Die Kaffeestube Teil 2 - virtual Kaffeeklatsch in Germany and Austria

[cheaspicks]

Chat for those living in a German-speaking country, or anyone else who is interested.

Ploom I always have to think for a few seconds before using schwul/schwül to make sure I use the right one (it took me a good 10 seconds now to remember which is which!).

Yes, a Vorschul year in the school would be an excellent idea - that's what DS is doing, but he's in the minority.

Have fun at the Freibad with cheaspicks!

I always say "feuchtwarm" to avoid saying "schwul/schwül". However I wanted to describe someone as effeminate recently and hesitated so long trying to think of a German word that the person I was speaking to obviously thought I was homophobic . "Schwul/schwül" (I still don't know which is which) wouldn't have been quite right anyway, but might have saved the situation.

Someone told me at the weekend that they wouldn't have known I wasn't German if I hadn't been speaking English to DD. I don't know if they actually heard me speaking German, though . Anyway DH immediately said, no she doesn't speak akzentfrei, she can't distinguish between u and ü .

My dc also laugh at my schwu(ü)le weather and zu(ü)ru(ü)ck as I often can't hear the difference and say it wrong. Dd sits and teaches me but she's very strict and gives up on me for not trying hard enough when I always get it wrong!

We're off to spend more money on last bits and bobs for school and a birthday present for dd's friend then pysio after lunch. ds is off swimming with his friends so I hope it warms up abit or none of them will want to go.

I agree as linzer says if I had only had dd at kindergarden (she loved it) I would have said it was great but ds hated it and couldn't wait to leave. In Berlin if we'd only had dd's teacher I'd have said it was a good school but ds had Pech and had a really bad teacher and rubbish class making me see the school in a more negative light. Thank goodness he's hit it lucky this time around and has a great class.

cheaspicks so glad it isn't only me with u and ü!

Its me too - have had the same kind of session with dd as you with yours admylin. I hear the difference but cant replicate it exactly and def cant hear it in conversation.

I must have spent years saying beeindrückend before DH kindly pointed out (with a smirk) that it's actually beeindruckend. I'm just avoiding the word now.

Oh yes, "drückend" is another option to describe humid weather, or is it "druckend"...

I'm so glad I'm not the only one with u-ü problems! I just avoid certain words sometimes too and am always scared of the schwul-schwül thing. DH taught me to just really emphasise the ü when talking about the weather to help me remember but I'm not sure it really does help, tbh!

DS is having a nap so I can finally get on and post properly.

Good luck at your physio appointment, admylin. I hope they manage to sort your shoulder out and aren't too rough!

Ploom A friend of mine in the UK is a physio and says exactly the same as you - she loves the job and hates the NHS politics. I think the hospital she works in is quite cliquey too though, which I'm sure doesn't help.

cheaspicks Enjoy the Freibad with Ploom!

Linzer If you come up with an alternative to super and schön do let me know! I'm sure I have a German thesaurus knocking around somewhere so I'll investigate this afternoon at some point. I try to use wirklich sometimes instead of echt, but it's hard to break the echt-habit (and I'm sure I sometimes sound like a teenager with my 'Echt?!' exclamations )

wantingmore Have a nice time with your DD and her new English friend.

TheEnglishWoman Is your DS2's cold clearing up? Are you managing to get a bit more sleep?

cheapicks I never seem to get druckend/drückend right either. I think DH is fed up with correcting me on that one!

Oh no hang on, I think I meant drucken/drücken in that last post.

Antique' ds2 is currently asleep on my shoulder, I can't put him down ashe wakes when I do, but at least he's sleeping, and I am multi-tasking "helping" DS1 build a "motor" on his bike, which involves cardboard and clothes pegs... DD is out, though we've banned her from her friend down the road as she's been there too much recently and started getting stroppy about being told to come home for meals! You'd think she was 16 not 6! Doesn't help that the friend is 8 and has 4 teenage siblings and her parents say they prefer dd to be at theirs as otherwise their dd is bored, but their dd is bossy and prefers her house to ours due to ours containg little brothers and rules and no wii ... DD's at a different friends today though.

Why do things allways go wrong when dh is away

cheas Ah yes, drückend sounds familiar - although it's part of my passive rather than my active vocab. Not sure how helpful it would be as a replacement for schwül, though, given my previous problems with drückend/druckend!

admylin I suppose it's the same everywhere and your personal experiences make you see the school system in a more positive or negative light. I'm reserving judgment on the Austrian school system until DS starts and will come down one way or the other then.

Antique I'm now worried that, while the DC sound like 40 year olds, I sound like a teenager constantly saying "echt?" (But I'm not as bad as DH, who has been known to say "cool". ) A friend of mine says "wirklich wahr?" which I'm not sure I could get away with, but wirklich is a good alternative. I caught DS saying "Bist du deppert!" (also an expression of surprise) the other day, but that's definitely not for me!

Our neighbour is back from work and has offered to take all the DC to the outdoor pool this afternoon. I really don't want to go (and had half-arranged for a friend of DD2's to come over, although it turns out she doesn't want her to come as she'd prefer to play with the neighbours, so I'll have to see if I can swap to another day instead), but I suppose I'll have to as I don't feel I can let her take all five DC (her middle one is going there too, but with another friend) much as I'd like to.

Hi Alice hope everything is ok

DD had a really great time at the park today with her new friend. They seem to get on really well which is great.

Linzer did you go to the pool in the end? if so hope you all had a good time.

Glad your DD had a good time today, wanting; I'm sure that finding a new friend will really help her to settle in.

Alice Have e-mailed you.

We did go to the pool in the end. The first hour was bearable but not my idea of fun; I sat on the edge and supervised (I find the water too cold to go in unless I'm actually swimming, but it was too hot to stand in the sun, so the edge was a good compromise). The second hour was much better; we bought all the DC ice creams and they went off to play in the sand, while we sat in the cafe with a couple of other mothers and chatted. Definitely a teurer Spaß (one of my favourite German phrases) though; with the ice creams and coffee, the two hours at the pool cost us nearly ?30.

I listened to my neighbour closely for alternatives to super and echt. She used toll (at the same time as I said "super!"), which I have already ruled out, and "bist du gescheit!" where I would have said "echt?". Am going to try out "bist du gescheit" on DH in a minute.

Hello, haven't posted for ages as the really long summer holidays here in America have been so busy. Hello to all the newcomers. Hope you all settle into MN/Germany really quickly. I post here because all the thread members are really friendly and welcoming and I am a German teacher.

A goes back to school next week and my Mum and Dad come out the same day, hopefully with a supply of chocolate.

Anyway, glad you all seem to have had wonderful summers. I loved the 3 weeks we had in the UK despite it being the wettest summer ever. I was a bit homesick during the Olympics, though the coverage here was awful.

I hope all accommodation/employment/muslin cloth acquiring/school starting problems are sorted out really painlessly.

Must actually do some planning while E is still at preschool. Bye for now!

cheaspicks trying to use schwül might be better than having people start having associations when hearing feuchtwarm

Evening everyone!

Life in the Eifel continues at a frantic pace . Actually today has been unusually dramatic as I returned from cleaning my old flat ready for handover to find DH has fired one of the waitresses. It was done with much pan throwing and gnashing of teeth so I hid upstairs.

Due to the drama I am only now having my dinner...

Ok can someone explain schwul/schwül to me please! I have avoided so far as I'm really not sure which is which...

Also, have I been embarrassing myself by accident again? Does druckend (no idea if there's an umlaut or not) have a double meaning??

Argh!!

No, no, no not embarrassing yourself

It's just one of these things, which are not in-correct and yet not really fir the bill...and would make some teenagers maybe giggle.

It's not wrong, maybe in English you'd describe it also as humid and not as moist-warm...

but you can say feuchtwarmes Klima, if you'd like to describe what the climate is in a certain country, for example....

Also, the akzentfrei is not usually described as a noun in itself such as Meine Akzentfreiheit, also technically not in-correct, but simply not really expressed that way

world Yes, I do realise that Akzentfreiheit doesn't actually exist and that I should have used akzentfreies Deutsch (if I had to use German at all), but it was more tongue-in-cheek than anything. I was going to write akzentfreiness, but then decided that as Freiheit exists, I would make up a more German-sounding word as it was slightly quicker to write than "well done on speaking without an accent" (which also doesn't sound brilliant IMO). And now I've spent so long explaining myself that I haven't actually saved any time at all.

Cake Sounds like an eventful day - I would probably have hidden too!

schwul means gay, whereas schwül means close/muggy. I always have to think twice before using them, but Antique's tip about emphasising the ü when talking about the weather is a good one that I'm going to try to remember!

spulen/spülen also confuse me. My way of differentiating them is remembering everyone in a Berlin cinema shouting "zurückspulen!" (rewind) when the film reel started playing up, but I still find myself mixing them up and using spulen when I'm washing up.

Hi Jenny, I'd been wondering how you were - hope you're surviving the long summer holidays! I also found myself getting a bit homesick during the Olympics, even though I was watching them in the UK.

Morning! Linzer you were up early!

Everyone has rubbish colds complete with crunchy coughs here now, and DS1 has a swimming lesson in the Freibad and has already missed 4 out of the total of 12, so really needs to go - he missed 2 due to DD and my trip to London (it seemed unfair to ask the in-laws to take him as it would be a long drive from theirs) and 1 was cancelled due to a bank holiday and 1 due to a thunder storm! He is swimming independently now - with a lot of coaxing he got all the way across the "fun" pool, about 10 meters, so would be good to keep the momentum up but normally I wouldn't take kids full of cold to the Freibad unless it were absolutely boiling hot! Plus we are due to go on holiday to Croatia on Sunday . DH is already being all doom and gloom about how he will doubtless catch the cold the day we go, and has decided the caravan (he chose to book) is too small after all

Wanting glad your younger one has found a friend, helps so much! Hope your DD1 meets somebody soon; it is probably quite hard moving at 11 even without the language issue, are there any clubs or activities she could go to where she might meet friends? Have you had a look for a "Families in Berlin" fb group (for English speakers) - I think there might be one, and if so it would be a good place to ask for local pointers like that.

I think quite often the German words we use on this thread (esp the ones I use!) arent completely correct within the sentence but sometimes a slightly wrong German word sounds better (and is faster!) than a whole sentence in English . I'm very guilty of doing this in real life too .

cakebump - that sounded like a right drama yesterday - what had she done to be fired [nosey emotion]!! Hope today is calmer. Glad linzer explained schwul & schwül cause i'd have to go and look which one is which. Always find it funny driving to Munich that somewhere is called "Feucht" . Wouldnt fancy living there.

I'm really just a taxi service today - got to drive to the local town to pick up a parcel that contains a present for a party I need to take dd to today. Then I need to pick up ds1's friend (as his parents dont have a car) for him to play at ours then take him home later then pick dd up! Fun day .

X posts english - we're all starting early this morning.

Well done to your ds1 on the swimming. Hope they feel all feel better soon - take it that means you're getting less sleep than ever??

Morning everyone!

Ploom The waitress has been pretty unreliable lately, and was an hour late for work last night. I wasn't here so DH ended up trying to cook and serve at the same time and was in a mega mood with her! When she had finished her shift he had a word with her and it all seemed ok, but when DH went into the kitchen she'd left it a bombsite and it was the final straw!

So now we're a waitress down and I'll probably end up having to cover the shifts...

Things generally at the restaurant are very stressful at the moment, so my plan is to just keep my head down and try and help where I can! :)

Oh and thanks for the schwul/schwül help!!

Have a good Wednesday everyone... I'm looking forward to my midwife appointment later :)

Morning all you early risers! I was up at 7am but have been good and done some housework and put washing in etc. Still looks like a bomb dropped in the kitchen despite it all being tidy when I left it at 9pm!

cakebump do you live above the restaurant? I used to work in the restaurant business while I was learning German and it was always realyl hard to get 'good' reliable staff. Hope you can find someone to help out.

ploom enjoy the driving around today! I'm not looking forward to all that starting again when the term starts. Taxi service is the least favourite part of my job.
I wanted to ask you - do you know a style of physio from your work where you press really hard on a point and just hold it? That's what the therapist did to me yesterday, was painful and hurt along the top part of my arm and then she went and pressed under my ribcage really hard with her fingers. Was very strange as a therapy for my shoulder as she never went near it.

english well done to ds for the swimming. Is he going to do his Seepferdchen certificate?

Hi jenny sounds like you could try some of your lessons out on us!! What level are you teaching this time?

wanting any news on a flat? There are some nice parks in Berlin aren't there? Great that dd has made friends already.

Well, better go and decide where to start in the kitchen. It's a mystery to me how so much mess can be made just from late night snacking that I have nothing to do with (all 3 of my family members guilty).