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".)

I'm pretty sure we used to have a difference, sometimes of a week, between UK and other countries changing - but we mostly deal with Libya and east Africa, so might be getting confused!!
Anyway, our clocks go back on Sunday. My PFB was born around this time of year (20th) - I was in hospital when the clocks went back, and couldn't understand why my breakfast was late on the sunday (assumed sunday working hours ) and why MIL was an hour late visiting(was v annoyed with her) and it was only the following year that I realised what had happened

There definitely used to be a difference of a week or two between clocks changing in the UK and Germany, captain; I remember it from when I lived in Berlin in 1990/1 and 1993/4. By the time I moved to Germany in 1999 the clocks would always change the same weekend, which would fit in with what suenan said about 1996. I have no idea about Libya and East Africa, though!

Continuing on the time difference theme, DD1 only missed out on being a Christmas Day baby by about 20 minutes - but only because we were in the USA. Europe was well into Boxing Day by the time she was born and I was quite glad that she'd waited those extra few minutes.

Morning all. I'm blue, the weather here is awful! DS could need some exercise outside but I really don't want to be out in this weather and I really don't want to take 10 week old DD outside. Oh well.

I've also been wondering, what does one do with an active 21 month old and a newborn? It's hard arranging play dates for DS. The weather isn't going to improve in the next few months so meeting outside isn't always possible either.
It's getting to me at the moment. I know that soon things will change with the DCs. What i really need is to get out and meet people. I just don't know where to find them

As for the clock change, I always find it confusing!

Nutella have you tried a wrap style sling/ carrier? Ds1 was late Sept born with a 24 month gap - Ds1 livedin the wrap inside a baby wearing coat for most of his first
winter, and DD and I carried on
prettymuch as we had when I was
pregnant.

There is so little to do indoors locally that toddlers almost had to be out in the playground for at least an hour or two even in bad weather, and DS1 stayed warm (and is the only one of my kids to have slept well at night as a baby too, no idea if its related to the sling, but I used them much less with the other 2 due to pfb not needing it and a bigger gap between 2 & 3.)

Also can you find toddlers / mama kind groups? DD and I started going as soon as we found one after moving here, and went back as soon after DS1 was born as I was able to drive - lots of people take baby siblings.

Another idea is a Kinder park - may or may not suit your DS, but they are a couple of hours twice a week, of organised play/ craft/ singing type stuff. The idea is to drop off eventually, but you can stay as many times as you need til DS is settled, and the staff (usually childminders) entertain so you just sit quietly feeding/ cuddling DD. Many take children from 18 or 20 months, up to bout 36 months/ Kindergarten age.

Libraries are free in Bavaria! At least our landkreiss... Except fines of course Marred a bit by the fact our local one, which is small but pleasant, only opens 3 afternoons and 2 (different) mornings a week...

MrT thanks! Yes DD lives, well, sleeps in wraps during the day.

I'll keep practicing my German googling skills and ask DH to help. I'm starting to think that what we need is a second car perhaps it's time to look into one.

mrsnutella sorry to hear you are feeling blue. I totally understand. It isn't easy to balance the needs of baby, toddler and you. I used to take baby to toddler groups, let the toddler cause havoc while I fed baby or had a quiet moment. Are there any groups you could go to if you had a car?

I can understand that going out is not what you want to do, but from my time in Finland I learnt that they thought it was good for babies to be out in the cold. They used to wrap them up warm put them in the garden or balcony to sleep. And older children played outside even in the cold, or until it went under -11C at least. Here's what I found with a quick google:
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

could you all get some really warm gear and just go outside, come rain or shine? I felt it helped a lot. Even a short trip out would just change our mood. The dds have fond memories of putting on our waterproofs and going out (in the wet UK weather) to "jump in puddles"- the aim of which was to get as wet as possible, then come home to a bath and hot chocolate. I think your ds might enjoy that . And that your skin is thick enough to just shrug off the judgmental looks and comments from the German grannies .

I was just thinking the other day how little "messy play" ds did in his kindergarten here, in comparison to what dds used to do in the UK. I have a great picture of dd2, about 18 months, sitting in, and completely covered withm white flour.

Nutella Hope you can manage to find some groups to go to. FWIW I found it really difficult to find out information about local toddler groups etc. when we first moved here compared to where we'd been (I remember SIL helpfully telling me that in Austria, you're expected to make an effort to find things out for yourself. ) I also agree with suenan that even just going outside briefly, whatever the weather, can really lift your mood. I remember our US paediatrician telling us to go outside with DD1 whatever the weather as Russian women take their babies outside in atrocious conditions and it doesn't do them any harm.

MrTumbles Your library's opening hours sound very similar to ours. The children's library opens three afternoons a week (if you can call two hours an afternoon) plus Saturday mornings (a whole three hours!). The DC were looking forward to a visit this afternoon that I'd rashly promised them before checking that the libary is actually open today - and of course it isn't. So now we just have a visit to the dentist to look forward to.

suenan I can do cold without issue. Yesterday it was serious storm weather most of the day. Heavy driving rain and quite windy. We went out this morning in the nice dry sunny blue sky weather though
I need wet weather gear.

Linzer DS has a place at a Kita to start next month. It's not ideal but it will keep him busy. There aren't many groups for kids aged around 2 and I don't think we can really afford a second car.

Oh dear, haven't been here for ages so lots of catching up to do after DS goes to bed.

In the meantime, quick question for you: Anyone been to the Legoland in Günzburg ? We're in Stuttgart over Xmas and I thought it might be worth a look. DS (total Duplo fanatic) is nearly 4. Will he be bored? Is it just things made out of Lego or is there more?

Keep forgetting to 'watch this thread'...

Weather here is unseasonably warm -17c and sunny! (Surrey) I am waiting for jumpers-and-hats cold.
Am off to see my mum today (Wiltshire) so she can speak German to my DC -cheaper than a half-term trip to Germany! She complains about my accent/grammar/vocab so I will just listen and hope she is kind about the dcs'. It is, after all, her fault she didn't teach me fluent German when I was little!

Re legoland -if it's anything like the English one, DC will love it. Lots of Lego of course, rides, stuff to jump on, hands-on things to do.

thanks for the lego info capt . We're boiling here in Dublin too. Still feeling flushed from walking DS to nursery

and I know it was a while ago but black, did you ever get your bike back?

Ooh, haven't been on for a while - thanks Lilac, I did get my bike back. Though it seems to have been borrowed a few times since, I clearly was too wimpy gracious when I accepted my neighbour's apology.

Surprised at the thought of having to pay to borrow books from the library - though paying to join I suppose is fair enough. I don't know if ours is free or not. It certainly seems to have very restricted opening hours, and I think you have to phone up if you want to go even when it is supposed to be open.
But our town does have quite a good initiative - we have book-swapping bookcases dotted around - there is one right outside our house. You can put your old books in and take out any that you fancy. I managed to snap up four English language children's books for DD the other day, which I was very chuffed about. Now I need to find something to put back in exchange.

Hope everyone had a good holiday, those that had one. Our first day back today after 2 weeks Herbstferien, feels funny having the house to myself again.

Hello to all!

Pie - I could seriously go for some proper 24-7 shopping availability! Last weekend was particularly fun as 1 Nov was a Bank Holiday so the already-pitiful Saturday shopping availability became no-shopping this weekend. Argh!

Suenan/ Linzer - My ear Operation went well enough. They shaved round my ear about 1 inch and now I have some funny tufty bits of hair about 2 inches long there. It did improve the hearing most of the way to my base level (which is still only about a 50-year-olds hearing level!) The left ear remains at about a 80-year-olds level. It was a horrible operation and long recovery. I still have a metallic taste to everything I eat. That taste could be either long term to heal (up to a year) or permanent- don't know yet. Overall it was worth it though as I was close to deaf for all practical purposes at work.
Linzer, I haven't been back to your street yet except for one visit 7 days past Op when my mum drove me there and back and I was mostly focussed on not being sick. I was supposed to go back 6-8 weeks after the Op but I'm late for that- very late as the Op was back at the end of June. I'll probably try a hearing aid first in the other ear to see if that will cover it for a few more years. It is odd having a good/ bad side and if a hearing aid will balance it up, I'll put off having the other ear done, possibly forever.

We recently upgraded our TV. Previously we were on very old tech- no internet, non-HD, only about a 32 inch screen, didn't have a TV receiver box wired in and only used it for DVDs (not even blurays). It's now a monsterous 57 inches and does all kinds of fancy internet stuff. Soon it will be also linked into 200 channels of satellite crap as well- once the electrician fixes that up. I look forward to learning some more German from watching "Bauer sucht Frau" or such similar highbrow stuff.

Do you all have winter tyres on? We did ours on the weekend, or at least mine are done. DHs car had 2 seized nuts on the rear tyres so he will have to lug his tyres over to a garage to get them swapped.

Hello all.

C4ro interesting to read about your op. A friend of mine had an ear op recently. It's amazing what they can do. FX the metallic taste goes soon.
And wow your telly sounds huge! We got anew TV last year. It's very fancy. not that we get to watch much

DD is feeding about every two hours overnight. Fortunately I can pretty much switch her to the necessary side, latch her on and go back to sleep. Repeating the procedure two hours later, almost to the minute. How do babies do that?

She has a case of the snuffles at the moment though, I was hoping to try and move her out of our bed but she's having none of it!

Hello, hope you're all well (recovering well in C4ro's case, sounds a grim op so hope it brings you a big improvement).

Poor DD MrsNutella, is she frustrated with a blocked nose when feeding? Mine used to get very annoyed, relieved only by giving me a good shower of snot every so often as I remember…. happy days. Have you had any luck with finding a group to go to? Is there a Familienzentrum near you, that's where I found stuff (quite a lot of stuff) to do with mine when they were small.

It's got all cold here , my mood not improved by knowing it's not really cold yet! I'm hoping for a nice mild winter so it doesn't interfere with Christmas travel plans.

On the Christmas note - those of you who are living in abroad, what specialities do you think are nice to bring home from Germany/Aus etc? (And those in the UK what would you like brought?). I'm scratching my head a bit as it seems everything I come up with, people back home could probably buy in Lidl/aldi (or a cheap equivalent of the overpriced nice thing I think about purchasing).

Heinous - I'm with you on the weather/travel watch! I'm coming over to Hamburg for the xmas markets on 29th Nov, and looking at the long range weather forecasts with horror - gales, rain warnings, high water... Last time I came to Hamburg I flew over in Hurricane Jude; not nice. Followed it all the way!

Presents - I always bring back those wooden spoons-with-holes-in, for making sauce. You can't get them in UK (no-one has even seen such a strange thing; a spoon with a hole? ) and they make lovely presents. Those, and lebkuchen of course, and pfeffernusse, and spekulatius, although they are available in Lidl.

C4ro - your op sounds horrible. Hope you get better soon, and are able to enjoy food again!

Mrs Nutella - I remember those days(nights!) with snotty babies; awful. Did anyone ever resort to the turkey baster ? I just couldn't...

(Just realised I posted in my Alter Ego - it's me captMummy!)

CaptMummy, tell me more about the spoons with holes in! I have never seen them, but I am always on the look out for interesting small presents, and MIL might like something like that. It it one hole or lots of holes, and how does it work?

Black - I get them in the xmas market stalls; they are like wooden spoons, with, well, a hole in the middle! They usually have a flat 'corner' in one side of the 'bowl', sort of like a spatula-ish, for getting into the corners of the pan, and the hole, I assume, mixes your sauce up kinda like a whisk would do. I've got 2, one small-ish, one medium-ish, and they come in different, pretty, types of wood. I've never seen them anywhere other than germany - my aunts all had them!

Very useful for small presents.

Thanks, CaptainM, I will look out for them.
Was just in town and they are building the Christmas market stalls already! .

yep not long now!

I was thinking about a PP who was talking about things for dc to do - I was informed by a german lady (and I cannot for the life of me remember who it was ) that her ds, about 5yo then i think, went to some sort of out-door camp at weekends. They did nature trails, looking at plants and wildlife, climbing trees...; it was supposed to instill a love/respect for outdoors and wildlife. She said it went ahead in all weathers (along the lines of 'there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing) and the dc had to had snow-suit/rainwear/boots etc. Sounded good (so long as I didn't have to do it!) but I can't remember what it was called. She lived in/near Nuremburg; it might be a local thing.

Not totally-up-to-the-minute info, but did you know Austria has netflix for the past couple of months?! I persuaded DH we should try it on Sunday night. We let DD chose the first one too so we ended up watching some godawful Tinkerbell fairy movie thing, but it was good in that there were no streaming issues and it even started straight into English but had German and other language options too. DD thought it was fantastic.