Wind, Obst, Wein und Spaß - living in Germany and Austria: the autumn edition

[LinzerTorte]

A thread for all those living in Germany or Austria or anyone who just wants to chat/ask a question about living in or visiting this part of the world - all welcome (particularly as the previous thread has been so quiet recently).

The thread title comes from this song btw - they're not the first four autumnal German words that popped into my head. (It could have been worse; I did briefly consider "Nüsse auf den Teller, Birnen in den Keller".)

Linzer oh yes, the dreaded language plateau! sadly I don't think I've reached that yet!

ptumbi I'm in Paris now, bit weepy at the prospect of leaving, but Vienna I think will be an excellent substitute

My grandmother used to write to me as Zwaarte Piet each December (sounds like the same thing) and my family gets all indignant and twitchy when the topic of blackface and Sinterlaas being racist comes up. I think because the history part of it doesn't get talked about that much the overall image of the Zwarte Piet type is mainly positive. Perk of commercialisation.

Thank you Heinous for the info. Is it more common for people to live in flats rather than houses? I will miss our garden if so.

mummypig yes, much more common to live in a flat, although there are houses available for rent sometimes. A lot of people have allotments and put up cosy sheds with tv and kitchens and live there at the weekends. Before I knew this I was really when students told me "I did go in my garden" when I asked them what they had done at the weekend...

suenan ha, I'm responsible for bringing up decluttering repeatedly. Probably should actually do some rather than just post about it!

How did the Germans decide that Federmappe was a good word for pencil case? DD had to take one to kiga this week for Vorschul- activities and DH had a hard job convincing me that the zip-up bags were also called Federmappe, despite not having any springs and not being folders

Lebkuchen Aren't there different words for the two different types of pencil case? They're called Federpennal (folder-style) and Schüttelpennal (with zip) here; I asked a German friend what she calls them a while back and I'm sure she said the zip-up one is called something like Schlampermäppchen, which I rather liked the sound of (just throw everything in if you're feeling schlampig!).

velour Paris and Vienna sound like great places to spend your year abroad! For some reason we could only go to one of the countries but were encouraged to spend time in the other, so I spent nine months in Berlin and three days visiting a friend in Lyon. Needless to say, my German was miles ahead of my French by the end of the year and things haven't changed much!

Nutella I'm also very about having to include a passport photo on your CV here. DH sometimes brings home applications and I'm also quite surprised about the amount of (for me) irrelevant information that's included, e.g. ages of children.

Heinous Completely agree about the kitchen situation being a PITA - why would anyone want to take a kitchen with them when they move? Luckily the couple who moved into our flat when we left Germany agreed to buy our kitchen off us, but I have no idea what we'd have done if they hadn't wanted it.

MummyPig Hello! I'm not even in Germany so am no help on the area and I don't think anyone else on the thread is nearby, but please ask if you have any more general rental questions etc; as Heinous said, most of us have been through it at least once!

Oh I will be so sad to lose having a garden. But having an allotment is a good idea.

Do schools provide extra curriculum activities? At what cost? Do children have a lot of homework? How would that work when my children don't know any German?

I have so many questions, I don't really know where to start!

Mummypig are you going to be city based? We lived on the outskirts in our last place, and lived in the bottom half of a Zweifamilienhaus, so we had a garden (yay!), and in fact when we were the top bit of a ZFH we had the use of the garden too, so it's not impossible… that would have been possible in Berlin too (in the suburbs), but we chose to live very centrally. There are still communal gardens though (no gardening, yippee!), and that's good for us/the kids to meet neighbours/neighbours children. And parks here are fabulous I have to say, at least much better than where we were living in England.

Oh another German stationery discussions , I'm in there! Yes it seems always to be Federmappe where we've been. I do love them, I want one. But don't need one.

Are you all getting terrible weather at the minute? It's the week for leaving out the Christmas trees to be picked up, and they're being blown about all over.

I'm not entirely sure how big Kamen is. But dh says you can walk everywhere there (good for me as I can't drive) so I'm guessing it's not a city. Is a Zwefamilienhaus like a maisonette?

Come to think of it, only one word is used for both types of pencil case in the area where DH is from (Federschachtel) - maybe a distinction is only made between the different types in certain parts of Germany and Austria.

Zweifamilienhaus literally means a "two-family house"; it's a house with two flats - normally one family would have an upstairs flat and the other the downstairs flat. An Einfamilienhaus ("one-family house") OTOH is a detached house and a semi-detached house would be a Doppelhaushälfte ("half of a double house"). Oh, and you can also get Mehrfamilienhäuser, buildings containing several flats.

Dh is back and we have a lot to think about and a lot of questions to ask! It seems like such a huge task, picking us all up and moving. And we have no savings which will make things even harder.

Frohes Neues - been away from the thread for a bit and catching up on all the goings on....

Hope everyone is now fit and well and back in the swing of things - going back to school this week has been a bit of a shock to the system! But getting used to the mornings again.

mummypig I think I've been to an Ikea in Kamen! Certainly rings a bell as being on the way to Rotterdam.

Questions about schools are very difficult to answer because things vary so much across the country. i think, though, that most extra-curricular stuff is done outside school and involves joining organisations called Vereine. So if you do sport you might join the Tennisverein, or Schwimmverein, or Judoverein. For music lessons you would sign up at the local Musikschule, or if you sing then join a Chorverein. Even getting an allotment involves joining a Kleingartenverein . There must be some stuff going on in schools as well, but my dc haven't reached school age yet, so I'm not sure how much.

linzer Schlampermäppchen is brilliant. Perfectly describes my handbag...

Mummypig schools vary from Land to Land - so we've moved from a Lan where school finishes at lunchtime, to a "Ganztag" so "whole day" school. Both schools offer "AGs", which are the out of school clubs (Arbeitsgemeinschaft), but the number will really depend on the school - there are far more here than there were back in Baden-W, probably to do with the fact that when you have the whole afternoon free, it's much easier to organise your own life. Likewise homework differed - when it was mornings only, even the 1st class children had homework (though only about 20 minutes), here the first few years of primary don't have any, and although my older primary aged child does have homework, they have study sessions at school so none of it actually comes home…. anyway, the overall point is, it will depend on the school!

One rather good thing is that the local school HAS to take your child, so there's none of that stress we certainly had in the UK about whether ours would get into their nearest school. OTOH, there are other education providers - though maybe not so many in a smaller place. But there are Montessoris etc, which I know English speaking friends round us have used (this is back in BW - in Berlin the choice is even greater as you might imagine) to give their children a bit more flexibility in learning when they were having to deal with a foreign language. But mine coped fine in a "normal" Grundschule, it will depend on how old they are, their personalities etc… But we've found the teachers really helpful and patient, and the children learn soooo quickly! It's amazing

Did you all buy your dc a desk when they started school? Wondering if we will be somehow failing as parents if we wait until the 3. Klasse (or whenever).

We didn't buy a desk - DD just does her homework at the dining table (she is 1. Klasse), and I wasn't planning on getting one - the dining table is perfectly acceptable imo.

But all her friends do seem to have vast, ergonomically sloped desks and padded swivel desk chairs in their bedrooms.

Lebkuchen We bought the DDs desks when they started school; DD2 uses hers, DD1 doesn't (both she and DS do their homework at the dining table). Having said that, I think it was only in the last year or so of primary that DD2 consistently started using hers. Oh, and we decided against a sloping desk when someone told us that everything tends to fall off them.

Excellent, dining table it is then .

Heinous, you used to live in Baden-W? We are considering moving there (currently just over the border in Switzerland) but the whole school Tagesstruktur thing is a bit of a worry. How does it normally work - is it possible to get whole day places/common to have after school clubs? Also, I noticed a lot of Kindergartens open at 7am - do the kids need to be in by 7, or is there any flexibility in when they can arrive?

Please can I join you? I found out yesterday that we will be moving to west Germany, near the border with Luxembourg. It's all a bit daunting at the moment. I'm going to get a notebook to write down all the thoughts I keep having about serious things such as pensions and trivial things such as electrical plugs. I'm also starting to learn German today for the first time as I never did it at school. I have had a read through the thread and I know a few of you from other threads .

Hello and welcome Stunt - I'm not sure whether we've "met" before, but I recognise your name. The thread is fairly quiet at the moment but I'm sure there'll be people around if you have any specific questions. I'm in Austria now but did live in Germany many moons ago, pre-DC. Do you know exactly when you'll be moving? Learning German is definitely a good start.

Hello StuntNun
I'm near Frankfurt. Good luck with learning German! I couldn't speak any when we arrived here, I'm not too bad now, and the DC are pretty good though we all speak with a local accent apparently (not that I can really hear it).
When are you moving?

Hello Stunt.

I'm in the north near Hannover. Where are you moving to?
I learned german when I moved here. I went to a class four days a week I think, it was intensive. But it definitely helps to speak the language of course. Good luck!

BlackRedGold - my german Tutor is from near Frankfurt (Hanau?) and even I can hear his accent!

MrsN - I had some teeth out in Hanover! We were living in Celle at the time (I was about 7) and it's like a Pavlovian response whenever I hear 'Hanover' - I had my teeth out there. Army dentist, gas anaesthesia, being carried out on dad's coat.... I don't remember much else about it. I was also 'christened in Hohne'. Again, other than that, don't know much about it.
Stuntnun- my long term plan is to move to Germany, prob either (so far) Berlin, Hamburg or just inside the border with Lux/France, prob Trier or near. Hopefully I can find people who don't speak too much english (they always like to practice their English, whilst I am trying to practice my German) and maybe brush up a bit of French too!
Linzer - I have a 'grammar' question (another one or two!) Can I PM you?

Ptumbi maybe that's because, unlike me, you are mainly surrounded by people who aren't from Hanau! Either that or I have a really bad ear for this sort of thing .
I can hear that everyone here says things like "Ish" instead of "Ich", but mostly I don't know what a standard pronunciation of things is supposed to sound like, so I can't compare properly. That's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

Yes, of course ptumbi - would be happy to help if I can.

Black - I can hear him say 'ish' rather than 'ich' (which is what I grew up with) but my ds2 says it's how the 'youth' pronounce it... Also he says 'werbs' for verbs - again, I grew up with people putting V instead of W and I've not heard it the other way around!