Fruehlingszeit in the German Corner - chat continues here

[SSSandy2]

"Deutsch or English
Native speakers, expats, anyone
From Brezeln to Bier

Please don't ask if you join in, everyone is welcome "

Wow, I´ve been in England for a week and this thread has really taken off while I´ve been away. It´s taken ages catching up on everything.

Glad to hear your Wohnung is sorted admylin, it must be a huge weight of your mind. The party service sounds like a brilliant idea, it would be so much less stressful than having to do it all yourself.

Sorry to hear about your dad SSSandy. I hope he´s recovering well from his operration.

Thanks for the phone info Finknottle. Our phone´s not working at the moment even though our internet is, but when it´s sorted that will be really eseful.

Well I had a great time in England with the children. We were staying with a friend and just chilled out. I love going back and always feel really depressed for a week when I get back before I reacclimitise (is that a word?) to Germany. I´ve stocked up on essentials in Boots and Sainsburys although I didn´t go as mad as I usually do.

Haven't joined in for a while and can't find where my last post is, lol!

Admylin, I assume you have found a flat in Hanover then? Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick now?

hupa....I am the smae after visiting Germany...when I first come back to UK, I feel kinda weird and do miss germany...but well...soon get used to it again

Hi again 3andnomore , I remember you from teh other German corner thread. We've found our flat in Hannover and you were right about Roderbruch (remember you advised me about it) - we had a couple of flats to look at there and even the taxi drivers told us it wasn't a nice place. Now we will be living on the opposite side of the MHH in Kleefeld and that is supposed to be a nice area and ds can go to the Schillergymnasium in walking distance.

Ladies, NEVER order a bike on the internet unless your other half is a Handwerker-type (mine IS NOT, he's a mad scientist). Ds's came today and I've tried to fix the wheel and adjust the brakes but the pictures in the instructions do not match the bike so I have given up and will have to go and get it done at a bike shop tomorrow. They will probably laugh at me because they can charge me a fortune and I might as well have bought it in a shop for 100 Euro more and it would have had proper lights on and so on. Oh well, it's a nice looking bike anyway and ds likes it!

Oh yes, Kleefeld is nice An ex-boyfriend from oh so long ago used to live in Marienstrasse, in a lovely oldbuild flat High ceilings, superspacious....

Our new flat isn't one of those altbau, shame really but I've lived in 3 different altbauwohnungen so quite looking forward to this new one with straight walls and modern everything!

I've got my first umzugsuntermehmung coming round tomorrow to give his quote. On the internet I'm down to 700Euro on one offer,do you think I had better warn the man tomorrow that I've got an auction on MyHammer.de going and it's down to 700? The famous Zapf removals sent a quote for 1400Euro so that's a big difference.

hi hupa and 3andnomore! Hi there admylin, you are sounding very efficient atm, think you'll be starting up your own company as soon as you're settled in Hannover.

Well this has nothing to do with anything really but I was wtching the documentary on Isadora Duncan on Arte last night and thinking, I would have loved to have met her, I think I would have really really liked her. Did you know she set up a dancing school here in a villa in Grunewald, admylin?

What a tragic life though, her two small dc drowned in the Seine, her husband committing suicide and then dying herself because her scarf got trapped in the wheel of the car she was in and strangled her. Good grief.

admyn, another exbf lived in flats in teh "estate" opposite the MHH...not quite newbuild, but not what we call ALTBAU neither...they were spacious, too.
Or are the flats new-newbuild...I probably wouldn't kow them then...it has been many years that I have been in that area (well, 14 years....I have been in Hanover since, but mostly Suedstadt/Zoo area and downtown and Linden... I am sure much has changed since!

admyn...I mean admylin

No idea ho wold really, they look new compared to our Berlin altbau anyway! At least we're not far from ds's Gymnasium - that was so important for me. Her ein Berlin he woudl have had such long trip to get to his school - now that they'll be both at different schools and I can't be in 2 places at once they will have to do as the German dc do and go it alone - and as it is not too far I can be brave and let them!

That is a tragic life - I missed that last night though sssandy, dh was watching by means of clicking backwards and forwards, 2 or 3 different political discussions so I gave up and went to bed to finish my Harry Potter book! Have you read them? Not bad really. We've got the 1st 4 in German and the rest in English. The other day ds said (he's on book 5 in English) that he can't tell the difference between the 2 languages, meaning he doesn't bother which one he reads in - I guess he truely is bilingual when he can switch between the 2 like that.

omg political discussions.... Igitt! I was watching some French thing on Tele5 (barrister series) and then I switched onto Arte after that

No, I've never actually read any of the Harry Potter books but think they would still be too frightening for dd really. I borrowed one of those Roman mystery ones for her but the first page had a gladiator being urged on to make his first killing and it was too gruesome for dd or me, so took it back. I was surprised because I've read lots of Mners saying their 7year olds read those books. How do you find the HPs?

We're working through the Jaws of Doom series at the moment. They're alright. Do you know those?

ad...with reading I find it fine either way (any book now)...but watching a movie in german does make me cringe...especially if I watched it in english first...tis alright with anything original german...just well...so much in films can be "lost in translation"!
Well done on your son though
My Kids only speak english really...my fault entirely...

I do know that even 5 year olds are keen on the Harry Potter books but then my ds started on the Gänsehaut series - they were the first books he ever read so quite spooky! And dd is into Der kleine Vampir series so spooks and all in that direction too! I must admit I've read the last Harry Potter and it was a bit brutal what with quite a few of the main characters getting killed.

Ds is having trouble enjoying Emil und die Detektive at school because he finds it too boring and babyish - suppose that's the problem we'll always have as he is an advanced reader. He's desperately waiting for the new Eragon (book 3) to be published so I hope it's published by the time he's finished all the Harry Potters.

Never heard of Jaws of doom, dd need new books as she has gone off Conny (yipee)

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/0141321334/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books They're ok, references to Greek legend etc is dd's kind of thing. We have a good selection of English books at school so she reads plenty from there.

I find it difficult to find really interesting German books at dd's level for her age group. I find it is much of a sameness everywhere, nothing all that amusing or strikingly different. Well I suppose your dd has read all the obvious stuff like the Hexe Lili books, dd read through all the Daisy Meadow fairybooks in translation after she read the English ones. I found those deadly boring in English btw, suffered through those. She enjoyed all the Magisches Baumhaus books in English and German, nowadays in German she has nearly finished reading all the Tintin comics and is onto the Fünf Freunde books. I only get involved now if she's stuck

I don't worry much about the German really, it's so straight-forward once you've got the basic tools. We have to build up literacy in Russian now so have to read a bit every day. They have lovely dc's books, beautifully illustrated

maybe those Reisebücher for dc are a nice read. Dd quite likes history books or books about how people live in different countries and she says they now have these Kinderreiseführer she saw advertised somewhere. Maybe your dd would like something like that about the US

Dd loves history stuff too but I think it's because I love that sort of thing and she can feel it. If only I could show a passion for maths - she might like that too!

I'll be buying as many books as I can carry when in Texas though. Oh no that reminds me I'm still meant to be sorting out a dress and shoes, talk about blocking it from my mind!

Listen, I've managed to put ds's bike together, do you think it's safe?! I mean it can't be that difficult as long as the screws are tight or not? The bike shop man was very unfriendly sort of a you-didn't-buy-that-in-my-shop attitude and wanted 50 Euro to check it over. Dh who was with me (he's being very helpfull at the mo. no idea what he's after) said too much, even a doctor doesn't earn 50 Euro an hour so we went to another bike shop and they said 36Euro but in 2 weeks and gave us an appointment! Anyway, now the bike is back here and I think ds should just try it out in the garden, what do you think?

How much construction work was involved? Can you put the seat right up and try it yourself?

Ha ha ha LOL at showing a passion for maths. I was saying to this woman at school the other day, I'm only expecting to put in so much work for the first couple of years and after my plan is that it'll all take off and I can disentangle myself. And she was muttering words under her breath that sounded like long division and algebra

Admylin, I always resisted reading Harry Potter, thinking it wouldn't be my cup of tea at all until we moved to Germany last year and I couldn't find anything to read so I picked up the first volume of dd's set and couldn't put it down. It was just what I needed at that time to escape from the realities of settling into life here!

Dd reads equally well in German and English atm although I'm aware that I need to make sure she keeps up her reading in English.

Hi taipo, escapism sounds about right for me actually. Dh is getting on my nerves atm telling me I should write books. Write books about what?! I ask him. I haven't a clue what to write a book about.

at those charges admylin - I'd bung him out in the garden too. Give him the manual so he can check the nuts and bolts himself and tell him it's an intensive cycle maintenance course

Our porch is half-tiled and looks half finished good so far. I expect it'll be a few months before it's finished. The whole courtyard looks scruffy, my vision of pots of flowers and climbing greenery seems v far off. It's all bags of cement, bikes and bins.

This morning I broke the standpipe in the garden through laziness, impatience and dippiness. That WHHHOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSH you may have heard was the sound of 28,000 litres of water gushing high into the sky. Bloody glad I knew where to turn it off. Though managed to turn the water for the whole house off too for a while and wondered why the washing was still soapy with liquid.

My h (who really is a dear/darling in such instances) e-mailed me to say, "Don't worry, everything is fixable." We will prob have to dig down 2 metres to fix it.

Don't know what's the matter with me, my head is all over the place, and I can't seem to get my self kick-started most days. Any one care to kick me in the a**e?

oh dear finks you have been busy!

are you going to have to have someone in to fix the pipe then?

unlikely, I'm hoping we'll come across the bit the plastic pipe connects to before we reach 2m. It's just a question of digging till we find it and replacing it. I remember h dug out a base for our garden steps that had to be 1m deep and it took ages and ages. Most rooms are 2m high, imagine the hole

H has himself down as Handyman since buying the house. He has done loads of things, to be fair.
I need rain, our water butts are nearly empty and the nearest water for the garden now is the children's bathroom, maybe I could run a hose through the window. I have stacks of new shrubs and my new apricot tree looks parched.
Have been v lazy lately.

maybe you don't need rain until after fixing the pipe though...