Der Nebel steigt, es fällt das Laub - a German and Austrian autumn thread

[AntiqueMuppet]

A thread for anyone living in Germany or Austria, or anyone else who fancies a chat.

Previous thread here

cheas It's so funny which subjects descend into bunfights sometimes on AIBU! Sometimes I type a post and then ask myself "hang on, do I really care?" and delete it :)

bienchen love that your DD walks along the bottom on the swimming pool! crafty girl :)

Ok so I think I have enough distance between myself and Sunday to report back on the craft fair/brunch now.....

...... disaster zone!

Well, the stalls looked amazing, the stallholders were lovely, DH worked his butt off to do a big brunch spread... and no-one came! We advertised widely...

It was really disappointing. Funnily enough we were then rammed all late afternoon and evening. I just don't know what happened!

We're considering whether to continue offering brunch as it's probably one of those things that has to be regular so people know it's on.

Just to add to the list of remedies, in Dhaka I was told to eat papaya and drink coconut water. That's what dh's family offered as treatment.

Anyway, hope your ds is better soon ploom, you could try offering him a ripe papaya but they're probably hard to come by in rural Bavaria!

Dd has changed the birthday plan thank goodness. Now she's having all the girls at 16:30 for birthday cake and whatever then they will set the dvd stuff up at 8pm when the quiet girl has been picked up. Phew!
She's found one 'cocktail' involving ice cream and some fizzy drink that she says tastes great so they can make that too.

cakebump sorry the brunch didn't work out. Good news that you were busy later on though. Maybe it should have been an afternoon craft sale at Kaffee und Kuchen time.

I was told papaya too admylin in India. Also bananas, to bind you together...

Do you mean Coke Float? Glass of coke with icecream in the top? mmmmm delicious and nice with lemonade too :)

Yes, she wants to do it with different flavours of lemonade and possibly add whipped cream and silver coloured sprinkles! She is creative!

We wondered whether afternoon would have been better, but all the handwerkermärkte round here seem to be Sunday morning things.

Oh well, I'm proud of us for trying....

We had such a busy week last week, I worked 4 double shifts Tuesday to Friday, then 10:30pm to 1am Saturday night, then we got up again at 6am on Sunday to do the brunch and I finished at around 2pm. I think I was very overwrought by Sunday.

My PIL then landed on us at 2pm and decided to stay the night.... meaning that our only day off together for 6 weeks (the Monday) was spent entertaining them. I was so disappointed and done in I had half an hour in bed in tears (being 30 weeks pg doesn't help!).

Anyway it had the result that DH will FINALLY speak to them about the random turning up-and-staying-over and point out that sometimes it is rather inconvenient. Hurray!

Sounds like they'll be bouncing off the walls with the sugar overdose admylin!!

cake oh dear, hope your dh can make them understand. You must be exhausted with those working hours. I worked like that when I was younger and was totally exhausted on the day off. Did the PIL atleast look after you abit?

Seeing as the girls won't be going to sleep anytime before midnight it won't make much difference how much sugar they have! Dd has asked me to make a carrot cake as a birthday cake so that's healthy right?!

CakeBump How disappointing after all that hard work. Were the stall holders happy with how it went once it filled up?
You must of been so frustrated when your PIL turned up. Hopefully dh having a word will have the desired effect.

admylin How many are staying for the sleepover? Hopefully being teenagers they´ll sleep in on Saturday morning.

Ploom How is ds1 today? I hope the rest of you have managed to avoid catching whatever it is.

Bienchen I´m glad you found an intensive course. I know when dd and ds learnt to swim, once a week just wasn´t enough. They spent most of the lessons waiting for other children to have their go and got hardly any swimming time at all.

I´ve just received a pinata that I ordered for ds´s birthday. It´s much bigger than I expected so it´s probably going to cost a fortune to fill it.

Hello... well I have read over what was written while I've been absent and I'm a bit but well.... never mind...

I am flying off to England later! Hurrah!!!!! :o I can't wait to see my family and I still have no idea if there is anything special I want to do but mostly seeing them eating a few favourite foods and trying to relax. My sleep seems to be finally catching up with me and I'm feeling much better than I was at the weekend which is a big relief!

Ploom hope your DS is feeling better!

admylin good luck with party on Friday (teenage girls sleep over sounds perfect for a party and nightmare for parents... probably why I never had one :) )

Right, better get back to sorting stuff out.... Have a great weekend everyone!!

admylin it's odd with the PIL - as nutella can testify with hers (from the sounds of it!) they are lovely, lovely people, so helpful, really look after me etc etc.... so when they are here they are fine (apart from they bring their dog who NEVER STOPS BARKING grrrrrrrr).

It's just that they don't think - so they would turn up on our day off and not think for a minute that actually, we get no time together, our day off is really important, and due to various outside factors at the moment we haven't actually had a day to ourselves in 6 weeks.... my parents don't even Skype on a Monday because they know it's "our time".

Also, staying over is mega awkward when we have a one bedroom flat, but they haven't realised that this is my home too now and it's a bit of an invasion of privacy when they are on the sofabed and I can't even get a glass of water without confronting them in my pj's...

Like I say, they are lovely, they just haven't "adjusted" to the fact that DH and I are together and have our own life/way of doing things/privacy requirements now. I'm sure, actually, that they would be really shocked if they knew we felt this way and we definitely don't want to upset them.

Anyway... :)

re: the carrot cake, I suppose you could count it as one of your 5 a day... but my recipe has half a litre of veg oil in it so, ummm healthy it is not! :)

hupa unfortunately it got busy around 4pm (for dinner service), and the stalls were gone by 1pm. I felt really bad for them, but they were all really nice about it. We gave them free brötchen and tea/coffee.

It puts me off doing anything because I feel like the village really doesn't support us at the moment. They all like the fact that we are here, but if they don't come to these things we might not be here much longer!

Enjoy the UK nutella!

BTW I always type "nutelly" instead of "nutella" when I'm addressing you! No idea why!?

cake I do that lots too! I keep meaning to change my settings so I can't read anything other than "Living Overseas" and possibly the bilingualsm bit but then I'd have to find another way to waste time.

Such a shame that the craft fair wasn't a success, and then to have your PIL turn up on your day off like that . I hope you'll be able to avoid overdoing things the next few weeks - I found being on my feet for long periods increasingly difficult at that stage of pregnancy.

admylin carrot cake definitely counts as healthy in my book! Coke float with whipped cream otoh would not be my cup of tea, but each to their own .

hupa I think some people add scrunched-up crépe paper to fill up a pinata, otherwise things like those Hanuta bars are fairly big without being heavy enough to cause injury when they fall out. I bought far too much to go in DD's pinata last birthday - they get heavy pretty fast when you start filling them!

bienchen well done on finding the swimming course. DD isn't quite old enough yet, but I know a couple of older kids who haven't been very happy at swimming lessons here, so I'm a bit gespannt as to how it will pan out when the time comes. An intensive course certainly sounds like a good idea from what people have said on here anyway.

nutella have a wonderful time in the UK!

cheas I posted on facebook that I'd done 4 double shifts, and my mum saw it and emailed DH to give him a bit of a telling off about letting me do too much!! :) .

I'm planning on slowing down at the end of the month, then stopping completely at the beginning of December. Its a bit needs-must at the moment, but I'm lucky that I feel up to it.

Oops almost forgot - Happy Birthday Linzer!!

Have a lovely day

Thanks Cake (and everyone who's posted on my FB)! Sorry the craft fair didn't work out; what a shame you didn't get more local support.

Have a great trip Nutella.

I've been lurking but don't have much time to post as I'm snowed under with work at the moment. Talking of which, must get back to it.

Linzer is obviously treating herself to a MN-free day for her birthday .

Please can I bounce another teaching idea off you all? I need a game idea to replace picture consequences (which the kids find very difficult to understand) when I teach body parts. I'm thinking of playing a version of pin the tail on the donkey using a big cardboard drawing of a figure - do you think that would be okay? I mean, blindfolding the kids and all! I'm not sure what exactly to use as a pin, though - any ideas?

X-posted, sorry. Shame you've got so much work to do today, Linzer. Hope you can declare Feierabend soon!

Ooooh before its too late- Happy Birthday Linzer!! Aren't you supposed to be out buying yourself a present as per your phone's instructions the other day?

Cake I've been called just nuts on another thread.... Think that was a name shortening ... What a pity the village didn't participate! Really sorry that you out in so much effort and it didn't work out .... Well hopefully future plans will be better!
And yes my PIL are lovely and very keen and most things they want come from the right place... but it is really hard to get them to understand we also want to do things our way. They are massively overexcited about their first grandchild and I know they can't wait to do lots of things with it but in reality some of what they want is still a few years off.... I won't be surprised if they start asking in May when they can take the bubba on holiday :o

Cheas I like the idea but I'm rubbish at coming up with my own ideas... Wish I could help

Right, I think I'm almost ready, need to pop out and do a few errands then I'm off!
Cake I think you're off to the UK this weekend too aren't you? Hope you have a good trip too!

cheas that sounds good to me - I'd use a laminated arrow on a bit of blutack maybe?

thanks Nutella, I leave on Friday :) :)

cakebum - I think I'm going to join your mum in giving you both a bit of a telling off - thats way too much to be working but I can understand it must be hard to step back when its your business. I worked full time right up till I was 37 weeks pregnant with dc1 and remember feeling ok but tired obviously. Gutted for you that no-one turned up for your craft fair - maybe the afternoon might work next time? And grrrr at your PIL - think your dh really needs to have a word.

linzer - happy birthday!!! Hope you didnt have to work too hard and get some cake later (and some sekt too of course!).

nutella - have a fab time in England - so . I wanna go [stomps feet like a 2 year old].

hupa - I've never seen those pinatas apart from in party pieces brochures - do you just have one and the dc take it in turns hitting it till it falls down?

admylin - dd was in a foul mood when she came home yest but I'll ask her about the cocktails tonight (if her mood is better!). I used to love a coke float when I was a teenager - that and spaghetti ice cream from the local italian cafe. Dont fance a coke float now tho.

Thanks for the dehydration tips cheas - think any risk of bunfights on this thread is gone now . He had 4 or 5 episodes of diarrhoea yesterday and another one this morning so not out the woods yet. But still no other signs of being ill - very strange.

bienchen - I had the same problems with dd and swimming when she was about 6. We also ended up going to a pool where she couldnt put her feet down and it was the best way for her to learn to swim. I see that also in my boys - ds2 swims way better than ds1 as ds2 cant stand in any pool so he has to swim whereas ds1 can swim but doesnt if he can walk about the pool. Also agree that an intensive course is a good way to learn.

Doubt I'm going to get a good sleep tonight - dh has a 24 hour blood pressure monitor on today - it measures it every 15 mins . Think I might be sending him to the guest room to sleep!

Ploom I haven't seen my bum in a while, admittedly (hard to turn around) but does it look like a cakebum? :) :)

. Note to self - check posts before posting!! (I still have a cakebum all these years later!)

Linzer Happy Birthday. Have you got anything exciting planned for this evening?

cheas Thanks for the pinata filling tips.
I was going to suggest blu tac, but see Cake got there before me.

ploom I´ve never had a pinata before, but the idea is that each child is blindfolded and then has a go at hitting the pinata until the sweets fall out. At least that was what ds said happened at the party he went to.

Cake and Nutella Have a great time in England.

We´re off to Turkey for a week on Friday. I´m really looking forward to it, but I´m half wishing we´d planned to go to London instead.

at cakebum! Talking of cake, I've just sent DD1 to the baker's to buy some as I've invited our neighbour and her DC over for coffee; I'd been planning to bake one this morning, but that was before I realised that I'd have to work.

Ploom The spare room sounds like a good idea if you want to get any sleep! (I wish we had one.) Am keeping my fingers crossed that DH will get back in time for us to have Sekt; I'd feel rather sad opening a bottle on my own (could always invite the neighbour back over, I suppose!).

cheas I was also going to suggest blu-tack rather than a pin; the game sounds like a good idea otherwise. I used to spend ages looking for different games to play when I was teaching English, and have lists and lists of them somewhere; I only ever used a couple, I think.

Nutella It's lovely that your ILs are so excited about the baby, although I can understand it must get a bit much at times. My ILs had already spent years looking after SIL's children by the time ours arrived, so I think the novelty had worn off a bit by then! My PIL have always been good with the children, although SIL and her family like to dispense rather patronising useful advice.

Anyway, must get back to work while I have the chance; DS is out at a friend's and DD2 has two friends over, so the girls are all playing together. It's actually quite easy to get work done when just the DDs are here, particularly when they're doing their homework; it gives me hope for a few years' time! Having to end my working day at around 11.45 am isn't ideal.