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 I´m not sure about the tick impfung and babies. I probably wouldn´t vaccinate, especially as you´re only going for a few days and by Sept/Oct the weather may not be so brilliant (not that it is now) so less chance of lots of skin exposure for the ticks. I´ll ask dh (Hausarzt) later. Even though he´s very pro vaccination, we´ve never bothered with that one when we´ve been to visit my brother in Bayern even though that is also a high risk area.

Linzer Hope you´re feeling better after your moan. Where abouts in Italy are you off to? We´re heading to a Eurocamp in Brittany on Friday. The forecast at the moment is just like here - rain and sunny intervals, but a few degrees cooler. I don´t like the heat, so don´t mind the temperature, but it would be nice if it stayed dry.

admylin Is there another level of management above your dh´s boss where he could complain? Maybe that would only make the situation worse. I bet it will be really strange to have him around for a month because he´s usually such a workaholic.

Gator not sure if it's recommended for babies but if available probably best to have it. We used to live in one of the danger areas when the dc were smaller and I used to have to do a full body search at bath time every night.

Not sure what dh managed to answer (or not) but he was really mad until the early hours of the morning! The boss is very unorganised even though it's her job to run the place. She forgot to get her chinese student enrolled properly so he wasn't health insured, forgot to send a plan in for money for another student, managed to get his money at the very last minute but it'd have been a catastrophe for him if she hadn't as he's from Bulgaria and can't get financial help from home so rent, food and insurance wouldn't have been payed. Another PhD student was promised some grant money and that fell through. Now he might get some in September and he's lucky that he can live at home.

Thanks hupa and admylin.
The Dr's receptionist just called me back and said they don't give the tick vaccination to babies under a year old, so that was nice and easy! I think we're going 2 weeks after his first birthday so I guess it's just long sleeves, no crawling on the grass (thank you zecken.at!) and a full body check every night, like admylin suggested.
We were there a few years ago in June and although it rained and was cold the whole time, all 7 of us had ticks on us at some point. DH's family have just been for a week (of 35°c annd bright sunshine) and had no problems at all, so I guess it depends on the weather.

hupa Have a lovely time in Brittany.

admylin Does her boss realise how incomptent she is? Did you mention a while ago that it was quite cliquey there? That's a very unhealthy work environment for your DH (not that you need me to tell you that :) )

Linzer I missed your last couple of messages as I was trying to stop DS snacking on the laptop cable as I was reading through. Whereabouts in Italy are you off to? I hope the break helps.

My brother is bringing one of these for DS when he comes over in September. There was a Pepper Pig one too and I instantly thought of your DD, Linzer!

admylin thats great :) I'll let DP know that I'll be off at some point back to an interesting city

Gator it was funny because we got confused about some names and DPgot a bit huffy another ones that "don't exist" in German... We compromised that if spelling and pron aren't too big an issue it can go on the list.

Had the 16 week check up yesterday.... managed to put on 3kilos last month [shock. But I think it was more that the previous weigh in was a fluke and we've been on holiday (almost two weeks in France=eating, non?).
Anyway, going to sort of diet this month ok less cakes and try and move a bit more...
They did the extra scan and the baby still has a favourite corner and is pretty lazy. DP tried to wake it up by calling schokoladen and I said that since its his baby too Wurst is more appropriate, then we all laughed and woke the baby :o

Nutella Knowing what I know now, I would probably have been more adventurous with the DC's names and gone for more English girls' names; the Austrians seem perfectly able to cope with foreign names, I've discovered. I would have avoided an Engish name with an a in it, as it would annoy me if people tried to pronounce it as an ä, but that's probably just me getting irrationally annoyed about the a/ä thing!

Gator Was going to say that Zeckenimpfungen here are recommended for children aged 1 and over, but I see you've already found that out. It's actually three Teilimpfungen and then a booster every 3-5 years, so I should probably check when our next one is due. The advice is to check your children carefully if they've been out in long grass/the woods, etc., particularly behind the ears, although I know one boy who managed to pick up a tick in his garden (he was fine, though).

We used to have one of those Mr Bump gel pads too! I didn't realise you could get Peppa Pig ones as well; don't tell DD2.

hupa We're off to the obere Adria, whatever that's called in English - three days in Caorle and then a week in Bibione. Half of Austria goes there for their summer holidays, as it's within driving distance, and the other half goes to Croatia. I'm not a fan of the heat either; mid-twenties is fine for me, as I tend to melt at 30° and above.

Feeling much better now after several coffees, hobnobs and a long chat with my friend. (I was just feeling a bit "used"/taken for granted Gator, but think I've got it out of my system now after moaning to DH about it last night and to my friend this morning!) Now have to go and pick up DD2 and DS; it's amazing how much longer the morning feels when I don't have to pick them up until 1 pm rather than at 11.50 am.

Linzer I often feel better after a moan! Glad you enjoyed your coffee :)
I used "whinge" with an American friend & had to explain it, I need a fellow native sometimes
And it would drive me nuts to have it constantly mispronounced, my name is Gemma and that's hard enough :o

Wish I had a Mr Bump bruise cooler

Just wait a year or so and you'll have an excuse to buy one, Nutella.

I know exactly what you mean about needing a fellow native to whinge to. Even though my German is fluent, it's not quite the same as being able to speak English to a native speaker (preferably over tea and "proper" biscuits).

Does your name get pronounced with a hard g? DH had a colleague with the same name, but it was pronounced in the Spanish way. (Weirdly, she keeps popping up as a friend suggestion on Facebook, despite us never having had e-mail contact and DH not being on FB.)

Have just had a phone call from the tax office asking how my returns for 2009 and 2010 had gone so horribly wrong. Luckily the woman was very nice about it and said she just needed to write down a reason, weil es nicht sehr oft vorkommt (that someone messes up as badly as I did, I assume).

Yeah but I want one for me Linzer... I don't wanna share!

Yeah either a hard G or soft j/y sound... DP's dad is the worst offender

I have a student at Bahlsen (the biscuit company, in their head office) it's a great building and we walk past the marketing offices, which have every kind of biscuit in them, to get to his office. Sadly I'm only seeing him one more time... Ahhh biscuits! I have a big packet of custard creams in reserve :o

ILs are funny with their pronunciations, aren't they? My MIL pronounces DD2's name in the English rather than the German way (stress on a different syllable); I have no idea why, especially as she doesn't speak a word of English.

We have a few packets of custard creams in the cellar as they were half-price at M&S a while back. We can get bourbons there too, but they only have M&S brand biscuits so I have to wait until we're back in the UK to feed my hobnob addiction. Luckily I still have three packets left so those should last me until August, as should my two big bars of Fruit & Nut.

DD2 and DS stayed overnight at friends' last night so we went out for a meal at the Greek restaurant down the road. We've sold the land (well, a price has been agreed) opposite my ILs' house for quite a good price, so DH decided we should have a bottle of wine to celebrate. I realised after about two small glasses that I'd reached my limit, so DH had to finish off the bottle (I wondered whether we should take it with us, but he looked at me in a mixture of horror and embarrassment when I suggested doing so) and admitted to feeling quite tipsy when we were walking home. He hasn't surfaced yet. Quite what I'm doing up at 6 am, I'm not sure. I said I'd pick up all the children at 8 and take the boys to KiGa and the girls to the Ferienbetreuung, but I don't exactly need two hours to have breakfast.

Gator the tick borne infection immunisation is definitely not for babies under 1. Our area is also red on the map, and DC3 had a tick on his T shirt at the Kindergarten Sommerfest (luckily it hadn't bitten before we spotted it) - my older 2 have been fully immunised but I have had different advice from different doctors on whether to immunise a 1 year old, some say it's not proved safe for children under 2, others say it's fine after 12 months. It is a minefield when you get different advice and the threat is real. Anyway I don't think they'll immunise your DC as he's still under 1 isn't he?

Linzer hope you feel better today?? Haven't read everything and just realised time is getting away from me and I need to leave for toddlers - I have somehow ended up running German toddlers, how ironic (the leader's DC is going to KiGa in Sept and she wanted to stop, and nobody else offered, yet somehow when I said I'd take the key and be in charge of opening up and the money/ admin several people said in that case they actually would like to keep coming).

Big thunder storm here first thing and DD was pretending to have hurt her leg in the night and not be able to walk, so I drove her to school despite the fact she kept forgetting to limp :o

Linzer he is the only one, he hasn't even picked which sound to start my name with and alternates it as he pleases

They are renovating something somewhere next door... Que intermittent drilling starting at 8am. Just when I was enjoying a really good sleep!

It's very grey and a bit chilly here today. I was going to go for a walk... Well I still should, where is summer?

Nutella The Mr Bump is totally for me, not DS :)
DS' name begins with J and a lot of people pronounce it as a sort of dzh, even though the name is fairly well known here. A Japanese friend of mine even adds an extra syllable, so not as safe a choice as I thought! It doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would though.

Linzer How's your head? I'm very jealous of your fruit and nut.

TheEnglishWoman The receptionist who called me back said they didn't immunize the under ones, so that rules DS out. We are going about 2 weeks after his birthday so will just be on tick alert.

Remember my friend who is convinced I am doing everything wrong with DS? Sleeping too long causes brain damage, rolling onto his front while playing will suffocate him, the lack of socks will cause the world to stop turning? Once again I am massively annoyed with her! Her DD is 2 months younger than DS, and is really long and skinny, whereas DS can only be described as pummelig. He is a bruiser, I realise this. We met up with them at the weekend (she's married to DH's colleague so I can't really avoid it sometimes) and she asked how much DS weighs. She then spent the whole time pointing at him, saying '10 kilos' and laughing. Once or twice I could have coped with, but it was the whole 3 hours we were with them. Leave him alone! She doesn't seem to get that babies are different and that everything that isn't the same as her DD isn't actually a freak of nature. I realise I'm probably just being a bit over sensitive but it really wound me up.
I was a bit smug though once I realised that, yet again, the things she told me off for when DS was her DD's age are the exact things she does with her DD now.

Coffee made, biscuits opened, rant over. Sorry

What biscuits you got Gator :o
And Linzer do you have an m&s near you? If you do, I'm so jealous!

And don't worry Gator I'm sure your DS will get his own back sooner or later :) and by the sounds of it he'll be a much nicer child .

I spent an hour talking to my little bro about crisps once, it was very hard

How ridiculous Gator; even if your friend didn't realise that babies come in all different shapes and sizes , surely she would be tactful enough not to keep on about it. FWIW DD1 was a huge baby and most other babies looked scrawny and skinny next to her; she's now one of the smallest in her class and weighs less than DD2 (not that you were worried about your DS's weight, I'm sure).

My head is fine, thank you; I knew when to stop drinking! (Annoyingly, DH felt fine this morning too - although he was tipsy rather than actually drunk.)

Nutella I suppose at least my MIL - unlike your DP's dad - has the excuse that she hears me pronouncing DD2's name in the English way, although it does sound a bit strange when an Austrian says it when they're speaking German.

DH tried to correct his nephew's pronunciation of their cat's name, Blackie. Nephew replied no, it's bläckie, like the colour bläck. You're fighting a losing battle, really.

Yes, there's an M&S in Bratislava, which is just over an hour's drive from us. I could always distribute biscuits on our round-Germany tour next month - I can fling some your way when we're in (near) Hannover.

Actually we're thinking about going there on Sunday if the weather isn't good, so let me know if you'd like anything Ploom (and possibly silken?).

EnglishWoman Sounds like running the toddler group could be fun as long as there's not too much admin involved.

The DC are usually fine about walking to school in the morning; it's at lunchtime that I get the phone calls (normally from DD2) that her legs hurt and can I come and pick her up. Both the girls started walking to and from school on their own (i.e. without me, but with other children) within a couple of months, but I can't imagine DS doing so for a long time; he seems a lot less mature than they were at the same age.

For those who live in Germany, Edika / Neukauf sell Hobnobs, both plain and chocolate...

Only half concentrating as DD is driving me a bit nuts with her maths homework as usual. Mind you the task is a bit obtuse...

Is it normal for parents not to be invited to school sports day in Germany, can anyone confirm? Guess I should check with neighbours but it sounds as though we are not expected to go.

On the baby weight thing DD was 4.1kg at birth and put on 0.5kg a week for ages on breast milk alone, and was round until she walked, but now she also weighs less than her 2 years younger brother (who was 0.5kg lighter at birth) and is the joint smallest child in her class (though she is also the youngest so not a surprise, but she is not big nor chunky)! *Gator your Japanese "friend" sounds beyond irritating!

I had a cleaning lady start for us last week, but her husband committed suicide at the weekend, so obviously she's not going to be working for the foreseeable future! Selfish to think of this in terms of the fact that after months of working up to finding a cleaning lady I again don't have one of course, poor woman! BTW do people in Germany send cards in situations like this? I don't feel I know her well enough to call or anything, only met her twice.

DD has just informed me her teacher has told her to get a new homework folder as hers is looking battered - seriously, with 2.5 weeks of term to go? Will the world end if I don't bother til she starts 2nd class?

EnglishWoman if you have one handy I'd just give her one and you can use it next term or not? Do whatever you can to keep the teacher happy is my motto!
I have a pile of new folders, files and note books of all different lineage/squarage and with or without a margin - you never know what they are going to need and usually at 6pm they remember for the next day when the local shops are closed!

Never been to a sports day in Germany except the one time I was supervising in Berlin. It was an eye-opener I can tell you that!

Gator her boss is just happy to have a woman professor on the team, as she gets more points for research money and some other stuff just by being a woman!!

Nutella the scans are great aren't they, could you recognise anything? I've just been back to bed all morning trying to not let this sore throat (thanks dc) get the better of me. Started last night, twice as bad as the dc had it. If it's all cleared up Westvan (a fleeting member of the mn german thread) and I are meeting in the city centre sometime next week so if you fancy a coffee let me know!

Looks like you had a few recommendations for hospitals and midwives already from the fb English group. I didn't know there were so many hospitals in Hannover!

admylin I also keep a stockpile of exercise books etc. for the very same reason; even if the DDs remember before the shops are closed, it's a half-hour round trip to Libro which is a bit far if you just need one exercise book.

EnglishWoman Not sure about sympathy cards, but it can't hurt to send one. Do they send those cards with photos of the dead person in Germany too? I find it very morbid and can't understand why anyone would want to put them on display (as some do).

DD1 should be catching the train back about now, as DH is picking her up from the station at 4 pm. Rather handily, he works at the station (his office is in the station building) so he doesn't have far to go.

Is she accompanied or by herself in the train Linzer? You'll be glad to get her back, I bet it was too quiet without one of them! I hate it when one of mine is away.

Stockpiling is the way to go! I used to be good with clothes too when the dc were tiny I would have the next couple of sizes stored for when they grew but I think I stopped that when they were 5 or 6 as I couldn't figure out what size they would need for what season! Now, if I could just get over to the UK for a shopping trip I could get loads of clothes for them, fed up of the prices here, especially for sports wear.

Her cousin (DH's niece) is bringing her back to Vienna and then catching the next train back to Linz. There was some talk of her staying overnight with us, but she decided not to in the end.

I still stockpile clothes - a size will usually last the DC for a year, so if I see anything on sale that I like, I usually buy it. I have boxes up to 158+ for the girls (virtually all the larger sizes are hand-me-downs from their cousin) and up to about 134 for DS.

Sportswear is ridiculously expensive here too. DH wants some running gear and has been waiting for a while to get some from Lidl/Hofer; they finally have some at Lidl, so I've got to go and get a few bits and pieces for him tomorrow.

Linzer go as early as possible for the sports stuff. Lidl had running stuff from Monday this week and dd wanted to try the shoes and tops and at 4pm they had 2 pairs of shoes left and no tops in 2 lidls! Guess you have to be quick to get their bargains.

Raining again, dd is being a softy and wanting to opt out of hockey training! They play in all weather but she's obviously got some of her dads genes, as he also won't set foot out in the rain and if he gets wet for a few minutes he catches a cold.

admylin I'm always up for Kaffeeklatsch :o and make your DD go to hockey practice in the rain! Actually don't, I'm only feeling mean because I just cycled home and got very wet!
Am off for a nice warm shower!!!

Linzer I'm almost afraid to ask about the cards you mentioned... Are they of the person when they were living? Thinking back to old strange Victorian pictures of dead people...

So going to hunt for hobnobs later, thanks Englishwoman! :)

Linzer and admylin how organised you are with your stockpiles! I have much to learn!

I have accidentally had clothing sizes ahead of time due to hand-me-downs from friends (and of course for DS2 I have everything of DS1's) and flea-market bargains bought in bigger sizes by MIL, but have never deliberately bought sizes ahead. DD was all out of season for the stuff MIL sent to us when she was born in the UK - MIL sent about 6 sizes starting with size 50, which she never even squeezed into at all (all her sons were tiny newborns, under 3kg - they are all over 6ft now though) but as DD was a big baby and grew fast a lot of it was unusable - she never needed a size 54cm snow-suit or size 68cm summer clothes etc. More recently she suddenly went from 110cm to 122 over-night (well it seemed that way) so I'm glad I didn't buy much 116! DS1 is pretty much doing the same now (a year earlier than DD) and is mostly in 122cm (even though he is still 4!) - last summer he was still wearing some 104cm and mostly 110cm. So I would probably miss the mark if I tried to stockpile clothes!

The stationary is probably a good idea though - our stationary shop is also a half hour drive, and usually I have to pay to park and then walk because the 2 spaces that serve the 3 shops and the doctor right where it is are usually taken. Maybe I'll stock up tomorrow, she also said something about needing another of the "rough work" pads they have. She can just have a plain homework folder though - the 2 she's got through so far have been ?6+ ones with pony pictures on them!

EnglishWoman if you can get to aldi and lidl check out their school specials, I just got packs of 5 A4 Schulhefte for 99cent each and A3 Zeichenblocks for 1,50? for next term.

I've still got loads of the maths books from last time. Honestly I don't know why I'm skint all the time, I'm so good at bargain hunting on the rare occasion that I make it before everything is sold out that is!

Nutella I'll PM you! Couldn't convince dd about hockey but she's going tomorrow as it'll be one of the last ones before summer break.

admylin I was planning on going to Lidl at 8 as I want to be at the hairdresser's when they open at 8.30 am, so hopefully I'll be in good time - I don't think running gear is quite as sought after as children's ski wear, for example. Last time I was there getting running gear for myself, I thought I was going to be competing with about 30 middle-aged and elderly not-particularly-fit-looking people, but they all headed off in another direction!

Nutella The photos are actually of the person when they were still alive, you'll be glad to hear! They have the date of birth and date of death on them and possibly something else (a poem/saying, maybe) on them too, but I don't tend to examine them too closely! You often see them hanging up in churches (of all the people who've died over the last few months) and the families of the deceased also send them out.

EnglishWoman I shall definitely look out for hobnobs if we go past an Edeka when we're in Germany; they're extortionate enough in the UK (unless they have a BOGOF offer on), so I can't imagine they'd be much more expensive in Germany.

I think I must have slow-growing children, as they've never missed out a size and have always spent a while in one size - from the age of about 3, at any rate - so it's definitely worth me stockpiling. The fact that I can pass clothes straight on from DD1 to DD2 is quite handy, as it means I don't have as much to store as I used to, although I can see them being the same size in a few years' time (DD2 already weighs slightly more and has bigger feet ).