sisters rooms at 8am on weekends yelling "Haul your lazy carcasses out of your stinking pits, it's the middle of the morning!" (He really did say carcasses and stinking pits, every weekend, it is burned into my brain) and I never got why he was so offended by us sleeping in.... especially as once up we didn't have a lot to do, in a village in the middle of nowhere with very limited public transport, and seemed to get on his nerves if asked for lifts anywhere or we sat around reading/ chatting/ bickering/ arguing :o Now that sleeping past 6am (or even until 6am) is such a rare luxury I can't quite get my head around deliberately waking a child when they don't have to be out the door within the next hour :o

Wow, that is inbearable heat. Hope it doesn't stay that hot for you Linzer, I'm enjoying a very cool, non humid summer up to now in north Germany.

Nutella have you found this fb group yet? English speakers in Hannover I think they've just started a baby group (meetings) that might be a good place to ask about Hebamme etc.

Tomorrow the Klempner is coming again to try and unblock my Leitung. Not sure if he will manage it but atleast he's been given the go ahead to try! Off to kieferorthopäde today with my revised, more affordable treatment plan. Half the price but still over 3000? for both dc.

NoHun hope the move went well - it was 1st of July wasn't it?

Don't ask me where I got inbearable from! Just ignore...!

admylin yes I do know that group but got a bit bored of all the ahem hannover people there... yes I know I'm quite mad. But sometimes they can be a bit too errr alternative for me, sorry I don't want to offend anyone but you're right probably a good place to ask more questions!

Oh and you must have been here too long inbearable

Sorry, I don't sound like I appreciated your idea, I do, I'm just very tired!! I'd totally forgotten about the baby group.

Thanks for the idea admylin :o

Has the plumber managed to unblock the pipes yet, admylin? ?3000 still sounds steep; how much is covered by the Krankenkasse? We had to pay ?300 for DD1's (small) brace, of which half was covered; the orthodontist told us a full brace would have cost around ?1000.

Half the morning has already gone on shopping (food shopping plus presents for a party the DC have been invited to this afternoon), but at least I'll get a few hours to myself while they're all at the party. A friend might be coming over for coffee, but at least we'll be able to have an uninterrupted conversation; DD2 picks up on absolutely everything, so you can't discuss anything "interesting" with her around!

Grrr- my entire kitchen is covered in a thin layer of dust - the Klempner has just left Linzer. He didn't manage to get any more water out of the Leitung so he is going to come back on Friday and try to put a new pipe from the sink tap, down through the worktop to under the sink so I can connect my dishwasher there.

I asked before he came if I should prepare the kitchen in any way and he said no it'll be fine as it is. Now I am going to have to wipe down everything from pictures, lamps and light switches to cupboard doors, everything is covered in dust. He only drilled a hole about the size of a normal building brick.

Nutella no problem, I'm in that group but don't join their meetings and hate it when someone asks a question and gets told to 'read the info document' or 'why don't you try google', nice welcome to Hannover! The baby/toddler group might be a good place to get info - unless that's in their info document already too!

Grr to the dust, admylin. It gets everywhere, doesn't it. I hope the Klempner manages to get it sorted fairly quickly so you can connect your dishwasher soon. (Having to handwash anything except baby stuff generally ends in a nervous breakdown and or divorce in our flat - we've only had a dishwasher for the past two years but are totally spoiled by it now!)

Nutella Is Hannover a bit hippy, then? For some reason I always imagined it to be quite conservative. I'm another who is quite enjoying the pregnancy ramblings :)

Enjoy your child-free time, Linzer! DH's niece is exactly the same and repeats stuff you had no idea she had heard. Funny for us, not so much for her parents. Looking forward to that stage... I hope you manage to have a nice coffee with your friend.

Thinking of taking DS to a different park today, to see different ducks - I lead a crazy life sometimes.

Gator yeah bits of it. It's a funny mix but with limited errr culture

It seems that in Hannover (maybe it's the locals we know) people are happiest when they can have a very boring meal for a very low price...
The friends I've made at my language course (a wonderful colourful bunch :o ) occasionally apologise for moaning about Hannover... It's an odd place. Sorry!! Rant done!

admylin I will check the info document and then post some questions... lets see what happens :o you'll know it's me when you see the question about midwife recommendations :o

and Gator different park, different ducks? You're wild!! :o

Gator hope ds likes the different ducks ! I had a rotation of parks and walks to go on when my 2 were tiny and we lived auf dem Land, a highlight was seeing a combine harvester or tractor on the field!

Nutella agree about Hannover. We moved from Berlin so sleepy little town would be a fiting name for it here!

First wipe down of my kitchen is complete but it has only spread the dust or made it stick even more so it's going to need a second wipe after my coffee. I hope I find something quick and edible in the freezer for lunch or the dc will be having sandwiches!