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

popular to?!?

Hello everyone and hello Charlotte.

I am sort of between agnostic and a firm believer, but then I only got a 2:1 and Mum was a Sunday school teacher. But then I live in America and you only really fit in if you have a church family. They would be the ones who help you out in times of crisis, etc. Possibly going to church at Christmas time is not enough to count as being part of the family. Dh has a PhD in physics (only a 2:1 originally) and is definitely not a believer, though his parents are church wardens, on the PCC etc. Am I muddying your statistical waters cheas?

Sorry about the A Levels not being recognised. I am finding similar with my qualifications here as the school boards would have to prove that there is not an American who could do the job as well as me.

Glad the snowboots got sorted Linzer. Pinatas are all the rage here (no symbols on this computer) and you can get them in all sorts of shapes but I like the original donkey best. Hope it's fun!

A is off school today and tomorrow for teacher conferences and she has a friend over so better go and supervise. Hope you are all having a great evening and apols for missing anyone out.

Hi charlotte, welcome to the thread :)

Linzer it is difficult to tell, because Tuesday bizarrely was a really good day for us, but yesterday and today have been tote Hose, and given that it is school holidays plus sunny weather, I would say it must be the roadworks having an effect.

The road is completely ripped up now so even though you can squeeze through, it really is dangerous. I'm sure the only reason the Gemeinde haven't closed the road is because they would have to pay us compensation. I reckon we're losing about ?150 a day at the moment!

Hi Charlotte, my daughter lives in Berlin. She loves it there. I have only been to Berlin once for a weekend trip but I loved it.

Morning. Busy day for me as although dd is doing most of the entertaining for her party tonight I have to fumigate her room and tidy the rest of the place up and bake and cook. Must also get rid of the embarassing amount of empty wine bottles that are in the kitchen!

cheas dh is atheist and got a 1 in all his many diplomas and his PhD. He was brought up in a country with enforced religion and obligatory holy book studies.

flippity and charlotte (hi!) and how did you find the move back to the UK after so many years away? I tried a couple of months of going back a few years ago but it wasn't how I thought it would be and things had changed so much that I felt foreign!

flippity did your dd look at the course they offer at Berlin university for foreign students? It's some sort of access course for people with exams that aren't recognised if I remember rightly.

cake hope the road works don't last too long. Have you spoken to the Gemeinde or whoever to ask how long it's going to take?

jenny is the election hype big around where you live? I saw that volunteers go door to door campaigning. I've never had a campaigner here or in the UK.

Well, better go and start my carrot cake!

Morning! It's another very cold day here, so I've just finished putting all my summer clothes away and hanging my winter clothes up in the wardrobe. I managed to warm myself up with a run, but unfortunately the effect seems to have worn off already.

cheas In the interests of balance DH is a scientist who believes in God and has always got good grades (he has a PhD too). (Your survey provides an ideal opportunity for stealth boasting, btw. )

Jenny Yes, the church seems to be a far more important part of the community in the USA than it does here, even. I don't have a tilde on my computer either btw, but copied and pasted as I'm a linguistic perfectionist. (Am bound to make lots of mistakes in my post now that I've written that!)

Cake That must be so frustrating for you; I hope things return to normal asap.

admylin Good luck with the baking and hope the party goes well!

Morning!!

cheas - I failed my final exams the first time in my honours degree so didnt get the honours bit but have subsequently got a Masters Degree and I am definitely agnostic. I had a quick squizz through my FB friends yesterday - out of 125, over 80 went to University and out of those 80 only 6 are religious and 4 of them in the serious go to church every sunday and do missionary work kind of way. Of the ones who didnt go to University, only 1 is deeply religious. But I am beyong confused after all that chat about it yesterday as to whether this fits into your "study" or not .

hupa ´have a fab time in Turkey - jealous of you getting some warm sun .

linzer - glad you had a good birthday afternoon with your neighbour. Hope you enjoy your night out tomorrow. I also got some snowboots for ds1 from Aldi yesterday. There wasnt much fighting about the kids stuff but they were next to the women's fleeces and there seemed to be a bit of a rammy going on there.

english - we also have the same Bavarian Grundschule problem with religion - there is no escaping the morning prayer or the option of Catholic or Evangalisch of which we are neither. But dd started her education in the Uk in a non denominational school and there was still a lot of religion (altho there was also the teaching of and respect for other religions which is definitely lacking here at Grundschule level). Thankfully dd can do Ethik at the Gymnasium which she really enjoys.

Welcome to flippity and charlotte. I'm trying not to think that the Christmas markets arent too far away since I havent even started thinking about Christmas shopping. Like to get ds1's birthday next week out of the way first.

Ds1 went back to school yesterday - he'd been 24 hours clear of diarrhoea and was absolutely fine so there was no need for him to stay at home. But you can imagine the fight yesterday morning cause staying at home seemed a much more fun idea . But I stood firm and packed him off to school.

Dh's BP monitor wasnt actually too loud as you said admylin and it only woke me a couple fo times. His BP was just a bit high when he went for his over 35 check up so he's to go back on Weds to see how it was over 24 hours.

But I'm glad he didnt have it monitoring yesterday evening - ds1 had a maths test and was marked down for having the right answer - twice . The question said do the sum and write your Lösungsweg. The sume was 9+4 so ds1 wrote 13 but the Lösunsweg didnt make any sense (he wrote 9+5-1) but rather than give him 1 point from 2 she gave him zero . The same on the next sum. But then further down the page the question said "Schreibe, wie du rechnest" and there was a little bubble with 9,3 and 9 in it. So ds1 wrote 9+3+9=21 and this was wrong. He should have written 9+9+3=21!! . In the previous 2 parts of the question there was the possibility to add the number up to 10 first (eg 8+2+4+3) but with 9,9 & 3 it doesnt matter how you get there. So dh ahs written her a note and attached it to the test. Am kind of dreading the reply.

Ploom that is beyond annoying about the way your SA's maths test was marked! Ridiculous! I keep reading examples of things like that on here, its as if the tests are marked by computer not a thinking human being, dreading our turn for something like that, but so far DD's teacher seems pretty reasonable and human, despite also being quite strict and old school!

Linzer do you know sometimes I feel the need to stealth boast to remember I once had a brain, as I feel completely useless and incompetent most of the time, what with the combination of baby brain, 3 small kids and ensuing chaos, sleep deprivation which has basically been ongoing for 7 years, and living in a country in which I am not fluent in the language and only get to make face to face conversation in my mother tongue with my own family most days/ weeks... I can hardly reconcile myself with the bright student I allegedly once was :(

This morning has been a catalogue of (very minor but slightly soul destroying) disasters, hoping the afternoon and weekend go better...

DS not SA

Ploom DD1 has had the same kind of problem in maths tests before; it's so frustrating, isn't it? Even though she's got part of the calculation right, because she started out with the wrong number she automatically loses all the points; the marking system just doesn't seem to make sense. Have you heard anything back from the teacher? Glad to hear that your DS is better, and well done for staying firm!

English Nothing wrong with a bit of boasting - stealth or otherwise - from time to time! (I hope you didn't think my comment was aimed at anyone on this thread; I was going to write more about DH's grades and then thought it would just end up looking like I was boasting, which is where my comment came from.) And there's no way you're either useless or incompetent; bringing up three children (with no time for yourself) is an achievement to start with, let alone in a foreign country or on the little amount of sleep you seem to get. It's only since DS started going to nursery and then KiGa in the mornings that I've started to feel a little more human but even now I still have days when it all feels relentless - I don't know how you've managed on so little sleep for so long. I also miss not having regular contact with native speakers, which is why I spend far too much time on this thread this thread is a lifeline for me.

Having said that, if you start posting on Facebook that your DC have got lauter Einser and so you're obviously doing something right, I may feel inclined to kill you.

Thanks Linzer :)

DD's only had one actual grade so far, the first piece of graded work was a Diktat last week - she got a 3 because she forgot to capitalise 5 nouns - so I'm not an Einser Mama or whatever the correct phrase was, I assume that means I can still post?? :)

No, no, feel free to mention your DD's grades on here, English - it's just this posting to all and sundry on FB combined with the smug assumption that your DC's grades are all down to you that annoys me immensely slightly. I've just googled Ein ser-Ma ma and, rather worryingly, my old post is on the first page of hits (of only two pages); it appears to be a made-up term. I'm consoling myself with the fact that the mother concerned is unlikely to be either on MN or googling the word.

Just a really quick update - no written reply from ds's teacher - when he gave her the note from dh she said to ds "Haben deine Eltern dich gelobt?" WTF has that got to do with whether she unfairly marked tests. Thankfully ds quite rightly said that we had praised him. Will be very glad when the 2nd class is over and he gets a new teacher.

Short post from phone here - have a rehearsal in an hour and am waiting to spot a fellow musician going into the building before I get out of the car.

I suspect my survey may be flawed, since it's not giving me the results I want .

English I know how you feel. I think I said to Linzer in a pm that I was rather excited by the prospect of studying and taking an exam in translation simply because it would mean exerting my brain a bit (apologies if I've repeated myself there).

ploom am speechless at that marking, plus I think writing 9+5-1=13 to explain how you worked out 9+4 shows a sense of humour!

linzer can't believe you cut and pasted ñ !

Had better go and see if I'm in the right place!

hello again,

I am a lapsed poster from austria with 5 mins to herself before the weekend begins. But I miss the chat on here.

Typing Alt 164 will give you an "ñ". in case you need it for more piñata discussions. Loved them as a kid, though someone always got bashed with the broom stick.

have a good weekend all!

Ooh, that's clever platanos (good to see you back again btw!). I can never remember all the Alt key combinations, although I normally only use the German characters and they're on the keyboard anyway. I had to cut and paste an o with a line through it the other day, but can't remember why!

Flawed, cheas? Surely not. Hope the rehearsal goes well.

Have just dropped off DS at a friend's; it's only the second time he's wanted to go to a friend's house in a month or more and he almost changed his mind at the last minute, but I went in with him and had a coffee and he virtually pushed me out of the door afterwards! Now need to print out a Probeschulearbeit for DD1, who has her first Schularbeit (in maths) next week.

Only three hours till our Heurigenabend, but it's so cold outside that I'm really not looking forward to walking there. Maybe I could drive and not drink. (But probably not.)

Admylin, I think that's the course my daughter is looking at now. She has her German passport back so we're not sure how that will affect her taking the course. She'd prefer of course to have her British qualifications recognised and not waste more time retaking years of study and exams. Fingers crossed. First of all she goes to Kur at the end of this month, she needs to recover fully before doing anything I think - she is a frail creature, has been since having whooping cough at the age of four, and gets everything going and takes ages to recover. This time it was quite a personal problem but she is becoming withdrawn and I am worried about her and hope the Kur will do her some good.

Oh flippity that must be really worrying especially when it's not so easy or affordable to just go and visit when you feel like it.

Hope the Kur helps and the course works out. Dh had a similar problem when he applied to study here in Germany. He was told his German wasn't good enough but the course to prove it was for foreign students and he'd just got his German passport! That was down in south Germany though and over 12 years ago so I'd hope Berlin would be abit less bureaucratic.

Hi platanos where have you been?!
Linzer how did the evening go? Did you try the wine?
ploom well done for sending in the note. Wonder if the teacher was just too embarrassed to answer!

Dd's party was the best and easiest birthday I've ever hosted! They just got on with it and entertained themselves. Apart from getting the food ready and providing the cocktail stuff I didn't have to do anything! Must say, I did have zombies sitting at the breakfast table which was worrying but they perked up after an hour and are now in the city shopping!

Admylin, it is really worrying. Luckily she has just been to visit for my parents wedding anniversary. I do think she'll be better looked after with the German health system than here in the uk.

As she spent the first 12 years of her life in Germany and frequently visited afterwards, her German is fluent, as if it was her first language - which it was for the first 12 years of her life. The only thing standing in her way is getting them to recognise her British qualifications.

How old are your children? Was the party a sleepover?

It's a beautiful day here in the uk, sunny but very cold.

Yes you could be right there, atleast waiting times are alot shorter over here so it's quicker and easier to get seen by a specialist.

My dc are 14 and just turned 13. It was a very civilized sleepover. Dh and I went to bed at 11pm and didn't notice a thing although ds's bedroom adjoins dd's room so he told me it was like having a barn full of hens next door until the early hours!

It's lovely over here today too (Hanover) despite the weather forcasts saying it'd be wet and miserable until Tuesday!

Flippity Yes, I'm sure your DD is better off in the German healthcare system, but it must be hard when you're so far away from her.

admylin The party sounded really good, especially the bit about it being easy to host! I can't wait until parties start getting easier; I found the two we had in July really hard work.

The Heurigenabend went really well in the end, although I was surprised at how little wine was drunk considering how good and cheap it was (mine cost ?1.20 a glass). I think everyone stuck to one glass of alcohol apart from one couple who pushed the boat out and daringly had a second (that may have been DH and me). But I couldn't believe it when the children came back in from running around outside, some of them quite wet, and said that one of the people next door had turned a hosepipe on them!

Linzer what??? Somebody turned a hosepipe on fairly young children playing outside in the grounds of a catering establishment (not trespassing on anyone's private property) in the evening of a chilly October day? Sorry to come over all British but is that not assault? Mild in the grand scheme of things granted but still, in the UK it would be, I know its different here and generally less OTT and precious is good, but that is not acceptable! Was anything done in terms of reporting the incident to anyone?

Hupa I think I have missed wishing you a lovely holiday :)

Plantanos hello!

Admylin the sleep over birthday party sounds perfect - DD was sulking last night that she didn't get a sleep over for her birthday last month (she mentioned wanting one about 6 months ago, then said nothing more and she tried a climbing wall on holiday and got into it, so asked for and had a climbing wall party, then last night she went all woe is me about not having a sleep over I suspect a 7 and 8 year old sleep over party would not be anything like the civilized one you describe :o

cheas glad you know how I feel (sort of, not that I want you to feel your brain has moulded away!) I'm not even sure I could take exams again, I have possibly lost my short term memory...

That reminds me actually - this is a weird one and I am going to sound an idiot, but I am wondering whether this is a living overseas thing or just me, so here goes:

Does anyone else find they don't recognise people out of context when living abroad? This has been happening to me with worrying regularity, not with people I know very, very well, but for example there is a Kindergarten mum who is a friend of one of the mums I have known ages, and she has a son a bit older than my DC3 too, so sometimes I have chatted with her outside Kindergarten for 5 mins here and there, not only said the standard Hallo in passing on the way in... A couple of days ago I was in Lidl and the cashier was unexpectedly chatty and told me about her youngest being in Krippe, which I found odd but assumed was because I had my own small child with me... it wasn't until I said hello to her on the way into Kindergarten the next day that it hit me she was the cashier in Lidl She hadn't even struck me as familiar!!! This isn't a 1 off, it has happened to me in the last year or 2 with students I've taught at VHS and then unexpectedly met in town or in a supermarket etc. and mums who have greeted me by name and stopped to catch up, and I just haven't been able to place or even recognise and have worked out from bluffing through a conversation I must have known from toddlers groups with one of the older 2...

My only logical explanation is that living in a language I don't speak properly, even though on a day to day basis I function fine and understand 90% usually, and can make myself understood whatever I want to say, makes me feel a bit disconnected and I do sometimes feel I live in a bit of a fog, so perhaps this lack of real genuine connection is stopping people making a normal impression so I can remember then... Is this crazy? I don't remember having this problem in the UK. Alternatively I am just getting old or going nuts of course :o I just wondered if anyone else had experienced it? I know many of you speak German well enough to be mistaken for a local and I guess it wouldn't happen so much in that case, though maybe my connection of the two things is nonsensical?

On a less crazy "out there" note I wondered if anyone could explain to me about what an Over 35 check up is, whether it is a standard thing to have or only on private insurance (we have public) and which doctor you have it with? Hausartz?

I have never had a general check up (as opposed to a specific thing like a smear test or a pregnancy check up) in my entire life, and if my health insurance covers it I think maybe I should, as well as the mysterious cancer screening which my health insurance notified me to go for which I assume isn't just regular smear test (which is also overdue by German standards as my last was at my 6 weeks post DC3's birth check-up) , and the dentist, whom I haven't seen in 5 years... DH has some time off coming up when we were going to leave the kids with Oma and Opa and have a few days away, but we can't afford to do that now so I may as well make use of the time for an MOT :o

Flippity sorry forgot to say hope your DD feels better soon and can get things sorted with her qualifications and courses

Ploom what an odd teacher

English Oh, that happens to me all the time but I assumed it was me being scatterbrained rather than a general living abroad thing! We bumped into a woman and her DD on a day out a couple of weeks ago; she looked very familiar and I thought I probably knew her from seeing her at KiGa. She came over to speak to us and I introduced myself to her by name, but she only said her name to DH... it was only afterwards that I realised (actually, the DC told me) that I'd met her at a friend's house and had spent quite a while talking to her. She must have thought I'd completely forgotten who she was. Well, I had.

Re the health MOT, I'm not too sure about the specifics in Germany but over 18s are advised to have one every year here and, even though I go to a private doctor to have it done, my health insurance covers it (not very useful information for you, I know). I would certainly recommend having one if you don't have to pay, anyway.

I think everyone was quite shocked at the hosepipe incident and one or two of the parents were going to go out to see what was going on, but didn't in the end. The teacher was particularly surprised that DD1 was wet, as she's so quiet, but I doubt the hosepipe wielder was targeting specific children! It can only have been around 8.30-9pm on a Friday night, so I don't know how they'd cope on a warm summer evening when there would be lots of customers sitting outside until much later.