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".)

Going back to FUDGEBO - I haven't been pondering this all night or anything - I think the U must stand for um, as über is one of those prepositions that can take either the accusative or the dative.

Still thinking about E, B and O but determined not to google!

'Um' - yes, think so! Rather than ober, is it Oben? Think gegen is right too.

The 2nd masc object - as in 'the man the fox and the dog' : the dog is the second (m) object, the man is the subject so is nominative. The fox is still der fuchs,(first object) but the dog is den hund,(second object) so is accusative... is that right? Of course, if it was the man with the dog, it would be der mann mit dem hund, so dative, as it's after MIT.
( i only know the dativ if it follows one of those prepositions. )

Oh and as for the 'movement' - there are several common prepositions that take akk if moving, but dativ if not, but apart from auf, or in, I don't know which these are. (and WHY? Just why? fgs )

No, it wouldn't be oben either as that's used as an adverb, not a preposition, e.g. es ist oben = it's at the top. "She's at the top of the mountain", for example, would be "sie ist oben am Berg".

Which reminds me, "an" is another one of those prepositions that can take either the accusative or the dative. I can think of an, auf, in, hinter, über, unter, vor and zwischen but I'm sure there are more. As for why - to confuse us language learners even more?

I still don't get the first and second object thing, though. If the man is the subject and the fox and dog are objects, they would both need to be in the accusative (or dative if indirect object) - the fox could only be der Fuchs if it's the subject of the the sentence.

The problem is that "the man, the fox and the dog" isn't a sentence - you need a verb to know what's going on.

• All three nouns could be nominative, e.g. "Der Mann, der Fuchs und der Hund gingen spazieren."
• Or the man could be nominative but the fox and the dog accusative, e.g. "Der Mann sah den Fuchs und den Hund."
• Or you could have nominative, accusative and dative, e.g. "Der Mann gab dem Fuchs den Hund." (Or, like you say, "Der Mann sah den Fuchs mit dem Hund.")

That may all well be as clear as mud. Must get back to German legalese, which is far less interesting!

OK, I've given in and googled! EBO are entlang, bis and ohne.

Ooh a grammar discussion! My favourite

Must restrain myself before I start reciting lists of prepositions.....

DH just doesn't understand my love of prepositions.
(I do realise that he's the normal in in the relationship )

Ohohohohoh I understand grammar.... But mostly in a more natural way now and I can't explain the rules. Although a lovely teacher I had in Nuremberg when I was first learning did give us a little rhyme to remember the prepositions and which were akk or dat.

The teacher I had here was amazing at explaining grammar and gave us loads of exercises to practice them. There were some though that did make me go a bit cross eyed.

I might have to dig out my old work book to find that rhyme now....

Can we have a discussion about sayings later? My favourite is "Tapeten Wechsel"

Glad it's not just me, Woolly - I was worried I might have scared everyone away with my last post. I don't think I've ever been able to recite a list of prepositions; my reciting skills don't go much further than DER, die, das, die, DEN, die, das, die, DEM, der, dem, den... and I've forgotten the genitive part of the chant that our German teacher used to get us to do.

Nutella Is it just me or does that word make anyone else think that German speakers spend most of their time indoors when they go away admiring a different Tapete, whereas English speakers go outdoors to enjoy the change of scenery?

Will have to have a think about favourite sayings, but one of the useful phrases I've learned since moving here (which I'm positive I've mentioned on the thread before) is "unsere Familienplanung ist schon abgeschlossen". Haven't needed to use it for ages, though; I probably look too old and haggard now for anyone to think I might want a fourth.

Ohne! Course it is!

It really doesn't help that english doesn't really have these cases (except a bit of dative) - a friend who learned Latin found German grammar came easily to him. I think Latin has even more cases.

My understanding is sort of second hand - ds2 understands it and uses it well, but I have to really think. And I really don't understand why anyone would want such a hard language,and WHY things change according to place in sentence... or why they have different genders in the first place.

I'll have to have a think about sayings. Not sure I even know any.

ptumbi I think Polish uses five cases and Italian is 6 or 7.... But I could be wrong.

I like German grammar because once you know, understand and can use a rule that's it. There aren't loads of complicated exceptions that make the rule you just learnt pointless. There might be add ons to make the rule more "advanced" but you can still use the simple version.

Linzer I don't know, I kind of think of it as "I need to escape these four walls" . But that is what is great about sayings. They all mean different things to different people.

ptumbi I personally don't think German is all that hard compared to some other languages; we have a Chinese neighbour, and I wouldn't know where to start with a language that has a different alphabet, in which words can change meanings depending on intonation, etc. (Although I suppose that applies to English as well to a very small extent, e.g. present changes its meaning depending on whether you stress the first or second syllable).

As for cases, you can probably ignore the genitive, particularly if you're learning conversational German. No, I'm only (half-)joking but the dative is used a lot more than the genitive in spoken German. Having learned at school that wegen takes the genitive, for example, I found that people actually use it with the dative more often than not and have picked up the habit myself. It would be quite common here to hear something like "dem Mann sein Hut" rather than "der Hut des Mannes". Sorry, don't mean to confuse you - you should really learn the correct version before breaking the rules.

ohne - that reminds me of another of my overused favourite sayings, that something is "nicht ohne" (something like "it's not all that easy").

Nutella I like German grammar too, but I think I may be a bit weird - I always preferred learning about grammar to writing essays, for example. And yes, I'm sure an actual Tapete is that last thing on most Germans' minds when they talk about a Tapetenwechsel! I also like the German for cabin fever, mir fällt die Decke auf den Kopf.

I had never heard that before linzer It `s a good one. I use Largerkoller for cabin fever. Less prepositions and cases to deal with!

Thanks for those lists - I never learnt any lists, which might explain a lot of my mistakes! Never to late to start, I shall write them down.

Is everyone ready for the heatwave?!

Any air conditioning unit recommendations?? I haven't mentioned it to DH but I think I probably should. I might also encourage him to finally get around to putting up the curtains in his office.... I wish we had shutters !

Once you live in a house or apartment with shutters, they become a must have.

Hello Gfplux
DH's parents house has shutters and an AC unit installed upstairs and we could renovate the top floor and live there. It's tempting. The biggest problem is that DH's parents live there. Next problem is the location

Oh DH just got a recommendation for an AC unit. It's 31 degrees in our flat today - nightmare. I haven't yet experienced air temperature reaching higher than body temperature, so I'm curious (apprehensive??) about that on Thursday... I'm not sure if it's the same where the rest of you are, but I can't get my head around the hottest part of the day being 5-6pm. It just seems all kinds of wrong.

But I am three degrees more acclimatised than last year. 31 is my tipping point now - I'm on the edge of comfortable, can relax and cope with it just fine until I get ever so slightly stressed or irritated, and then I start to panic and can't breathe and look for a way out and realise that there isn't one and that exacerbates the panic/stress, so that's fun, when you have a six year old who thinks he can deal with the heat but has the exact same issue. Tonight we had inconsolable sobbing and items thrown over the fact that three electronics ran out of battery at the same time. Aaaargh.

Nutella Could you have shutters installed? (Sorry, can't remember if you're renting.) We had them put on the bedrooms at the front of our house (south-facing) and it's made a real difference in hot weather. We have an AC unit in our bedroom, which is on the top floor so underneath the roof - the make is ProKlima and we're quite happy with it.

Bertie I wish I could make it to 31; 25° is about my tipping point. And we're forecast 34° at the weekend, which should be fun.

suenan Ah yes, I've heard Lagerkoller too. I'm now wondering which term/phrase is more common in Austria; I learned die Decke auf den Kopf fallen in Germany, but I'm sure DH uses it. Another random expression I like: Hahn im Korb.

We're winding down towards the end of the school year; only two days to go after today. DD1 was in hospital last week having her insulin pump fitted and is still at home, but will be going back to school tomorrow (for all of about three hours spread over the two days - am wondering whether it's worth it!).

Our shutters are the normal ones that are installed when the house was built 11 years ago. ie with a shutter box built above the window that holds the rolled up shutter. These are quite a job to be retro fitted.
However I notice a trend here in Luxembourg in new houses. They have a type of large heavy "Venetian" blind. These are fitted outside the window and just like Venetian blinds can be partially opened, tilted or pulled up completely. This has allowed floor to ceiling windows to be installed.
I imagine these are more easily to fit to an existing property.

We have those types of shutters Gfplux (with a box above the window) and had them retrofitted without any problems. It wasn't cheap but was definitely worth it - also good for getting the DC to sleep when it's light outside as they make the room pitch black (although DS prefers to sleep with his shutters slightly open).

Yay, the school year is over here! Now comes the challenge of 9 weeks of summer holidays!

Hope you aren´t suffering too much in the heat. Still bearable here today in Vienna, though meant to go up. We have a portable air con machine, which we use when really hot. It`s a bit daft as the tube has to go out window, so window has to be a bit open, but it does cool the room. Most of the time, we use fans. And cool showers help too. I don´t envy those with smaller babies and children - they are much more fragile in these temperatures.

Hüftgold is my favourite word at the moment. (Much nicer word than muffin top) Nothing to do with the fact that I have been making (and eating!) too many frdige cakes. (Linzer introduced me to them) Luckily the dc and dh also like them so that limits my intake. Though the one currently in the fridge has wholewheat biscuits and raisins - see how many like this version. Maybe I will get to eat it all myself and increase my Hüftgold.

I had a really bad word fail last week. I wanted to say my dd1's room was a mess (she is 12) and thought of schlampig. Then I called her a Schlampe not realising it was a dreadful insult. Luckily she reacted straight away, realised that her foreign mum had used the wrong word, told me what it meant and it gave me a chance to apologise profusely. I felt dreadful.

Right, off to cool shower. Enjoy your evenings, and weekends!

suenan I'm sorry but that is hilarious! I can't remember why but I mixed up schlampe and schlumpf (smurfs?) and created Schlampfe which has now stuck.

Other instances of bad language in our house is suppositories. We don't call them suppositories or Zäpfchen... Oh no. Here they are Arsch-Bon-bons even DS now calls them that!

Linzer sadly we are renting. No shutters for us in the foreseeable! I don't know how much longer we will live here for though... Shutters are on the list for the next place or if we ever go mad and decide to build.

DD is still teething and has a cough. Illness has been endless since Easter! I've had a few dreadful colds, a cough and even an ear infection which has left me with glue ear so I might need a grommet putting in next week if it isn't better by then
I really really hope that we will all turn a corner soon and become healthy!

I am dying. Even with the air con it is still 33 degrees. I'm KNACKERED but bedroom is even hotter, sleep is impossible. I am planning to go to bed at around 2am but it's totally messing up my sleep timetable

And there is a stupid fest in the stupid Altstadt so people keep coming home all drunk and happy and singing. I despise them.

As an aside, took DS swimming today at the outdoor pool and he was far and away the whitest child there. Even a ginger kid was not as pale as him, and nor was one who had such white-blonde hair he could have been albino. Do you think that's just his Englishness or is it worth getting him tested for anaemia? He is utterly terrified of needles, so it isn't a fun prospect, but I feel as though I shouldn't ignore potential nutrient deficiency He's the exact same colour as me, so maybe I should wait until they have tested me first.

Bertie it depends what is normal for you. DS is pale like me but I try and let him run around in the sun as much as he wants and last year he had a pretty decent tan. But he was still very white.

We haven't got air con. DH's dad says the only kind of unit that really works are the kind that are huge and cost around 400€. Which is a tad more than DH and I can really manage. I don't agree, but DH and I haven't managed to sort ourselves out and buy something.