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".)

Thanks frauEnglisch! My mum is german, so I should be a lot better than I am at german - my understanding is quite good. My ds2 is doing Alevel German and his german is better than mine, tho I can sometimes come out wiith a few words he doesn't know!

I love germany, go there at least twice a year, but it is really not well served by airlines. I know of germania, but never heard of Erfurt so will check it out.

Captain you can fly to Munich from Gatwick as well. I think it is expensive to live though. I would have thought any big city would have lots of English speakers - when we go into the city, we hear English spoken loads. We are further out, far fewer English speakers but not the cosmopolitanism that you get from a city.

We have been here a year, all starting from speaking no German at all. DH is pretty good now - he speaks German at work, though probably not totally fluent. I am probably about GCSE level, maybe and DD(6) is closest to complete fluency, though with some gaps here and there. It depends on the chances you have to speak, I am not very good at pushing myself forward and striking up conversations, and I find Germans a bit reticent sometimes - not unfriendly, but not particularly effusive.

Oops, used the wrong name there

Black Thought we had a new poster there for a minute!

Heinous I was also shocked to find out that our PTA has to raise money to decorate the classrooms. And yet the local authority (or whoever it is that pays) has enough money for each child to be provided with a set of new school books every year. Mind you, I think Austrians have much higher standards than the British; everyone seems to be shocked by the state of DD2's school, which seems quite normal to me (I was actually quite impressed by how clean the classrooms were - no graffiti on the desks!).

FrauEnglisch I would love some of those Muji boxes, but then saw the price of shipping to the continent and decided against it! Although maybe I could have some sent to my parents' address...

I've heard awful things about teachers here - one locked the gym changing room and left a child in there (who was locked in for a while IIRC), another would tear up pages that weren't written neatly enough. Actually that may have been the same teacher, but I'm sure they get away with a lot more than they'd be able to in Britain. Luckily our teachers have all been fine, albeit generally in that Austrian "never heard of positive feedback" way. DS's current teacher is lovely, however; she had lots of positive things to say about him at the parents' evening, while I sat there open-mouthed wondering whether I'd been transported to another country.

captain Like FrauEnglisch, I would probably also opt for Berlin if I had a choice. (Or Gatwick has flights to Vienna if you don't mind the Austrian accent!) I spent a year in Berlin after my A levels and found that, despite living with an English-speaking family, it didn't take too long for me to become fluent. I did a four-hour German course at the Volkshochschule every day, however, and my social life was conducted almost entirely in German, which obviously helped hugely; it really depends on how much of an opportunity you have to speak German.

Linzer DD could read at 4, DS2 knows his letters and has the idea of sounding out at not quite 3.5, DS1 started school 2 weeks ago, and turned 7 a few days after he started school - he can't read, and though he has all the "pre-reading" skills in place and has been read to every day of his life, he was totally uninterested until not long before turning 7 (and is now irritated about having to colour silly pictures in at school instead of his teacher doing what in his view she is meant to be doing and spending the entire 3 hour school day teaching them to read and do sums).

I think a lot of children aren't ready til they are 7, and think if DS1 had had to start school at 4 he would have got to the end of reception still unable to read at all (as many children actually do - lots and lots aren't actually genuinely reading by the end of a full year of school in the UK, whereas if they start school at 6 or 7 they are all reading within a couple of months despite the in many cases abysmal teaching) Ignoring here the fact DS1 is a Sept birthday so would actually have started school at very nearly 5 even in the UK, even so I think he would have struggled for a good year or so :)

I'm seeing the flip side of a very good Kindergarten and imaginative, sociable children who love being outside and just playing now - tbh both DS1 and DD (even though she's 9) would probably be quite happy to have stayed at Kindergarten indefinitely - when we pick DS2 up they both disappear off and play if the kids are in the garden, as they usually are :o

MrTumbles I wasn't suggesting that all or even the majority of children should be reading by 6. DD1 couldn't read when she started school (at 6.75) and it took her the best part of a year to learn. I was just surprised that it's so unusual for children here to be reading when they start school - no one could in DD1's class, and only one other boy was reading in DD2's class. Surely a few would pick it up by themselves through being read to? Other than the odd genius?

Captain Easyjet fly Gatwick to Dusseldorf too which opens up the glamourous Ruhrgebiet area....... Actually Dus and Cologne are lovely cities and not as industrial as made out to be

DD1 did most of reception in the UK. By the end, she still couldn't read by any means fluently, she was still struggling through individual words one at a time, and had a tendency to guess wildly at words, and to struggle with blending. I don't think she really saw the point of it all.

She has actually improved since coming to Germany and doing no reading at Kindergarten, and only the very occasional bit of practice at home (I tend to read to her instead), and it's only in the last few months that she has started reading sentences as though they are sentences, with a bit of expression and intonation, rather than a string of unconnected words to be battled through. She was 6, and it was like a switch was flicked, and she wanted to do it.

Linzer there is a muji in Hannover (and I'm guessing therefore in Germany generally) are you sure they're not in Austria too??

Poor DD has a cold and a cough. At just 7 weeks old she seems much too tiny for a cough . DS isn't great either. But you can't make a toddler rest can you?!

Black and doradoo - thanks for that. i know easyjet fly to Munich, I jsut thought it would be too expensive and more than an hour-and-half on the plance. i intend to come back once a month or so (to see the dc/dp - who will still be here in UK) so needs to be as short/easy a journey as poss. Dusseldorf I had ruled out, as being too industrial - should I check it out? I love Berlin tho, so that is increasingly a hot contender!

Nutella Ah, thank you - no Muji in Austria AFAIK and the misleadingly named .eu site charges an extortionate 30 GBP to ship to mainland Europe, but I hadn't thought about checking the German site. I'm so used to German sellers on Amazon charging a ridiculous amount to post goods here, but Muji only charges €1 more. May have to have another browse.

Captainmummy We pretty much always fly in to Dusseldorf (Newcastle is our nearest airport back in England). It is a very efficient airport, if you were thinking of somewhere near there. For me, the thing that got me from that slightly awkward "learnt German" from school into a something more fluent was finding people who were happy to chat for hours - at first that was through the Goethe Institute's Tandem programme (met one person, through whom I met her group of friends and we'd meet up every week, eat cake and yatter!), and then through playgroup (harder if you don't have children, but something like that where you're stuck with people for hours on end and nothing to do but talk is ideal). I hope you can find something! We're in Berlin, there is a lot to be said for being here.

I agree wholeheartedly with children playing in those early years. I love how much they all play outside here too, come rain or shine. It is slightly problematic for us that the reading is later here, just because we might be returning to England and I don't want DD2 to be way behind. If she stayed here it wouldn't really matter, the others would soon catch up with her reading, and she'd catch up on her conker collecting. Conker collecting being the most important subject at school atm it seem

oh and sorry to be really dull…. but do any of you live in hard water areas? Berlin seems to be one (really hard!). The landlady left us some Cillit Bang stuff for cleaning (an anti-kalk one) - it does the job but it smells horrible and is really harsh. I don't know, maybe that's needed! I've looked in the shops and haven't found the sort of natural, nice smelling and yet effective product that I would like… do you have anything you can recommend? If you're still awake that is

We live in a hard water area - we were recommended to use Essig Reiniger for cleaning. The one I buy is made by Frosch and I think they are supposed to be particularly natural and eco-friendly. I wouldn't say it smells nice exactly, because it doesn't but it smells more vinegary than chemical. I think they make one with lemon instead of vinegar too, which might smell better, but I haven't tried it.

BRG beat me to it. We live in a medium water hardness area (where I grew up in the UK had really really hard water) and I know I've seen various anti kalk products. We have the Frosch essig reiniger and use it for all sorts. It's fab. Yes it smells of vinegar but I find it doesn't linger.

I think I'm going to have to get the decluttering book. I hate clutter....

Kalk/limescale is alkaline so any acid will dissolve it - vinegar, cut lemon, coke. DH is obsessed with cillit bang though and it does work for normal grease - not so much for limescale.

The water here is so much harder than I'm used to.

Thanks Heinous. I think my main problem will be talking to people - I find i hard to talk in English, let alone german! I really envy those who can talk to anyone about anything. Maybe I'll have to watch a lot of soaps tv

Happy togetherness day everyone!
Except Linzer... And anyone else in Austria. Sorry

I know it's the reunification but I'm sure someone I know has translated it badly... Maybe that was me

thanks for the cleaning tips (and sorry to be so boring!!). My hair is like wire wool with it too (and the DDs, so it's not just my age )

captainmummy what you want are very talkative people to hang out with! TBH the playgroup we went to was in an "interesting" area, and the conversations that went on were really eye opening. Absolutely no problem finding something to talk about! But actually you're right about tv, one of the other things I did at the beginning was watch a lot of telly, just to get the vernacular ingrained - I was great at writing essays about Heinrich Böll's works, but not so much at just normal German "noises" iyswim. I was quite obsessed by Das Quiz hit Jörg Pilawa at one point! In the UK, you can get a satellite put up to watch free to air German telly reasonably cheaply, I think it's well worth doing just to keep your German topped up.

Hope all the Germany residents enjoyed the long weekend - we really did, felt longer than 3 days, which is always good. Fab weather helped!

I've ended up downloading the KonMari book on the back of this thread and am a little obsessed with it. Unfortunately it's more theory than practice for me as I'm the size of a small house & can't really move around much as the baby seems to have done something to my hips. I'm my mind I'm decluttering though, if that counts!

For whoever mentioned watching tv to help understanding more German - I've been trying to do the same lately but where German language programmes are fine, I really struggle with English/American programmes dubbed into German. Does anyone else have this problem? I don't know if it's better speed or if it's because the lip movements don't match the sounds but it really throws me and drives me up the wall!

Back to sitting and sending the baby exit vibes.....

Hope everyone is well!

Better speed? The speed, even.

I looked up the Konmari book - imagine my feeling of anticlimax when I discovered that I already fold clothes like that - stops the DC riffling wildly through to find clothes as they can see everything. In spite of this, my house is still generally cluttered and a bit untidy (and I can't even take credit for the folding because my mum has always done it that way and I just thought that was the normal way to fold)

I hate German TV, it is dire IMO, and I agree, I can never understand when it's dubbed, so I hardly ever watch it, we mostly watch DVD box sets in English. I know I would really improve if I watched more but I can't find anything worth watching - just the news, usually.

Have you tried watching with (German) subtitles? That's supposed to make it easier. I'm nowhere near that level yet.

Ach, you lot complaining about German TV, have you watched Austrian TV?. But it is true that it is a great way to learn. I've learnt a lot from listening, then get into trouble when writing as often unsure how something is spelt. Especially those "k" and "g" sounds- I thought gucken was spelt "kucken".

wooly hope you are feeling better. when are you due?

mrsnutella how are you doing with your two little ones? is dd's cold better? You have me really confused with the "happy togetherness day"- I thought Germany had started celebrating couples who lived together.

That book link looks good. I don't think there is a cheap book postage rate in Austria, is there linzer ? I am on book number 45! How do I know they are thin ones on kindle? The number of pages is usually listed under book description (under setting on kindle) or on the page where I download it from amazon.de. May be different on the UK site though. It's rather nice to read short books for a change.

thanks for the tips of playing in an ensemble frau. I hadn't thought of that, so trasmitted the positive side to dd1. Apparently the teacher hasn't mentioned it again. Strange.

Here is my "only in Austria" experience from last week. DD2 phoned from school saying she had tooth ache, the dentist we normally go was closed, so we went to a nearby one who was willing to see us immediately. I was slightly shocked to see a Pirelli calender in the reception area. But more shocked to see a pile of Playboy magazines in the waiting room. Reading on-line reviews on the dentist I apparently missed the umbrella stand: a real elephant foot. Sick.

Off to enjoy the sunshine, have a good Sunday all!

PS. And update to my rant from a few weeks ago
Shower still not fixed.
Key still not delivered.
Battery for kettle still not received.

If I didn't like this city so much, I would be packing up right now!

sue that is sick, How horrible - political correctness not happened in Austria yet? Where are you?

I was only thinking about the TV as, when we are in Germany, the dc like to watch;- in hotel rooms there is not much else to do in between 'Things To Do' and meals! They loved watching SPongebob in german (they are 17 and 15!) but I agree subtitles may be teh way forward, at least in the beginning. A german soap would at least have colloquialisms, rather than 'business' or 'posh' german. I wish I could get german TV here.

But yeah, a chatty german friend who wouldn't mind my blank looks would be the ideal!

I do still come out with (as a PP said) 'german noises' that even impress the Alevel studier - I said 'Nicht War?' the other day. That threw him.... Do you still say it in Germany? That is my other fear - that my german is outdated! My mum is (east) german and came over to england/the west a long time ago. She will, for eg, call oranges Apfelzienen, rather than Orangen. I get laughed at if I say that!