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 "

saw quite a funny report on tv last night about the beheading of that Hitler statue at the Madame Tussaud's exhibition here in Berlin. A guy from Kreuzberg went in, shouted, "nie wieder Krieg" and chopped his head off.

The guy doing the reporting (realBerliner) was hilarious. He was saying the more time elapses between us and the Nazis, the more vehemently we fight them and he was asking the policemen, "hat es einen Attentat auf den Führer gegeben?"

What an idiotic idea though bringing a wax HItler to Berlin.

I heard it was a bet from his Stammtisch drinking pals! He's getting fined so I hope they all chip in and help him out!

LOL the fool. Well he was questioned for a couple of hours and when he was released they asked him if it had been worth it and he said "no!" Hope he wasn't too heavily fined.

He's an ex-policeman in fact, now Hartz IV

Admylin
Did your DD get off ok?

Don't worry too much about the kitchen, if need be there is a good Ikea in Hannover and they also give the names of companies (or a man with a van) who delivers/assembles it.

There is also a big Porta furniture store in Laatzen where you can get a kitchen. You need to look in the "Mitnahmemöbel" area as the normal kitchens have to be ordered which can take a few months.

Sssandy
Good to hear that you have come to an agreement with your DH about the house. It is not ungrateful to be simply unhappy with the situation. Would your DH ever be able to move to UK?

We are celebrating DS's birthday today. I have made pizza and cheese and ham pastries, baked a cake (with Dr Oetkers help) and blown up lots and lots of balloons. I usually do a lot of preperations for birthday parties but I have not had enough time.

Last party was DD's 6th party and my parents were here, and the DCs were in kita. Today I am alone and the DCs are home and under my feet.

AAAnd, I emptied the bio bin today because it was stinking and there were crawly things in it. I think they were maggots, baby ones.

I scrubbed the bin with bleach then decided to throw the bin out and use the new one that I bought at least 8 or 9 months ago that DH has not got around to putting in. The whole cupboard has now been treated with so much bleach that it smells like a swimming pool.

AIBU to be annoyed with DH for not emptying the bin? It is unspoken law here that he is responsible for the bin. Lawn mowing and bin emptying, spiders and creepycrawlies removal. That is what I have a DH for.

Thanks for those tips MmeLindt, I suppose if I have to get a kitchen we'll just have to eat bread and cold food for a week or two, wouldn't bother me - h would suffer more than any of us as he NEEDS his curry and rice!

Wow, your birthday preparations sound like the sort of party where I make an extra effort so doesn't sound like anyone is going to think you haven't had enough time! Hope it all goes smoothly, how many little ones are invited?

I hate those bio bins outside, in our garden theer 's one for the whole house - so 10 flats all together and when it was really hot back a few weeks ago we couldn't stay out in the garden because of the stink. Someone must have thrown quite a bit of meat away as it really stunk. Also sick of the constant taking out of bio rubbish from teh 3rd floor flat it's a pain. It'll be dc job when we move - no point at all in giving that sort of job to h. He'll do it if I catch him walking out of the door and hand it to him but of his own free will, no way!

News about my kitchen! Just had an email with the news that the vormieter are leaving the kitchen and I have a mobile phone number to contact them and ask about any details and price (worry?) hope they didn't put a 10,000 Euro kitchen in there! The only thing they are taking with them is the dish washer and washing machine so that's OK as i have my own washing machine and not in a hurry for a dish washer either - can take our time with that.

Now I need to pluck up the courage to phone, how I would like a 'real' German husband at times like this.

Hi ML, I live in hope re moving. I did sort of point out to dh that while he is doing this kind of world tour with all the company dependencies, he could look into getting a job in one of the places he liked.

He wasn't entirely against it but he said it would depend on what job, he wouldn't be prepared to do soemthing on a lower level. Well I suppose I can understand that really.

Bl* hell creepy crawlies!!!!!!! Yuk yuk yuk. Remember when I was living in Morocco I bought quite a few cartons of HV milk because I couldn't get fresh. The next day I noticed one of them had weavil type crawly wormy igitty things coming out of it! I went beserk throwing things out and splashing bleach about. This was INSIDE my kitchen too. Well done tackling your bio bin, I think I would not have gone near it tbh but left it for dh

agree with admylin too, your birthday preparations sound brilliant. Hope you all enjoy it!

Admylin how much would you be willing to pay for the kitchen, did it look new, did you see inside the cupboards at all etc?

You could ring how much they want to sell it for, tell them you'll talk it over with dh and call back tomorrow maybe. THen come back and tell us how much they want for it

The thing is I didn't get to look at it properly, just saw that it was nice, but not close enough to see if it was scratched or inside the cupboards, didn't even notice the washing machine was in there - it must have been a dryer that I saw in the bathroom. Not sure - will phone and ask or I'll never find out!

hard to know what you'd be willing to pay under those circumstances. Well see what they're asking and ask them when it was bought, perhaps also where - might give us an idea of the quality. We could then brainstorm whether it would be worth buying it at their asking price

Admylin
Both times we have moved, the vormieter have not asked for too much for the kitchen. I think that we paid 1000euros for our kitchen here (Ikea Faktum). It depends on the size, the age and the Zustand.

There is a good chance that they still have the plans of the kitchen, maybe they could fax/email you them, that is what our vormieter did.

Normally you would not spend 10.000 euros on a kitchen in a rented house, so you should be ok.

The party went great. The games were a bit of a washout though. I did similar games at DD's party but she had only girls here. The boys don't seem to be so interested in games. I just let them dance/throw balloons about then got the box of cars down for them. DS has a fab Fisher Price racetrack that the other kids always love, it is very unusual here amongst all the Brio Bahns and solid wood toys.

The rain went off so we went outside with bubbles and waterbombs, that went down a treat. They then whizzed about on the bikes/tractors/scooters for a while before the parents came to pick them up.

Wow, MmeLindt, sounds like they had a great party! Well done.

Here's some news - I think it's good news: I rang the Vormieter and he said they don't need the kitchen and if we agree to take the flat unrenovated (so they don't have to paint it) he'll give us the kitchen for free. He paid 2000 euro for it a year ago but he doesn't need it and he doesn't want the hassle of painting - the thing is, he only moved into that place 1 year ago and when we looked round it the wife wasn't expecting us but it was extremely tidy and clean (gave me a deprssion for 2 days at the state of my place comapared but that's a different story) and I'm sure it didn't look that bad so I think it's worth us going for that deal even if we do have to touch up the odd wall here and there - or not? Bet h will be all for accepting it too and it means I'll atleast be able to cook straight away. So - shame I haven't got anything alcoholic in to celebrate.

Great news, Admylin. That is a good deal. Even if you have to paint one or the other room, keeping the kitchen saves you a lot of work and hassle.

Our vermieter arranges that we renovate when we move in, not when we move out. Much more sensible I think. It always seems daft that you paint the walls white just so the next guy can paint a different colour.

I'm waiting for something to go wrong. All this move thing just seems to be going too perfectly up to now, it can't be true. We've saved so much money, myhammer.de saved us a fortune in removal company costs, the new flat is bigger and nicer than this one but costs the same, the deposit was 1 month less than we thought it would be and now someone wants to give us a kitchen...I'm in the wrong film and I'll wake up soon I think.

lol, Admylin. That is Germany apologising for the shite schools. They are trying to make it up to you.

Great news about the kitchen, admylin. Sounds like a good deal to me. If they've only been there a year then I should think it hardly needs painting anyway and when it does you can choose what colour you want.

When we were looking for a flat there was one guy who wanted 15,000 euros for his kitchen. Put us off straight away.

Yes, we crossed loads of flats off our list because people wanted thousands for their kitchen. As h said , if they ask over 2000 then I'd rather buy my own new one.

Lol, I did think that, this is my reward for all the suffering and being so patient over the last few years!

OMG, I can't get over the fact that my dd is not here in her bed, I've just been trying to reach her with telapathy - she's probably fast asleep in her bed but it is really strange not having her here - in her whole life she's only slept away twice and that was next door to my parents house at my sister's place in the UK.

Do you really think that she is asleep already? I thought that the big part of school trips is staying awake until all hours of the morning with the teachers shouting, "Just go to sleep, it is 3am!" every so often.

We are goign to Scotland for 3 weeks on Wednesday, without DH. We have never been apart so long. What was I thinking? Why did I book 3 weeks?

Just think how much he'll miss you and appreciate you when you get back! I did this the first time a few years ago - well when ds started school - I just booked the whole summer holiday and every time we were away h would end up having to buy new towels, new sheets or once he even bought a new freezer - the last thing I came back to was a new set of frying pans (good ones) as he'd ruined the old ones!

LOL at your DH. Mine is not that bad, he will hardly be home anyway. He is visiting relatives in Würzburg, friends in Regensburg and Stuttgart. Then he is working in Munich and Geneva. So he will almost not miss us.

Trying hard to imagine dh engaging with frying pans in any manner whilst I'm away

Failed

This really is going well admylin. I do think it is MEANT TO BE. There you go, maybe finally everything will turn around and you'll all feel settled and happy in Dusseldorf
(It sounds a lot like a Rosamunde Pilcher novel in fact, doesn't it?). What shall we call It? "Dew Drops at Dawn in Dusseldorf?"
We get a lot of her on this thread come to think of it!

lol Sandy, except Admylin is moving to Hannover, it is me near Düsseldorf. So I can steal the Dewdrops at Dawn and Admylin will need something like Happy Homes in Hannover.

Just spoke with Francios (hmm, how do you spell that? I think it needs one of those curly things on the c) from the Geneva tax advisors. It does not look good for me working in Geneva. They take DH'S salary into consideration when taxing me. So it it is anything like Germany, I might as well not work at all.

I must find out about kindergeld, if we still get it when we live in Switzerland but earn here. Or do we apply in CH?

no idea. Could you ask LIZ, she's always so helpful.

I am thick mixing you two up! Our Happy Home in Hannover..