Cyber Glühwein und Lebkuchen - the German and Austrian advent thread

[admylin]

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

Happy first Advent to everyone!

Previous thread: here

Aw I've just seen on FB that cakebump had her baby. Lovely news - a girl Mathilda

Ooh, has she? Lovely name.

Yay for cakebump!

ploom ha ha, I can just imagine walking through Weimar and dd suddenly saying "look, there's ploomchens 2+3" and me going "nah, they live a loooong way away, dd..."

I've re-threaded the sewing machine and am going to do some quilting in half an hour now.

Oooohhhh I never got around to FBing cakebump but sounds like she's just pinched DP's favourite girls name awwww congratulations for her though!!
Anyone else tried to pick slightly different names only to discover that they suddenly became really popular?
Good friend in the UK picked Florence for her second and then the PM went and used it a few months later - she was quite rightly very peeved! :)

Linzer I would have gone for Santa too, because its easier to teach; but I prefer Father Christmas as a personal choice. Couldn't answer before because I was enjoying a pedicure and reading a trashy magazine :o

cheas we practically live on top of a haberdashery style shop and I wish I was more crafty but I managed to find what I needed because it had hemming web in English under the German "Saum-Vlies"

Nutella I'll let you off then - a pedicure and trashy magazines should always take priority. (Can you actually still see your toes? )

I was thinking before that it's a shame Cake is no longer on the thread as we could have had a guess-the-weight competition for her baby as well! 7 lb exactly and a quick labour, apparently (I take back what I said about first labours rarely being speedy!).

Linzer I love trashy magazines and always go for them at hairdresser's or wherever. I'm always pleased to see they include all the necessary ingredients, someone who is too skinny, best and worst dressed, who has had surgery, who might be pregnant and of course a diet that will help you get a bikini body in about 5 days.

I can still see my toes cheeky (they look lovely now :o ) but can only reach them when balanced against something (if not sitting already) for a few seconds at a time. I had warned DP that he'd have to give me a pedicure at some point, being the kind of man that steps up to a challenge he said he'd pay for a pedicure

Now I'm going to enjoy a coffee and a toasted raisin roll it's all Ploom's fault

Hi, Cake, if you happen to be browsing, and congratulations!

Nutella, I would be very hacked off if DS's name becomes popular, but I doubt it will. There is of course a chance that a sleb will use it, I very much hope not. I used to love Phoenix for a girl, but when Scary Spice used it, it went off my list. I really love it though, maybe it could be a middle name. Are you telling us your names?
Are we guessing date of arrival? I'm baggsying 01/01/2013 if so!

Linzer, I say Santa. It's less of a mouthful, and seems to be much more commonly used in the Xmas books we have.

Congratulations to cake did she have her today or did she have a 12-12-12 baby?

nutella I think my dd would like to live where you live! She loves pottering in haberdashery type shops!

ploom you've turned into the perfect Bavarian housewife (your xmas biscuits looked perfect too)! The other day dh was speaking to an old friend who now lives in the US and he was saying 'I'm a neuroscientist, my ds is in 9th grade and my dd is in 8th grade and my wife is looking after us all!' hope they realise what a life of luxury they have.

jenny you have my sympathy for the workaholic dh! Mine is like that and if he didn't need to eat and sleep he would work through sometimes! He's a researcher so it's never ending anyway.

platanos is your ds feeling better? High fever is a worry isn't it, hope you managed to get it down abit.

cheas hope it's not too slippy, can imagine living on a hill in this weather is pain, although you could maybe sledge down it but getting back up isn't fun. I nearly fell over crossing the road this morning and that's in flat as a pancake Hanover.

Grinch those snow and sledging photos are great on fb, you really do live in a great place for the dc!

hope everyone else is fit and healthy.
I have just got the parcels ready for the UK, decided against the bottle of alcohol for my dad as it was going to cost 17? to post and there are 2 parcels so I took the bottle out and he's getting a lovely light weight scarf with his chocolates! Have to go to the post office now.

advent (I always read your name as Kerzilein, or was that intended?) Cake's baby was born at 1.30 am today, so just missed out on a 12-12-12 birthday - that would have been a great date of birth, wouldn't it?

WhatWould I've never heard of anyone else with your DS's name, but at least it's one that's fairly easy to spell - having a name with various different spellings (like DD1's) means you're constantly having to spell it out or having it misspelled.

Nutella Glad you're still able to admire your toes. In answer to the question in your previous post, we went for fairly unadventurous names but I'd have liked to give the DDs more English names. If I'd had my way, DD1 would have been Emily, which I thought would be fairly unusual in Austria (DH claimed it would be), but it's actually fairly common here - mainly among girls younger than DD1 and in various misspelled forms.

I did go with "Santa" in today's English lesson, but of course one little girl put her hand up and said "I know another name for the Weihnachtmsmann - Father Christmas!". (Not DD2, I hasten to add!) So then I explained that Father Christmas was mainly used in Britain; one of the boys asked if that meant England, which led to me giving the mini-lesson on Britain/England that I mentioned on FB. (The teacher obviously wasn't taking in what I said. She was probably distracted by my drawing of Britain and Ireland on the board - possibly the worst ever. )

@ UK/GB/EnglandWalesScotlandNorthernIreland!

MIL has the same name as your DD1, Linzer, but yes, spelt one of the other ways!

Can anyone please recommend some snowboots for 2yo DS please? I love the look of these Moonboots but the sole looks rather thick, is this practical for a toddler, being a few inches taller than usual?
I quite fancy a pair for myself too!

Yay to cakebump's new baby! Pretty name too.

Well done to all the snow shovelling - there hasn't been enough down here for that.

I always used to say Father Christmas too Linzer but Santa is shorthand and ubiquitous here.

Dh made it back at gone half ten last night and got to bed at gone 2am as he has a meeting with Intel today. I wouldn't mind so much if I thought it wasn't becoming so regular but he forgets to eat lunch as he is so busy, never bothers with breakfast in the first place so I think he's going to make himself ill. Thanks for the sympathy! I appreciate he is lucky to have a job at all in this day and age.

We tend to buy Sorel snow boots Santa but I don't know if they are available there.

Mmm, pedicure and a trashy mag - sounds bliss nutella. Get the relaxation in while you can!

Go cheas with the quilting. It's something I ought to get round to as well... Enjoy Weimar - lovely place!

Hello to everyone else. Got to get ds2 down for a nap or I will not get the rest of the cards done. Bye for now.

Hello and apologies! Been really busy and am now again just on my phone - with hardly any battery left.
So just very briefly to the very last post
santa what do you need them for? Just for winter, playing/walking in the snow! I'd think that moon boot type shoes would be too stiff and too much for a 2yo. We usually have either superfit or pepino boots for winter. They are nice and warm, waterproof and have quite soft soles. Much nicer for the younger ones to walk and play with, we found. Elefanten boots are ok too ( at deichmann), a bit cheaper than the other two mentioned, but soles aren't so soft and flexible.

Right, my phone is shouting at me that it'll turn itself off. Sorry for ignoring everyone else.
Waves

Santa we had Kamik boots last year - good eco-credentials I assume, as they are stocked by Hans Natur. They had a removable inner bit for quick drying. The soles were not particularly flexible, but I never noticed dd walking strangely or having problems because of that.

Dd has Superfit this year, simply because they are in all the shops here - I've been happy with all her Superfit shoes so far, though. Jack Wolfskin are always good for winter wear and presumably good since lots of kids seem to wear JW stuff.

Thanks for the boot advice. Yes, out, just for playing in the snow. That's if we get any more snow. Hmph, where is it!? Hard to know if it's worth buying them, we might not get any more snow!

tadj, hope your DH takes time to eat, sounds way too busy.

I'd like to make a quilt. Is it too ambitious a project for an absolute beginner? I also don't actually have a sewing machine yet.

Hello!

You get a 19 month old to drink yeast by mixing it with apple juice and feeding it through a medicine syringe ... trial and error reveals this to be the only way

My 19 month old has snowboots from Kaufland, they were ?9.99 he walks and runs absolutely normally in them, they are easy to put on and always fetches them and is eager to put them on, his socks are never wet after playing in the deep snow - those and his ?9.99 snow trousers from Lidl and C&A coat appear to keep him warm! There was a big "which boots and snow suits for an 18 month old discussion on my parents in Munich forum, and the boots being recommended were ?50 and up, ?80, and the snowsuits up to about I was and weighed in with my Kaufland recommendation :o I guess paying ?50 for snow boots if you only have one child is like paying ?18 per pai if you have 3 children though :o Still more ? doesn't always mean better, especially when you don't need them to last 10 years, just to be comfortable and practical for the 4 months or so til they outgrow them!

Saw cakebump's baby news on fb, lovely news and name :)

On the name thing, we chose DD's name when we still lived in the UK, where she was born, and had no immediate thoughts of moving to Germany - what we wanted was simple, classic, pretty but not over used, and international (family in the UK, Germany and Croatia) - her name absolutely fitted the bill and we were so happy with it... it still does in the UK... but then we moved here when she was 19 months old and found out that our next door neighbor had a little girl 5 months older with the same name, there was another a year older with the same name about 10 doors down, and another with the name hyphenated with Lena one month older than DD as well! It was the number 1 name in 2005 here - oops!

After all the dryer talk recently - my 4 year old dryer stopped working yesterday, I don't know how I'm ever going to get through the laundry-alp left over from the week of illness, had to dig out the airers and load them up, hate having laundry handing around the house everywhere!

Ooops better get going - need to drive DD to school as the kids were snail like getting dressed etc. this morning, probably due to a latish night last night for the football club Christmas party and tournament!

waves at everybody after shamelessly failing to namecheck at all!

Good morning! Still on my mobile, but at least a fully charged one

I agree, it does a little depend on if you have another child who'll be wearing those expensive shoes! All of ours have extremely wide feet, and none of the cheapish shoes seem to fit anyway. And wrt to how long they last, I do usually find that the more expensive ones do last longer. There are lots of things that we do buy at aldi and lidl -most things really- but with shoes, jackets, snow suits and wellies we started buying 'quality' after the cheap ones often didn't last with one child.

I don't know cakebump but I love the name Mathilda it was on our short list in slightly different spelling for ds3, and still is on our short list just in case
With ours we also tried to find names which weren't popular and suitable both in German and English. Like you grinch when ds1 was born we were in the uk. I used to go to all the toddler groups and there wasn't a single one the who had his name. Then we moved here and found its very popular. Luckily most if the boys with his name are a few years older than him though. I think I know your dd's name btw. Does it start with A?

Tauwetter here and grey skies. I nearly slipped and fell when I took ds2 and3 to pre school as snow is melting but the ground is still frozen. Be careful nutella perfect excuse to have a sofa day with a trashy mag! Oh how much I would love to have one of those! I have a Mutter-kind-kur approved for February/march and am just taking ds2 and ds3 with me. I wonder what it will be like, has anyone been! Will I get lots of nice massages and time for trashy mags?

Is everyone on here hooked up on fb as well as here?

Anyway gotta go, we are viewing a potential school for ds1 today.

morning all!

We have also found that warm, waterproof boots from superfit, elefanten etc are fine for winter and snow here. And I have got some in Hofer (is that Aldi in Germany?) too, but check those out carefully as one year I got a pair that were not waterproof and then had to buy a second pair (different model but also from Hofer) which turned out to be fine. Not sure what that was about...

grinch oh no, no dryer! are you going to get someone out to have a look at it? timing of such things is always such a nightmare.

linzer- good that "Santa" went down well. I've always known him as Father Christmas, but I am waiting for " the Christmas man" to come out my mouth. I am sure I shall say that soon...

jenny sympathies on the hard working husband. bit worrying if he forgets to eat and does not look after himself. I have a butternut squash waiting to be turned into soup. Butternut and sweet potato soup is one of our favourite here. I used to add red lentils too, but not allowed to anymore after our "Linsenkotzentag" (as ds calls it).

st.ploom of rural bavaria - who did the snow shovelling this morning? I shall have to bastel a 'lie-in gutschein" for you and a snow shovellling sign for linzer. or rather get dd1 to bastel it, she has the bastel gene. I am not sure where she gets it from as neither dh nor I have it - maybe it skips generations?

advent well done on the christmas presents. mine are here but have no box and no chance of getting them sent off with ds being ill and dh away/working. and I need a few little pieces to finish it off. Well, traditionally, in Spain, presents were exchanged on 6 January when the three kings brough them. So, I might just make that deadline!

cheas hope you are getting through your list! quilting sounds like fun. I sometimes wish I had basic sewing skills like taking hems up, it would save some money - all my trousers need to be taken up.

ds is still unwell, thanks for asking...high fever again yesterday. He has woken up looking a bit better today but fever comes later on so will see what happens. This is the third time this year that he has had such a long spell of high fever, at least we have managed to stay out of hospital and avoid intravenous drips this time. My other two were/are never so ill, so often...so I worry at times.

I spent a long time yesterday trying to find a typical British/Spanish simple christmas recipe that I could make for dds Christmas party. But failed. Any ideas for something easy to make? Unless the Asian shop round the corner from my work has mincemeat. My colleagues laughed their heads off when I called it the "Indianer Geschäft", I meant "Inder" of course .

off to look after my little one. waves to all and have a good day...

Morning!

DS is off school for the second time this week without being ill, but this time he really does have to be at home as he has headlice (the first time we've ever had them). I've treated him, so hopefully he's louse-free now; DH is at home today, so he's taken him to the doctor's to get a certificate so that he can go back to school on Monday.

DD1 has her first KEL-Gespräch (Kind-Eltern-Lehrer) this morning, which is why DH has taken the day off - she has to present a topic of her choice to her parent(s) and a teacher of her choice, and has chosen to talk about London as she could reuse everything from her primary school Referat last year with her English teacher present. We're going back to see the clinical psychologist this evening to discuss the results of all the tests done a couple of weeks ago, so will have to decide whether she needs more dyslexia training - but it's looking fairly likely at the moment.

WhatWould Sorry, no help on the boots as we've never had moonboots - well, we did have a pair in the cellar passed on from a friend, but they were never used (we found the cheap Aldi/Lidl boots were fine, although you do of course have to know when to buy them and Aldi, Tchibo, Lidl, etc. aren't generally much use for spur-of-the-moment buys).

Grinch There are two girls with the same name as your DD in DD2's class; one is usually called by her full (hyphenated) name at school, but her parents and other friends call her by the shorter version and it can get a little confusing at times (to me, at any rate!). Plus the other mother was feeling a little put out by the fact that her DD was often called first name + surname, until I pointed out that it was probably only to distinguish her from the other girl, who's very often not called by her full first name. if you've got through and understood that!

Katharina was our first choice of girl's name originally (until we realised the initials would be rather unfortunate - think concentration camp), but there are so many Katharinas here that I'm now glad we didn't go for that name. (Although the DC's names aren't exactly unusual here either...)

outnumbered A Mutter-Kind-Kur sounds good, although I don't know anyone who's been on one.
Yes, I think most people on the thread are on FB too - PM me if you like.

platanos at Indianergeschäft! Sorry to hear DS is still poorly; fingers crossed the fever doesn't return later. We have exactly the same here - the DDs are never ill (I think they've missed a total of about two days of school over the past four years) but there's always something with DS. And if it's not illness, it's school refusal/headlice, etc.! I'm sure I've heard one of mine say "the Christmas man", btw.

Also meant to say platanos - yes, Hofer is exactly the same as Aldi (same products, same logo, same everything). Thanks to googling my in-depth knowledge of Austrian culture, I can inform you that this is because Aldi took over an Austrian chain called Hofer and kept the name here.

Yep DD's name begins with A. There is actually an up side to her being known by first name surname combo as sometimes I meet people for the first time and they hear my surname and ask me if I am by any chance the A *'s Mama! She is a bit infamous locally (in a big fish in a teeny pond way) :o well she has lots of friends and a big personality, and often grandparents or other relations of kids she knows seem to have heard of her - obviously they wouldn't make the connection with me if she wasn't known by her full name :o

Linzer I think I've said before I liked your DD2's name for DD but DH vetoed it because of the popular here New Year's Eve programme they show every year...

DS1 on the other hand has a name that under 3 children in the UK were given in his birth year apparently, and we know no other boys with his name - but it gets miss-spelt with a C, when he has the "Wikinger" spelling with a K, which DH and I both much preferred - the c spelling seems somehow a bit weak and chinless, where the K seems strong and stompy :o How crazy feelings about names can be! :) Ds2 has an English name and one child asked me "Wie so?" when I told her what his name was! Another mum referred to it as "Etwas besonders" - its pretty common in the UK.

We bought expensive snow boots for DD the first year here and the zip broke a few months into winter, ironically we've never had a problem with the supermarket ones. Unfortunately as DS1 is a Sept birthday and DS2 an April birthday, and they are both very similar size-for-age passing seasonal specific stuff along has never worked out, DS2 is always in between the sizes we have in the Keller from DS1 - and as we moved here with DD knowing I was pregnant with a DS (who was at the time going to be our last baby) buying snowboots and snowsuits to intending pass down has never been a consideration really.

plantanos hope your DS is better soon. My middle one is usually the one who gets every illness going and gets it worst, and has a tendency to get wheezy etc. although for the first time he came off fairly lightly with our most recent bout of illness and was better in 24 hours, unlike the rest of us. Probably your DS is just getting bombarded with more germs than the older ones got at the same age, because of having older siblings bringing them in.

Morning!

grinch Names must vary in popularity in different regions - an acquaintance here named her dd2 the same as your dd and when she told me I reacted with the same things as you wrote here: "a lovely classic name, doesn't seem to go out of fashion", then I said I knew two other babies with the same name and she looked and said "but not here!?!". She'd obviously decided that it wasn't overused as well and didn't want me to tell her otherwise!

I've taught two girls with that name so far, although one was -Lena. DD's name seems to be equally popular in this town, although we've opted for the less common spelling. As an aside, and a massive pfb boast, I watched DD write her name yesterday with no help whatsoever - no idea how she can do that, since her drawing and colouring in doesn't seem in any way advanced (I hate that word) and she flatly refuses to hold a pen/pencil correctly .

I got a lot done on my quilt yesterday and only have two more ?seams to sew before I can start on the binding. I would really love to have it hung up before Xmas. I will post a pic on fb once it's done!

Santa quilting is pretty simple - I'm not an experienced sewer by any stretch of the imagination, but I have used a sewing machine for the odd project every few years or so since I was a teenager - drawstring trousers, a couple of bags, two clothkits dolls for dd. You need quite a lot of equipment to start quilting - a rotary cutter, cutting mat, two large plastic rulers and a good sewing machine - otherwise you would make life harder for yourself - you could cut pieces of fabric with a paper pattern and a pair of scissors, but the edges would be less straight and therefore harder to pin and sew accurately, and then the bigger pieces might not match up, etc.

I think the pattern you choose is what makes it hard and/or time consuming. I started another project last year which had much narrower strips of fabric and I got very fed up. The project that I'm currently working on took much less time to cut and much less time to sew. I'll link to a few patterns later on this morning (don't want to risk this long message disappearing if I click on another tab now!)

Hello to everyone else!

grinch completely agree about your ds1's name. I discovered that someone I know with the same name spells it the same way you do - totally changed my opinion of his character .

Grinch your dd really is famous, that radio thing she did was great! I bet she was really proud of that. Sorry about your dryer, that's another load of expense on top of filling your oil tank eh? It always happens at the wrong time.

Linzer hope the headlice problem is solved and dd has a good KELgespräch. Yes, my xmas name is sort of kerzilein but with lin as in admylin at the end!

platanos hope your ds is better soon. How about making a chocolate log cake for dd's xmas do? I've cheated before and bought a ready made roll and just covered it myself (with chocolate butter cream), stuck abit of plastic holly in and bob's your uncle!

outnumbered great that you got a Kur. Do you know where you will be going yet? A friend of mine wnet on a few and she got to decide where she wanted to go so one year she went south to one in Bavaria and one year to the Nordsee. She loved it, good rest and organised stuff for her dd to do, one year she even put herself on a diet and got a special menu and exercise plan to follow.
I'm on fb too, message me if you want. Mostly put photos on there.

jenny those are long days for your dh. You don't get half as many days off in the US either do you? Know what you mean about being lucky to have a job. Dh just got another Absage from a job at a new science cetre in Freiburg, they said they had 45 higher qualified applicants so he didn't make it past the first round but to please keep checking their website and apply again if he sees more jobs! This is dh who has 8 years experience and high impact factor publications in his area of research.

Must get going and post these parcels, even dh (who is useless at timing) reminded me to get it done this morning or they won't make it!