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".)

Hi MrsM

Each German state is slightly different with regard to exact school starting age - in Bavaria they need to turn 6 by the end of the Sept they start (so the very youngest automatically starting school are 5 and 11.5 months - ignoringthe odd one who is granted exceptional permission to start at 5.5 for being a socially and emotionally mature genius. ..) The oldest new starters can be 7.5 or occasionally a few months older, as it's very easy indeed to keep kids back a year and works hugely in their favour - a lot of the Gymnasium definite in my DDs year 4 class are a solid year plus older than her... funny that...

Anyway Köln may use a different cut off - the kids may have to turn 6 by the previous June or August, so you really need locally specific information - Toy town can be good for for that (but it's a bitchy, snippy place where where some posters lurk purely to take pops at people who post a frequently asked question instead of quietly using the search function. .. so wear a thick skin and search first as get says.

Do your kids speak German? If not I'd try to get the youngest into Kindergarten even if she is old enough for school. The German school system is rigid and inflexible

Oops wanted to say if they don't speak German Kindergarten will be a much pleasanter place to learn than Grundschule, where they will be left to sink a lot of the time if they can't follow instructions. There are extra German classes for foreign children at both Kindergarten and school though.

If your company is relocating you and you are only going to be in Germany 2 years, will they pay bilingual school fees for your oldest? I honestly wouldn't go total immersion if you're not moving long term - the stress will be considerableand they wwon't retain the language when you move back unless you can expose them to it in active use daily.... Full immersion at a nice supportive Kindergarten maybe, but not school.

If they are already bilingual ignore that though! :o

• oops sorry! For some reason I misread and wrote my posts assuming your DDs were a year apart in age - nearly 6 and nearly 7. Obviously your younger one will be Kindergarten age!

Linzer that's rubbish about the extortionate hotels! We find youth hostel en suite family rooms good with 3 kids as they have family rooms for 6 - and often 8 ... breakfast tends to be included and it's cheaper than one room at a travel lodge. Depends whether you mind sleeping in a bunk bed though :o Didn't realise I'd go back to youth hostelling in my late 30s, but most of them are very family oriented and we've had lots of good experiences - more suitable for kids to roam and let off steam after a flight in than a travel lodge too.

Enjoy your trip!

MrT interesting what you say about toy town being snippy and demanding that you do a search before asking anything... Do you think that is a german thing? sorry for the sweeping generalisation just a local English speakers group here is on Facebook and mostly run by Germans generally their response to all new posters is "search the files" not "welcome to Germany/ Hannover" ... I've only ever been to one group meeting and found it very cliquey

Sorry, I'm having an "I hate Hannover" day Cebit is on now as well.... Ho hum. I know I need to be positive.... I'm going to go now and stop writing drivel on here

Nutella I quite like Cebit/Hannover Messe as I do a fair bit of translation for them. Not sure if I'd feel the same way if I was actually there (and not getting any money from it), though.

MrTumbles A room in a youth hostel would be fine as we only need a bed for the night and basic is great (I don't want to pay for luxury!), but I don't think there are any near the airport. I did find a B&B a mile or two away that sounded nice but check-in was only until 9pm and we wouldn't be arriving until around midnight...

I ended up booking a slightly cheaper hotel with a much more reasonably priced breakfast, but I'm still not over the moon about paying such a ridiculous amount. I phoned the first hotel yesterday to ask how the price can suddenly have shot up so dramatically but it was all "you must have booked when there was an offer on, prices vary" blah blah. Well, I've obviously been very lucky over the past four or five years as we've usually stayed there twice a year for much, much lessI get that the prices of cheap chains go up but we've always paid more or less the same (even at Christmas, when I was very disorganised and only booked about two weeks in advance).

DS is off school as he had a temperature yesterday evening and didn't feel great when he woke up either, but he seems fine now so I haven't managed to get much work done at all. But I'm looking forward to going to the cinema this evening.

No probably not really close to an airport Linzer that's true. We're staying in the central Manchester one at the end of our early September UK trip to be nearer to Manchester airport for the flight home, but also tohave a day at the Manchester science museum the day before - it's not as convenient for the airport as an airport travel lodge though obviously! £61 for 5 people en suite in the city centre though (actually is 2 en suite rooms, a twin and a tripple, as oddly that's £25 cheaper than one 5 bed room at that specific hostel!).

Yesterday's meeting was fine - I was worried that DD's German and HSU grades (usually 1s and 2s) had slipped as she had had a run of 3s - just worried with this being 4th klasse and determining which schools she is eligible for next year, especially as it is only 6 weeks till the final grades come out. She gets 3s inmmaths so can't afford 3s in German and HSU. She hasn't been sleeping (not due to grade worry - the sleep problem started first and I thought probably affected her school work) so I wanted to explain that as a mitigating circumstance... Her teacher said she'd been challenging them recently though and the 3s were on hard papers and won't affectoverall high 2s for the year... soththat's ok.

Meanwhile I have been trying to find solutions to a problem of taunting and aggressive behaviour going on between a group of 5 1st and 2nd Klasse boys in our village - problemsat the bus stop both our end and at school are getting out of hand. 2 of the mums were up for getting all 5 boys together but one (the one who claims to work 40 hours :o got very worked up at the idea her son could be in any way involved and had a huge rant at us claiming it's normal, not happening anyway, and even if it is what do we expect her to do, she has to work....) at which point the other 2 changed their mind and said there's nothing we can do, they are just going to stop allowing their boys to take the bus... I haven't approached the boy who is getting taunted and responding aggressively - lashing out at any boys not just the taunts - I really wanted us to all to get together as it isn't just her son who is the problem. TBH the worst taunted is the son of the woman who won't engage with the rest of us. The mum of the aggressive boy will just apologise, but that doesn't solve anything... It's all very frustrating, as (perhaps with rose tinted glasses) I feel as if it would be much easier to address in the UK as school would get involved, but they won't here...

DD and the only other girl in her class with a non German parent have been hassled today by a boy in their class for being "Schlimmer Auslander" and the son of the "what do you expect me to do? " mum said the same to the aggressive boy (who is Czech) ... so that's something new to have to find a way to raise and deal with

The truth is Mr T - love your name btw although I note with interest that Mr Tumble comes up a lot on the which cbeebie character do you want to kill and how thread - that sadly it is the case that nationality will be used against children in the same way weight, height, hair colour, glasses etc is.
My DD was called an englische fettsack, fette dumme englaenderin, bescheuerte englaenderin usw
You have to teach them bloody quickly to not rise to it and to simply reply Das ist rassisstisch/nicht lieb. Solche Beleidungen bekommen Gebuehren usw You can report to the soziale paedogogin/eltern klassensprecher/ or directly to the teacher but ime as you are well aware they do not have the same onus on anti-bullying as they would in the UK. I found that to be the case and we were in a multi kulti primary.
It will be a huge advantage in Gymnasium however and the kids will do a huge u-turn and want to befriend the english native speaker especially when the orals come round. Rache ist suess!

The toytown forum can be snippy yep. I could name at least two deeply sarcastic regulars. Have not been on there for a while. However it was and still is a great source of info and there are also brilliant people on there too like Pandamunich for tax questions or Starshollow/John for insurance.
Run by non Germans mainly so do not think the direct non fluffy approach is cultural on this occasion
It is just that there is less traffic on there than on here so if being asked about Elterngeld for the twentieth time mods and members tend to get a it shirty. Whereas on mn there could be the millionth thread on bf vs bottle or cosleeping or favourite things etc and people will still respond.

Waves to all the expats in Germany and Austria
Remembers to regurgitate the denglisch thread.
Wann wird es endlich wann wird es Sommer sein?

We've lived here nearly 8 years get and it's the first time it's happened. The kids' German is native speaker (DH is German, all their friends are German, we rarely see ex pats as we live at the are end of agricultural rural Bavaria). The first time this has come up was yesterday - 2 different boys in different years addressing their comments to different "foreigners" ... It seems a big coincidence and I wonder if they've heard it from someone older... hmmm

Up til now the kids have had no problem at all with friends and we usually have a house full, so I don't want anything to start to turn around in that department! Or perhaps it is inevitable the trouble starts now theyare getting older

Then you've been very lucky MrT, no doubt because the kids' German is also Muttersprache (my DD now 'passes' as in her German teacher was shocked to discover she is English with two English parents, she thought she was German. That wasn't always the case...)
They could have heard it at home. Pagida scares the shit out of me and I'm not even muslim. Genuinely don't think Auslaender bullshit gets worse as the kids get older, apart from where world cup is concerned, it has got easier.
But the auslaender kommentar is a bit like Godwin's law...it will come up with complete strangers, kids and oaps alike, once it is clocked that you are not German/as soon as there is a conflict situation. I think you are sheltered from that more if one parent is German and you are out the city. But I have told the kids 'under the radar' many times. And I look German and I understand German, which makes it funnier when people don't realise and I pull them up on what was said.
But thst is the case everywhere...people are great, people are cunts. So you cannot take it personally. but you can judge the parents!

I know the kids parents Get - the boy who said it to DD was one of her best friends from the age of 2 to 5, they went to all of each other's birthday parties, even when they were each the only boy/ girl. They've grown apart since being at school, and I don't see his mum much any more now they aren't at each other's houses to play and there are no kiga drop offs, but I'm going to go and talk to her with the attitude she'd want to know and address it. DH thinks it might be coming from grandparents though, and it's true the grandfather lives in the same house as them but has never spoken to me... gruff old Bavarian farmers are not very forthcoming though! The grandmother has always been friendly, and the boys' mum was one of the ones who went out of her way to be welcoming when I first walked into Mutterkind Gruppe with a 19 month old, a bump, and about 12 words of German... Makes me sad. :(

Hope your DS is feeling better tomorrow Linzer - meant to say that earlier!

MrsN I think mods and self selecting "experts" on smaller Internet forums sometimes get very self important and pompous, I'm not sure whether it's Germans in general - more the type of German who decides to spend a lot of time lording it over an English speakers in Germany forum in the belief they are charitably giving of their precious time to educate the ignorant foreigner and allow them to pull their socks up and meet local requirements (sounds very imperial British - but now anyone who thinks they know best can educate and improve the foreigners by bei g imperious over the Internet! :) ).

For a year or two I was a member of a Munich fb group for English speakers and although it was superficially more friendly, it had its inexplicably motivated German members who were massively condescending in handing out "advice" and would come out with phrases like "shame on you" as well as sometimes making questionable claims that their own personal hobby horse agendas were "law" or values held by "all" Germans... The site had been started by an American though and she was the real fruit cake - she was a conspiracy theorist who believed the police were spying on the group, and regularly deleted long and useful or interesting threads because she thought the police would use them to arrest people (for example if somebody suggested calling a child in sick in order to miss school and catch a flight). She also randomly deleted any threads where a discussion had got going and wasn't going the way she wanted it to... Wasn't worth posting there in the end, so I left - we're too far from the city anyway, and the people on there were not generally people I felt I had anything in common with except the English language...

How's your day been MrsN ? I hope it improved?

DS is much better thanks MrTumbles and back at school today; thankfully it was a very short-lived thing.

about the Ausländer comments. You do wonder where it comes from... DD1 said not long ago that when she changes schools, she wants to go to one with fewer foreigners; when I pointed out that she's half-"foreign" thanks to me, she said that doesn't count as she's half-Austrian. I have no idea where this came from - certainly not from me or DH or our families - although it's true that there are very few children from Austrian families in her class and she doesn't have any friends at school either (I don't think the two are connected, but she doesn't really have anything in common with the other girls in her class). In theory, her school is a comprehensive but in practice, the majority of Austrian parents (in our town, at any rate) are never going to send their DC there when there are Gymnasien they could go to - but that's a whole other issue.

Figgy Ah, I thought I recognised your name - must have been from the denglish thread.

Glad he's better Linzer !

Got to the bottom of the Auslander comments, after accidentally making the boys mum cry when I went to talk to her yesterday and ending up there all morning She was more upset than I was about it... Then when her son came home she grilled him and it turned out that although he had said it, DD had called him a dumb farmer first! He told his mum it was the only bad thing he could think of to say back at that moment! DD initially tried to deny it but then admitted it was true - so although not ideal foreigner is being used as an insult, it's pretty much 50/50 and not nearly as bad as I thought - I ended up much angrier with DD than the boy as I'm pretty sure she milked what happened for the drama! I made her apologise for exaggerating, and the boy invited her to play, so she spent all afternoon in and out of their dairy cow barn and off on a bike ride with him! Blimin' kids!

Is your DD planning to change schools Linzer ? That's a pity she doesn't have any friends at school, are the other kids all from the same country?

That's good that you got it sorted out, MrTumbles. And that the children are friends again - love the sound of the barn (it sounds a bit like DH's childhood!).

DD1 has 1.5 years left at middle school and then has to move to another school; atm she wants to do the Oberstufe (second four years) in Gymnasium, but I don't know whether she'd be more suited to a more vocational school. She'll have to decide by early next year, at any rate. Most of the other children in her class are from an Eastern European or Turkish background, but not all from one country so I don't think she feels particularly excluded from that perspective. I don't know about the children so much, but the parents are very different from the ones in DD1's class - not bothered about coming along to get-togethers (the ones who do are mainly the Austrian parents who all seem to be heavy smokers ) whereas it was a more or less full house at DD1's first Heurigenabend parents' get-together. Mainly Austrian parents, but I couldn't judge the proportion of smokers as we were sitting inside.

I am currently trying to set up Skype - I must be the last expat in the world not to be using it, but have to do so for work next week which is rather scary. I need to find someone to practise on...

Linzer, very happy to practice with you. I am also in the throes of job stuff so maybe we can give each other tips!

That's very kind Autumn, I'll PM you.

Hello all! Trying to catch up. Horrid to hear about the nasty "foreigner" remarks, though it sounds very sorted out now. Kids, indeed!!

Back along to MrsM, each time we've moved I've looked up the local rules on the Gemeinde website, then emailed the school. TBH our experiences have been very positive. First two times the girls just were plonked into the Grundschule (and no issues about "getting places" the way there is in the UK, which made life so much easier - it's your local school, so you go there). I always said to the teacher I'd do whatever it took to help. The first two schools were also 8-12/1300 schools, so I could look over homework and see what they were doing, and help if something hadn't been understood during the day. But at neither school were there extra classes for non-Germans! They just had to learn quickly.... Now we're in Berlin, and school is 8-1600, so that's not been possible. But they're in a bilingual school, so it's been fine... not sure if that's a possibility in Cologne?

Agree Toytown is really useful, but I've only ever posted once - mostly just read to find what I need and scuttle away again!

Please can it be warmer soon, I've been freezing me arse off!!

On the plus side, we have found a reliable babysitter, and DP and I have been to Out This is a big development in our lives - moving around a lot has meant that kind of back up has been hard to find. We went to two (count 'em) concerts last week Good to get the most out of living in the capital!

Out sounds good, Heinous! What concerts did you see? I haven't done that in ages..

In our schools, you have a choice of 3 infants, 2 juniors and 1 senior, so all sorts go to them and you don't really get a choice (Unless you go private). We are close to Gatwick, so get quite a lot of 'immigrant' children, going to school for a few weeks before they find a place to move to. Quite a moveable intake. And really it's not worth having a dig about 'polish' or 'indian' or whatever - they are (mostly)not here long enough.

I love the sound of the 'barn' too -when I went to play with my German Cousins, (Detmold) they had a big barn for storing straw and tractors and stuff - we spent lovely long sunny days throwing straw about, or sitting on the machinery. I wouldn't do it now, too afraid of the big spiders, or fire, or machinery falling on us...

Two totally different ones ptumbi - first was a counter-tenor plus piano, all very French and 19th Century, the second was Swedish Rock and blues in a concrete bunker! And week after next we're going to another rock - though more proggish this time. Then I won't go out for another decade, just to get over all the excitement And also let out bank account relax again, Out is an expensive place!!

We're on our last day before the school holidays here - are you about the same? Can't wait tbh, the DDs are tired- the time since Christmas has flown by. Not going away or anything, so hoping the weather plays ball. There are a few places opened up for the summer season now, quite fancy a spot of climbing and a bit of swimming - there's a pool near us which is heated outside. That must be terrible for the environment, but it is lovely to be swimming in the open air

Heinous - the Swedish Rock sounds great. Not sure about the French 19th Century stuff tho

I've just spent a long weekend in Portugal, just outside of Lisbon. Never been before, but really liked it. Only problem was the wind - constant, strong, off the Atlantic. I walked along the beach in quite a breeze, which masked the effect of the strong sun on my skin. My white pasty shoulders are now pink and sore! Stupidly didn't take suncream either, for March! Brought the wind back with us - it's blowing a hooley outside today.

We've been advised to check out the Algarve for the beaches - I never wanted to go before as I have the impression of hordes of middle-aged British golfers braying all over the place, but maybe a long weekend...

Easter Hols here too - 2 weeks of no school run, no morning alarms, hopefully some relaxing sunshine

Hello Everyone! Long-time stalker, first-time poster (I'm a kind of a newbie, please be gentle )
Myself, my husband and our two sons (4.5yo and 9mo) will be moving to Koeln in LESS THAN two weeks! Eeek! From Australia! Eeeeek! I am very much a beginner level German speaker, but I am trying to learn, and am staying well clear of Toy Town, thankyouverymuch
I have so many questions but also so much to do before we leave, so thought I would just drop in to say hi, and then when I came back crying and lonely, you will (hopefully) remember who I am and give me Nutella and beer...!!
Oh, and also to say hello to MrsMortis, seeing as though we will be in the same city. Hello! Do you know where in Koeln you will be based? I don't know much about German-only schools in Koeln as I have been looking at bilingual for now (though I am still undecided). My understanding is that children can start school in the Sept as long as they are 6 by Dec (sorry if that is completely obvious to everyone else, we start school in Jan/Feb down here and Sept school year is doing my head in... among other things about our impeding move!).
Looking forward to your words of wisdom