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".)

Your messages inspired me to google fluechtlinge kleiderspenden and our Landkreiss and that brought up a Caritas collection centre much nearer than Munich, so I think I will take things there! Thanks for the nudge to do it! Glad not to have talked myself into hauling bags of clothes across Munich by train and U Bahn to be honest, we are only planning one trip into Munich over the holiday, and that will be by train with just me and 3 kids... Looks as though there is a collection centre only about 10km away though, so will get the kids to help me do a serious sort out! Come winter I have at least 3 good coats which I no longer fit into plus some very small childrens ski wear and other winter stuff, which Im sure will be even more needed than summer stuff.

posts not messages obviously...

Doubt theyll want the Schuleranzen, but can offer it...

My keyboard has gone nuts and all the punctuation marks except the full stop and comma are not where they should be, plus y and z have transposed, so I apologise for lack of apostrophes etc.

Sounds like you have a different keyboard driver. I always runs us keyboard driver on the German keyboard. It drives everyone else insane but I can type about 100 times faster.

Good luck with the move MrsM

Well we are here. The airline lost 2 of our cases, including the one with the girls school things for this week in... Here's hoping that they get to us in time (they've located them but I have no indication of when they'll get to us).

We're in a hotel this week. I'm hoping to be able to move into the apartment at the weekend. We are just waiting for contracts/initial payment etc to go through.

The good news is that Kaufhof special offers save the day. I got a Ranzen yesterday at 40% off and with a further 10% off all Schulbedarf I got everything we needed, including the Ranzen, for about 130 Euros.

Fingers crossed for the first day of school tomorrow.

Good luck for tomorrow mrsm - I sent DD of to kindergarten today - then DS2 goes back to Grundschule tomorrow and then DS1 starts Gymnasium on Thurs - all go here! It'll be a relief to get back to normal now - though the semester is going to be a super long one!

Fingers x'd all your bits turn up in time and bravo on Kaufhof!

Nur that is easy to fix. Are you on Windows? You've got English and German swapped somehow. Which do you usually use? (If you're not sure, one where the top line spells QWERTY is English and one where the top line spells QWERTZ is German.)

On Windows, go to Start > Control Panel > Region and Language (icon is a little clock and a world, in case your computer is in German!)

Then click the Keyboards and Languages tab. Click Change Keyboards. Install as many keyboards as you like - I have EN UK and DE installed (Mrsmortis, you can do this too to swap between UK/US and DE).

There is another tab called Language Bar. With this you can add a little quick switch button to your start bar. So MrsMortis's family might also find that useful! :) You click it to immediately switch between keyboard layouts. So you can use what is printed on the keyboard or whatever you are most used to, and then switch back and forth for others.

AND I've just noticed that you can assign shortcut keys to switch keyboard languages!

Thanks Bertie - blimin DH helpfully updating my laptop to Windows 10 without asking me, appears to have altered a few things... I have a German keyboard, which I was totally used to, but it didn't occur to me it would be having an identity crisis and suddenly believe itself to be an English one...

How annoying about the suitcases and typical its the ones you most need Mrsm - glad you sourced everything you need and good luck with the first day of school!

Good luck to your DD to dorado* - I've one starting Realschule in September (I've been tutoring a 5th klasse Gymnasium student - they only do a laughable bit of play English in Grundschule out our way and she was being given jaw droppingly complex sentences to translate from German into English after less than a year of learning properly - at least English speaking kids have a head start I guess, I was shocked!)

Our school holidays have barely started - older kids have been doing Ferien Programme activities (So far T shirt making, tennis, dancing like the Kinder Garde, a night hike and camp fire with hamburger eating and flaming torches - Fackel? or are those piglets? :o - run by the volunteer fire brigade... and a fossil hunting and cave exploring day trip which they got back from an hour ago, an hour and a half late... but none the less it is a good programme of rather random activities put on either free or at cost price by the Geminde and assorted local Verirren) Its a bit hard on DC3 though as he is hearing "You're not old enough to go too" on a daily basis atm... everything is minimum age 6 or 8...

We don't go back to school til the middle of September :o and still have 2 weeks in the UK to come.

oops bold fail there - can't blame the keyboard, will blame DC3 who keeps kissing my arm, guess he's bored of both lego and climbing the door frame... :o

DH has Windows 10, so if the instructions don't make sense, let me know and I'll double check on his machine how to do it. He's presumably installed Windows in UK/US English so you have Start, Documents, Settings etc all in English but it will have reset the keyboard as well. It's like Microsoft can't fathom the idea of wanting one thing set one way and the other set the other! :)

Well, the girls are at school/kindergarten. DD1 was obviously nervous going in and a bit unsure of herself. But she LOVES her new Ranzen and the girl she is sitting next to has been asked to be her buddy for the next few days.

DD2 on the other hand astounded the kindergarten teacher. She waltzed in like she owned the place, kissed us goodbye and when she was asked if she wanted us to stay said basically 'no, you don't belong here!' Apparently that level of independence and self sufficiency is not normal in a 3 and a half year old here...

The Ranzen has been bought today! We got a last-year's McNeill for €79 which I don't think was too bad! Still grumbling at any bag costing that much but it looks the part and DS is thrilled, so there we are :)

seit ungefähr 4 Wche bin ich weg, und Wien fehlt mir sehr! those who can, enjoy Votiv Kino and Jonas Reinl café and Molly Darcy's Irish pub for me and Mariahilfer and MQ and the amazing cheese selection im Spar :) :) (I lived just up the road from the MQ!)

Argh - Kipper books again!

I thought we'd left them behind for ever, but now DD1 is bringing them home again, only this time in German!

Hi all, I'm hoping that someone out there can help...

My DDs need new shoes. I was hoping to be able to wait until we went home at Christmas but DD2's toes are squashed up against the end of her shoes now and I don't want her walking several miles a day in shoes which are that bad a fit.

I tried Clarks in Cologne but they are useless. The ladies definitely weren't trained fitters and they only had F fittings. DD1 is a D!

So where can I go in Cologne to get them properly fitted sensible shoes/winter boots in narrow fittings? What chains are generally good? What makes are good?

Hi mrsmortis, getting properly fitted shoes can be a little tricky in this part of the world! I don't think I've come across a shoe shop in Austria that has properly trained fitters and width fittings don't seem to exist in most shops; if you're lucky, you'll find a 'wide' fitting, but that's usually about it.

Having said that, elefanten is considered to be a good brand; their shoes are generally good quality and long-lasting. Re shoe shops - we like Deichmann, which has quite reasonably priced shoes (have bought much more expensive shoes that haven't been any better quality); they have elefanten shoes too. But they don't have properly trained fitters there (at least, not in our local branch).

I always used to try to buy the DC's shoes at Clark's back in the UK, but gave up on them once the DDs got to the age where the only proper shoes they could get there were black school shoes. I now rely on measuring their feet myself in the shop and getting them to tell me whether shoes are comfortable... I'm glad I got Clark's shoes for them when they were little, but now tell myself that Austrian children seem to survive without lots of different width fittings and shoe fitters who know what they're doing! (Although if I still had the option to get properly fitted shoes for them, I would.)

Hello mrsmoritz
Superfit shoes have a narrow width fitting. My DS has narrow feet and they seem fine on him. They also have an insole that you can remove, get your child to stand on and check that the shoe is the right size. If you can, look for a small independent children's show shop. I have found one shop and they seem to really know their brands. They have a machine that does a length and width fitting - I'm not sure how accurate it is... But that's all I've sever seen in the shops here.

I always go back to this one particular shop, even it can be a trek, because I trust their measuring and fitting advice. Occasionally you might get a good member of staff in a bigger store but there isn't always a children's specialist in them.

And I think Ecco shoes are narrow too.

Thanks everyone for the help. We went with elefanten in the end. I found a pair for each of them that I could tighten (for DD1 with laces and DD2 with Velcro) enough that they fit properly). We bought boots here and will get new shoes when we are home at Christmas...

anyone still here? If you are HAPPY NEW YEAR!
**
Although that should really be: FROHES NEUES!!

Oh bum. The app was very helpful with the bold wasn't it never mind.

hello - just wondered if anybody on here would be able to help me plan a possible trip to cologne next christmas?

What's the plan, Mareseatoats? Christmas markets? Cologne is good for them. As is my personal favourite, Berlin. Cologne has had a bad time of it this year apparently, with 'gangs' mugging and assaulting women over christmas/NY. Still, COlogne is still number 1 (or 2!) on my list for my future jahr in Deutschland.

This christmas we went to the xmas markets in Luxembourg - lovely city, nice markets, pretty architecture and, as they speak mostly French and belgian, they answered me in German (not English, as they maybe probably didn't realise as quickly that I'm not german.

Anyway, cologne is pretty easy to get to - easyjet fly there, as does Norwegian I think (from Gatwick) and I think you can even get there by Eurostar and train. Or fly to Dusseldorf and train, that's easy enough.

If you are coming for the markets my advice is to come early or to come midweek. The weekend before Christmas was INSANE. They'd closed the road outside the main station to let the coaches in and unload. There were so many people there you couldn't actually get to a lot of the stalls. I ended up walking home rather than on the tram and taking a very indirect route to avoid the crowds.