Bavaria

[Goosegettingfat]

Anyone there/ has lived there?

Looks like I'm moving there with dh and dd1 (6), dd2 (5), ds (8m) and ddog

No idea where to start!

I‘m not in Bavaria but l know from friends/acquaintances that Bavaria has a big expat community in and around Munich. Away from the city, and especially in the rural areas, there isn‘t much expat-wise. There are a few Bavaria residents on MN. I hope they can give you more info.

I lived in Bavaria for 9 years - loved it. My son was born there and attended local toddler groups and Kindergarten.

Thanks both for replying! We will be in the middle of nowhere, about 2 hours from Munich. I'm very up for it though!

Shanghai were you in Munich? And if you had non-German speaking dc, did you find the kindergarten supportive? Dd1 would be in year 1 of school and she is my biggest worry. She's not exactly outgoing.

Will you be south of Munich?
It's beautiful but often still very old-fashioned, eg schools finish at 12 midday in places.

The support for learning German at school should be good as programmes have been developed because of refugees.

We were in Regensburg. Ds started kindergarten when he was 3 and didn't speak any German, except please, thank you and to ask to go to the loo. The kindergarten teachers were supportive and could speak some English, but spoke to him in German from day one. He learned really quickly from the other children and was speaking full sentences after 4 months or so.

I spent some time there. But 20 years ago so this might be old news.
Beautiful scenery , and conservative Christianity were the two things that stood out for me. There is a phrase that I can't remember the German for. But it means children church kitchen, and it refers the woman's realm.

“Kinder, Kirche, Küche” Ohyesiam

Kinder Kurche Kucher ^^
The German system for teaching English was total immersion from the moment they walked into the English class. Only English spoken. So the teacher mentioned above was doing it The German Way really. I've always liked Germany, there are certainly worse places to live! Round Munich is beautiful.

My DH is from Bavaria
Absolutely love it but it’s quite conservative still and you WILL get publicly told off on a regular basis.
We find people aren’t overtly friendly but very nice and helpful

Hi I live in Bavaria and I love it most of the time .

I live in a beautiful place, my kids are growing up with a most outdoorsy lifestyle than they would have in the UK and with more day to day freedom too (it's rural where I live).

The weather is better, access to healthcare is better and while the Bavarian school system is regularly bashed for being too hard / no good for low achievers (there is something in this), I look at the education my daughter is receiving at the moment and it is better than what I had in 1980s/90s UK.

Yes Bavaria can be conservative (politically, culturally) and other parts of Germany can be quick to put down Bavaria and its quirkyness but I quite love the whole Bavarian thing these days and can't imagine feeling more at home anywhere else in Germany.

School will be tough for DD1 learning German but she will pick it up faster than you believe (I have seen this with foreigners in my kids' classes). If you create positivity at home about the German language, it will happen all the faster i.e. always listen to German radio (even the music channels as it's so good for picking up everyday vocab and just tuning into the language.) Join the local library as you will find lots of easy reader books with big /not much text so she can get into German books from day one.

Every small town has its own sports club which will offer a range of training for different sports and it could be good to get your kids into some kind of sport just so they are mixing with German kids.

Your town hall should be able to put you in touch with a MuKi group - Mutter Kind (toddler group) for your littlest one which you may find hard-going at first but will help your immersion.

I strongly recommend you have German lessons (if you can't speak it already) because you will need to help you DC with reading and schoolwork and if you can understand the lingo, all the better. Your nearest city may well have a Goethe Institut where you can will find good quality German lessons.

I hope this doesn't sound daunting because it's not meant to. It is more than possible for you to make a great life for yourselves here and for your kids to be fluent German speakers in less time than you would realise.

Good luck. I hope you love it. And feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Volkshochschule is also a good option for German lessons and I took the Goethe institute exams there too.

Thanks all for replies. Very interesting. I did speak reasonable German (ages ago) so very happy to have German radio on etc. what are German supermarkets like (so sad that I'm thinking about this). And there won't be such a thing as online grocery shopping will there. Sigh. Any online shopping much?

Online grocery shopping - no not anywhere near me, maybe in the cities.

Also you will have to get used to supermarkets shutting at 8pm weekdays and staying shut all day on Sundays. And the supermarkets are smaller and you won't have the mega aisles of choice a la Tesco and Asda. And probably you will moan about that for a few months.

And then the day will dawn that you realise you have been liberated from horrible supermarket shopping. The quality of fresh produce / fruit / veg is better than the UK (it's travelled less distance), every town will have a couple of good butchers shops with lovely meat, your town may well have a weekly market for fruit /veg /cheese etc and your town will have a few proper bakeries where you can get lovely, grainy proper bread and your bowels will go into health shock.

Sundays feels like the quiet day of the week. I love it and when I go home, detest the feel of Asda / Tesco and the shop til you drop culture!

We're in the middle of nowhere an hour from Munich. No, you won't have online grocery shopping - some parts of Germany do, but not rural Bavaria (believe me we've tried all the theoretical options including ordering groceries on Amazon - which is terrible and your postie will want to kill you...)

I would very strongly recommend putting your 6 year old into kindergarten for a year. Learning an entire language is a massive task, they won't be lacking intellectual stimulation!

It's very common not to start school til 7 and rurally there is no stigma and is seen as positive, all my children's classes have had several children who could be in the year above in them.

Rural schools aren't really set up to deal with children with no German, TAs don't exist and kindergartens have more time for 1:1 and tailored support. City schools are totally different and would probably have encountered non German speaking children frequently.

Children are expected to be very self sufficient and organise themselves at school, and this would be very difficult for a child starting without even a passive understanding of the language.

I have lived here ten years and never been publicly told off, though it is probably the number one complaint among young ex pat mothers. I am however completely terrifying I think British and American youngish women are so heavily socialised into walking around looking smiley and approachable that Bavarians, who are erhem less heavily socialised to do that, assume that they are a bit dipsy and need setting straight Living rurally you do say hello to everyone and get to know your neighbors, but perfect your resting bitch face for town and public transport

We get told off at least once on each trip to Bavaria Evelyn
Actually thinking about it it’s usually DH who gets it rather than me and I DO have BRF whereas he’s more smiley. He’s not too bothered as we have Austrian relatives who are like Germans but without the tact so he is well used to being insulted in the guise of fact!!

As far as working women in rural Bavaria goes - my experience is of an area where people own million euro houses but have fairly modest incomes, because most people's families have always lived here and someone in the extended family owns swathes of forest, a small farm and a few village plots - so people inherit land or were given it as a wedding present, houses hardly ever come up for sale... That creates a weird situation where people live in big detached houses yet don't have high/ any housing costs and aren't particularly well off. I assume that is part of the reason 90% of the mothers of school age children whom I know work part time. Most common is the tax free 450€ job - I'd say 50% of mothers of primary school children with no smaller children under 6 have a 450€ a month job. It's all above board and not actually cash in hand but nothing is deducted (you stay on your husband's health insurance) so it's like the old fashioned "pin money" job - pure spending money.

When my eldest was at kindergarten only 7 years ago almost non of the mothers if 3-6 year old's worked, and there were only 14 full day slots at the kindergarten and 50 half day places. You had to justify a full day place - they were for single working parents first, families with two working parents second, and children with two non German parents third. The only family not in those categories who I know of who had a place for an older child had newborn twins and letters from the Kinderarzt and Frauenarzt to support their application.

There have been changes in the law regarding childcare and now anyone can have a full day kindergarten place and a place in after school care (which you also used to have to explain your need for). I don't know if that's why but more of the parents worked when my youngest was at kindergarten. However people made a real song and dance of it, presumably because it's a fairly new thing locally, and I was always surprised to learn how few hours people who heavily laboured their working status at every turn actually worked... Almost always 20 hours per week or less... I assume that doesn't happen in the UK!

These days by school age a lot of mothers work (I do too, stayed home til youngest was nearly 4) but is refreshingly acceptable and respected to be a sahm. I do like the fact people aren't snooty and condescending about sahms here.

Evelyn I am very interested- do you really think it's possible my 6yo dd could attend kindergarten? I would definitely be up for this, I think it would be much better for her (apart from anything else, she'd have her sister for security, which she'd love). However I'm not sure it can happen... my understanding is that Grundschule is compulsory from the September after they turn 6. My dd will be 7 in August.

Otherwise, I am so excited about this! It's not totally new life experience for me- I was a trailing spouse in Switzerland too, so I'm well versed in the improved standard of groceries and in the pita of no online grocery shopping. Very up for throwing myself into dusting off my German language skills. Does anyone know what time kindergarten usually finishes? I've grasped that Grundschule is generally 8-11:30 but haven't managed to pin down kindergarten. Thanks lots for all the info and advice! Oh, last question- any tips on finding rentals? Immobilier has to be the worst property website ever!

Goose it's very possible.

School in Bavaria is Pflicht for all children who will be 6 by the 30th September that year - so September born kids start at 5 years 11 months and however many days.

Two of my kids are September born.

One started on her automatic start date (two weeks before her 6th birthday).

My other September born was very shy with adults at 4-5, so I decided not to send him to school. I told kindergarten before he started his preschool year that I had decided he should be zurückgestellt (held back a year). The head of kindergarten said yes, he's a bit shy, why not give him the gift of another year to play and be a child - she said to ask the Kinderarzt for a supporting letter and she'd support my request, and I could assume it would be automatically agreed with parent, doctor and kindergarten in agreement. I went to the doctor and asked for a letter without even taking DS with me and he said oh yes, school's a lot for the only just 6 year olds, why not give him the gift of another year of kindergarten, how lovely :o then he pondered what to write and said that if I didn't mind he'd say it was due to ds's "migration background" (DS was born here and spoke better German than a lot of his bayrisch dialect speaking peers, and his older sibling was doing well at school, but the migration background was nevertheless perfectly acceptable as a reason).

Although DS should have been in the year above (by a matter of two weeks) he is actually only the 6th oldest in his class of 25. 7 of the 25 children stayed back a year.

There is also a Czech boy in the village who moved here at 6 with no German and started kindergarten instead of school.

My DD, who started school in her correct school year at not quite 6, is now in year 7 with children aged 12 to nearly 15 in her class. This is the first year of her entire 7 year school career to date that she hasn't been the youngest child in her class. Now she's the second youngest :o

City parents are known to be pushier and to try to get their kids into school early to save kindergarten fees because they are all such prodigies, but rural families view that as tantamount to child abuse and generally keep kids out of school as long as possible, with the cooperation of GP or Kinderarzt and kindergarten :o

If you don't move til September it might be pushing it to send an already seven year old to kindergarten, but if you're moving soon you will definitely get the next 8 months at kindergarten.

Our kindergarten is open 7:30 - 16:30. Core hours when enrolled children "have" to be there are 08:30-11:30. You don't have to send children to kindergarten at all but if you do you generally agree to send them core hours every day Monday to Friday, you can't just send them three days or just afternoons or rock up at 10am. Longer hours are available to everyone these days, you just pay for them.

My older kids went 08:30-12:30. Afternoon is free play - there is free play in the mornings too but anything structured that is happening, happens in the morning. That's when they have montisorri style learning stations set up and the kids split into age or ability or interest related groups for targeted activities. Also when they go for walks etc.

Sorry I meant to say my older ones went 8:30-12:30 but my youngest 07:30-16:00 from when he was nearly 4 because I was working then.

To be honest for language skills 5 mornings worked out better. I think the long days were too long, and it was too much German immersion not balanced with afternoons with me.

My older two actually had both stronger English and stronger German starting school. Most noticeably my older two have never, ever mixed languages whatsoever, but the youngest does, but the other thing is that the older two have immaculate grammar in both languages. The younger one is fine and fluent, but occasionally his vocabulary and grammar is muddled. His teacher also taught my eldest and said she couldn't have picked her out of the class as the one from a bilingual home, but that it is noticeable sometimes with dc3.

Counter intuitive but I think it's because a rock solid mother tongue usually leads to the other languages being acquired more perfectly.

If you are a sahm I'd do not more than 5 hours a day of kindergarten.

Evelyn this is amazing news! I can't tell you how grateful I am for your time in explaining this! I've tried to do my own research, but German school websites don't appear to be that informative about this kind of this (similarly to uk actually). I had assumed that since school was compulsory from the September a child turns 6, and kindergarten isn't part of the state school system, that delaying her entry into Grundschule wouldn't be up for discussion.

I agree- I wouldn't send them for longer than 8:30-11:30, maybe building up to 12:30 if they wanted to. Then they could be together for at least 5 months. Montessori/ play-based learning would suit both of them down to the ground. Then baby would get chance for a nap (!) and we could all explore/do nice things together in the afternoon! So so excited about this (although if it's going to be me and all 3 dc from 11:30, I will find a cleaner. Very Promptly.)

Last question- who/where did you send these letters from doctor/ kindergarten to? Who is in charge of granting places at kindergarten?

Thanks so much again Evelyn and everyone- I'm feeling so relieved at the thought of this. Brushing up on German irregular verbs this evening and planning a trip next week to see kindergartens and hopefully houses.