Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen : German Corner 3 - life goes on

[SSSandy2]

Other thread was getting a bit full. Alles wie gehabt :
"Deutsch or English
Native speakers, expats, anyone
From Brezeln to Bier

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

I'm trying to hold out with the heating but another couple of days of this and I shall give in.

In a way I do prefer this to the hot, humid weather. It was my turn this morning to do the school run this morning (with 6 dc) and when I got home I actually felt quite invigorated for oh, all of about 5 minutes.

I hate the sudden drop too. Last Thursday at this time I was in my bikini drinking coffee on the balcony (admittedly a bit of a sun trap) and then took the children to the (outdoor) pool for a last afternoon. Now I've got socks & a cardy on and realised if I want to go and clear a bit in the garden I'll have to hunt out my old gardening coat which I haven't seen since March.
Instead I'm drinking coffee and bemoaning the end of summer. Can't remember the last time it was so cold in September, always loved being able to wear T-shirts till October.
And I seem to be shedding hair at a phenomenal rate, is this seasonal or am I falling to bits?

Canella,

I'm originally from Wuerzburg (well, a little village 10 km to the West of it). I have loads of family and friends there, if you need any help let me know. There is (or was) a Scottish woman, from Fife I think, living in our village. I ask my mother if she is still there.
I always wonder if I know M Lindt.

Finknottle I've only got 2 baclconies but you'll maybe give me some tips being the experienced gardener that you are! Is it worth doing anything on there or do I leave it all bare until after winter? My dad's coming in a couple of weeks so he might help with ideas as he's a hobby gardener since he retired!

I find bare looks so gloomy but it's a tricky time to do anything. I don't buy in plants (never had the money and got used to growing from seed) so I've sometimes dug up calendula/marigolds from the garden and they've kept going a while, also morning glory climber has flowered for me till Nov. Difficult cos you've got nothing there, have you?
I also cut greenery from the garden, esp anything going golden or red. You could pinch some when out for a walk, hedges etc. Rosehips, anything that takes your fancy and stick em in large pots/galvanized buckets. When they get sad-looking, replace. Germans are always cutting stuff from hedgerows for Deko, can't see anyone would object.

I didn't get around to growing anything in pots for our decking this year and it looked v bare. When I trimmed the lavender & oregano back, I plonked all the trimmings straight into pots and stuck one in each corner of the "Pavilion" - dunno what that is in English. Big green tent covery thing with wooden trellises on the 4 corners.

You could see what's in the shops, supermarkets often have bargains, though often foul heather. Then start in spring with a Planting Plan One of the best aspects of gardening is sitting down on a comfy sofa with hot coffee on a frosty day and flicking through seed/plant catalogues and doing the Plan
With a few window boxes and pots you could have a luvverly display. I always have a few packets of "Sommerblumen" seeds and you get a great burst of colour for 55 cents.

Gracelo
I remember you posting about being from Wü. Perhaps we have bumped into one another on the Domstrasse.

I caved today and put the heating on. It was so cold this morning that the DCs did not want to get out of bed. We are only another week here so I cannot see that it will make that much difference.

I bought a packet of sommerblumen in Aldi last Spring and sprinkled them over the front garden. It is either a charming, muddled wildflower garden, or a complete mess depending on your views. The spirit level and shovel brigage are horrified, the hippy chicks find it lovely.

Hippy chick here, matches my wild natural weed ridden garden. Well, I'm a lipstick-wearing hippy chick
Too much spirit-level-gardening here. When I take d to friends living in the modern part of the village, the gardens are so samey, same plants, same colours, so manicured. We're in the shabby old part, though the old ladies are always out manicuring, their gardens at least look like part of nature and not manufactured.

Gardening wittering aside, it was the "Frauen und Beruf" Beratungsstelle at the Kreisverwaltung. I was waiting for ages for some admin thing and stuck my head around the door & asked.
Haven't worked since I took mat leave for s1 in 96. I could do an "Umschulung" but only if I were officially unemployed and ... Plus we're in the wilds, remember, she said I'd have a better chance with a multi-national in Mannheim/Heidelberg but prob only full-time which I wouldn't want. Plus we'd need a 2nd car. I manage here with a bike.

There isn't much in the way of teaching here & I know from experience (I ran a language school) I'd get v little free-lancing. The few VHS posts are taken by my friends, lol.
Last year when the Arbeitsamt were consulted when h's company lost 85% of their workforce, h was told he was too old for the Arbeitsmarkt. He was 44. Luckily he was kept on.

I just want a bit of brain work and a bit of money. Will badger my local contacts. Loads of people who live here work in Ma/Lu for multi-nationals. The mothers & work thing here is so different, isn't it?

Wild, unkempt garden here. Our neighbour is definitely the spirit level and shovel sort who looks disapprovingly at all the weeds on our side.

What sort of language school did you run finknottle? Why do you think you'd get little free-lancing?

I think my discontent atm is caused by not having found any meaningful work yet. Now that both dc are at school I feel I would like to start working part-time but not quite sure how to do it.

I do one conversation class with a neighbour and her friend which is very easy money and I've got one starting tomorrow with a Y11 boy (am a bit scared about this as I have no ideas what boys of that age are interested in!). Doesn't really add up to much though. VHS said they were interested but not until January and most language schools seem to want people in the evenings which I don't really want to do more than once or twice a week.

Perhaps translating is worth looking at. Does anyone know how easy it woud be to get work free-lance? Or whether you need to do a translation diploma first?

As far as I know you can translate away without a diploma as long as you are not doing anything official, like a begläubigte Übersetzung of a marriage licence. A friend of mine does translation and it is great work for doing from home. She has now got a couple of clients who bung some work her way. The only problem with that is that sometimes she is twiddling her thumbs, sometimes she is snowed under in work.

Finknottle
I cannot remember where you are exactly, somewhere in Schwabenland? I have (another) friend near Walldorf who teaches English in a primary school. What about your local primary school? Do they offer English from 1. Klasse? Here in NRW they are so short of teachers that they are apparently taking on folk without teaching qualifications, sometimes even without degrees.

Another good place to try is the kindergarten, especially if you have a private kita nearby. There are a lot of parents desperate to get their kids started early with English. This very much depends on the kita though.

Taipo
I tutored my friend's 12yo last year and found that he really needed to go back to the basics and brush up on things that he had not understood at the beginning and had never been corrected on. He was totally amazed that the sentence, "We is going to the cinema" was wrong. He even argued with me on that point. I had to go back to 7. Klasse work that had never been properly taught.

thanks gracelo and mmelindt - not sure where we're moving to yet - his job is in munnerstadt (i've no umlaut on the keyboard - sorry!) so there are some options where to live! wurzburg seems like a good choice to give me some support from other international people because its a bigger town (or is it a city?). My dh is interested in living a bit nearer his new job maybe in bad kissingen - we went there on honeymoon but i remember it being so beautiful but full of elderly people!
do you know of any good areas of wurzburg to look in? maybe to the north or east of it so he could get on the a71 easier?

Münnerstadt is a fair bit away from Würzburg, but with the new Autobahn it is not too far to commute to, especially if you look for something in the NE.

If I were you, I would look at Lengfeld/Versbach area. Both these villages are close enough to Wü with reasonable infrastructure. There are a lot of newly built houses in that area with people from other towns.

There are a few villages/towns on the way, Rimpar for instance, but these small towns tend to be quite difficult to make friends in. Further up towards Münnerstadt, you will probably find it even harder. The Rhön area is lovely, but I would not want to live there. Typically you can live in a town like that for 40 years and still be an incomer.

As they say here, "da sagt Fuchs und Hase Gute Nacht"

Bad Kissingen is a Kurort, so loads of pensioners, although it is a pretty town. There is not a lot going on there.

Würzburg has a population of around 130000 so it is a reasonable sized town. Thankfully there is both a University and a Polytechnic in the town so that there is a bit more life in the town.

Getting work here in Germany is really tough. I'd have a choice of different part time jobs and hours if I went back to my home town in UK - anything from working in a pharmacy to selling walking and climbing equipment! All decent pay too. I would have a chance of getting jobs that I wouldn't even get an interview for here because I haven't got the German Ausbilding.

A friend of mine was told exactly the same as you finknottle by a Frauenbeuaftragte - she said no chance, stay at home with your baby! And this friend had a university degree from a UK university and spoke fluent German! When I went she just told me I had no chance because I had to improve my German and the Arbeitsamt would have sent me on a training thing but with a 1 and a half hour trip to get there it wasn't even an option really. It's depressing but thank goodness I don't have to work to survive (h's PhD was worth it after all) but I'd like to get out and have adult company and do something for my brain too.

I've done some proof reading for publications for h's colleagues and a few thesis and essays for students, they can be willing to pay quite a bit for that. Have you got a university near by? If you put an ad up in the Mensa or where ever that can bring some work. I am so de-motivated at the moment that I can't even be bothered to do that.

What a load of shite! I am really angry at the advice you have been given. I had just been in Germany 2 years when I applied for and got an apprenticeship. My German was far from perfect but they took me on. I worked for the summer as an untrained saleswoman, it was no problem.

They should be ashamed of themselves for talking such tosh.

There are plenty of companies who would be willing to take on a person wiht less than perfect German, depending on the job obviously. I always got a colleague to proof read my letters to customers but apart from that I did it all myself.

Bloody Beamten !

I know, it makes you feel so small aswell and you walk in there all full of hopes and wishes thinking I'm going to get a job and they send you home nearly in tears! I have huge complexes about my German now even though I think I can speak quite fluently, I'm always unsure and unmotivated to learn more or even try.

We just had the first parents evening at Gymnasium and we had to vote for a couple of Elternsprecher and when asked I said I would do it but felt that it would be better if the Eltersprecher spoke better German than I do - at the end about 6 parents had said they'd be willing to do it and there was a vote, but no one voted for me at all because I'd put them off right from the start. If I was in UK I'd be in there joining in, helping out at school and here I'm too scared I'll make mistakes

By the way which Ausbildung did you get on mmelindt?

Admylin
That makes me so sad and angry for you. I resisted attempts to make me secretary of the Förderverein in kindergarten because, although I am very fluent in German, I am not so great at writing. Or not anything official. I did say that I was willing to be on the committee though. Do they have a Förderverein? Could you get involved in that?

My apprenticeship was Kauffrau im Einzelhandel, which tbh, was so easy.

Perhaps you should look into some kind of further education, it would be good for you to feel valued, I think.

The other thing to remember is that although they expect a 19yo German youth to have an apprenticeship before getting a job, if you were to apply for a job without an Ausbildung, you might still well get it. Especially when you make it clear that it is not something that is done in UK. They will take your other qualifications into considerartion, even if the Arbeitsamt don't consider them any use.

What kind of work did you do at home?

I actually did do a private Ausbildung before I had the dc here in Germany - I worked for a big chain of opticians and they sent me to Hamburg on schooling weeks etc but in the end I left because it was a long way to work and we had to try and sell 'extras' even to poor old ladies you could tell were being talked into buying more than they wanted but that was the policy of that shop so we had to. In the training time I always came out top in the exams so my German wasn't that bad.

There's no point using that now though as I left so am probably on some black list and they use part timers for weekends or late night shopping - not when I would be able to work in the golden morning hours of freedom! Normal opticians hate the place I worked for so they wouldn't accept the internal Ausbildung that I did anyway.

oh, was it Brille: F??

Still, you could definitely get a job in sales then. The only problem is the working hours, that is a problem with school age kids.

Yes it was F! Not so cheap if you can't say no to the pushy sales techniques. We had a box with lenses in and the basic one was really thick and plain glass - show that then show how much nicer the lense can look with a double Verspiegelung and tinted glass and so on, bring out the ultra thin super tinted lenses.

I'm going to check out the Volkshochschule in Hannover to see what is on offer - and maybe go and get myself an appointment at the Frauenbeauftragte again, you never know I might get a Beamte on a good day with some actual helpfull information to give me!

By the way, spent all afternoon building our new stuff from Ikea and it's all good solid stuff, quite pleased with it. I built the big expedit shelving by myself - proud! Dd's bed is also good, not as rubbishy as I thought it would be and she's really pleased too.

By the way, spent all afternoon building our new stuff from Ikea and it's all good solid stuff, quite pleased with it. I built the big expedit shelving by myself - proud! Dd's bed is also good, not as rubbishy as I thought it would be and she's really pleased too.

A new computer is the next thing on my list, this one is tired.

Well done. I think that Ikea furniture is better than its reputation. We have quite a lot of Ikea stuff, and have never had any problems.

I just got an email from the Girl Scouts of Geneva. I emailed them about DD perhaps joining a group. They have a new group starting shortly about 20 mins away, and here is the great thing: Two aupairs in our village would like to open a Scout group in the village, and there is also another family interested too. That would be fab if we could make contact before we even get there.

That sounds great. You sound quite calm actually - you go next week don't you? I was nearly in tears and totally exhausted just before we moved, I did have jetlag though.

Have you found a good expat forum or something like that? We'll miss you on here that's for sure.

I have not found one like MN that is for sure. There is a Swissmoms and an expat Swissmom forum, the German one is a bit twee. The other one is good for info but not to just chat iykwim.

I am pretty calm, I did have a wobbly at the weekend though.