Can we make our own 'from our own correspondent'

[teafortwo]

I love love love this radio show...

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/default.stm

Can we please please please have a thread that has a vibe a bit like this?

We can have a bunch of parents who live all over the World in all kinds of countries (including Blighty), with all kinds of neighbours and themselves living in all kinds of situations (rural, city, suburbs and anything inbetween) explaining what is happening where they live. Day to day things (what is on sale at your local market, what you ate for lunch), portraits of figures in your community (e.g a lovely old village character), big news stories (e.g student riots), little news stories (a much loved dog has died that used to wander around the town centre), arguements in the cafe (sport, politics, religion), music and dance (e.g I notice all Parisian teenagers like to do this weird wiggling dance and they even have lessons for how to do it on national telly), observations on things that are different from where you come from (I don't know...e.g a New Yorker's take on living in the Lake District), interesting discussions on languages spoken... etc etc... I think it could be fun!!!

So tell me...

Am I making sense?

and..

What do you think? Shall we give it a go?

My friend came in yesteday while I was watching the news on BBC and remarked on the Olympics. She asked how Britain got on and was rather suprised to hear how successful Team GB was. It struck me as amusing, we only hear about our own country, our own athletes and there are so many stories from other countries.

So here is one from Germany.

I guess each country has a young athlete, who goes to the Olympics with the burden of expectations resting uncomfortably on his shoulders. Germany's Hoffnungsträger, carrier of hope, was Fabian Hambüchen. He is not an unknown in the world of sport, he won several competitions on the world stage in his sport, gymnastics. This was his second Olmpic games and the pressure was immense.

He was not at his best but still managed to win a bronze medal, which was seen as a defeat by many, himself included. There have been a few stories in the past week or so about him and his father/trainer. The Sport Director had made a comment about being happy with the bronze medal as it was known before the games that Fabian was not on form and that it was kept from the press so that Fabian would not lose confidence in himself.

Fabian's father took umbridge at this comment (why, I do not know) and asked the Sport Director if he had "alle Tassen im Schrank?" (all the cups in the cupboard = are you crazy)

All of this was reported in Bild Zeitung, the German equivelant of The Sun which can always be relied upon to blow any little dispute into a scandal.

At the end of the day, it all reminded me of the "Tennis Dads" that some of these youngsters have. Parents who were not so successful themselves, who then train their DCs from a young age. Every country seems to have them, Steffi Graf and the Williams sister spring to mind and Michael Schumacher. I sometimes wonder if they would have been so sucessful if they were just competing for themselves instead of trying to win their father's approval.

More on language in Switzerland.....

Swiss German is a completely different language to Hochdeutsch (or rather "standard German" as the politically correct here would rather we called it).

• It is sometimes a case of using a French word instead of the German (e.g. velo instead of fahrrad for bike, coiffeur instead of friseur for hairdresser, poulet instead of ?? for chicken).

• Sometimes there are entirely new names for things (Gipfeli means croissants).

• Some differences are the use of the German words (Swiss use schmecken to mean smell as well as taste - that confuses me, "what do you mean the shampoo tastes nice?, ah you it mean smells nice!").

• Some differences are the grammar, for example the Swiss don't use the genitive (thank goodness for small mercies) and generally seem to avoid long complicated sentences wherever possible. Also most of the the der, die, das come out as just "d' " which means you can avoid the whole case issue for most of the time.

• The Swiss seem fond of diminutive forms of things - almost any word you like can have a "li" added to the end, klammerli rather than klammer for little peg, huusli rather than haus for little house, bitsli for little bit).

And then there's how it all sounds.... it's all back of the throat, hacking cough type noises and a really up and down melody to it. And it varies widely throughout Switzerland from canton to canton of course, (everything varies according to canton, everything!)

I learnt German to O'level at school (loooong time ago!) and have been here for 6 years and don't really do any Swiss German. I can understand Hochdeutsch although am very bad at speaking it and often people encourage my laziness by speaking English to me, since in Basel at least most people speak English well (during the recent renovation of our bathroom, the plumber, builder and electrician were laughing at the tiler because he couldn't speak English!).

The children (aged 4 and 2) were born here and have attended a Swiss German nursery since about 8 months old. They speak both Swiss German and English equally well(as far as I can tell). DS (the 4 year old) doesn't often mix them up, although he was talking to me about "driving his bike" since that is the literal translation of the Swiss velofahren, and will not accept that in English we ride a bike. dd (aged 2) does still muddle them.

Swiss German is only a spoken language. It can sometimes be written down but then there is no standard spelling, so you kind of have to read the words aloud to make any sense of it. Children learn standard German at school at age 6 for reading and writing. There is a move here to speak standard German in Kindergarten so that the children begin to learn it and can make the transition to standard German at school more easily. I find this really sad actually. Admittedly if we move from here it will be little help to my children to be able to speak Swiss German and standard German would be a more useful skill, but the idea that the Swiss are actively trying to move away from speaking their own language seems a shame to me. One of the arguments in favour of the standard German in Kindergarten is that in this city there are a lot of children for whom German (either Swiss or standard) is already a second language and it makes it easier for them if they only have to learn one new language. I'm not sure, but I'm no expert. It is certainly true that there are a lot of children here who do not speak German at home. There are people who have moved from the French, Italian or Romansch areas of Switzerland as well as many immigrants, particularly in the area of the city we live in. At the parents evening at ds's Kindergarten last week we were all reading sections from "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" in our native languages, i.e. in Farsi, Arabic, Cantonese, French, Albanian, Turkish, English. I think perhaps someone actually did German too!

We live just next to the French and German borders so the second language in school here will be French. There was a move to change it to English a few years ago but for now it stays as French.

Interestingly as far as languages go - learning them in school that is - french and german were the norm. Only a very few did any asian languages. Japanese and Chinese were the most common if any Asian languages were taught.

From when I started teaching in the 1990's there was a move to introduce indonesian given that is our nearest largest neighbour. My SIL is a LOTE ( languages other than english) teacher and she teaches Japanese. She has done an agricultural exchange where she lived with a Japanese family on a farm for a year. THen a few years later she returned to teach english for a year as part of the JET program. I was fortunate to be able to go and stay with her for a couple of weeks and in fact spent Christmas in Japan with her. She lived north of Tokyo.

it was strange cause in the little town where she lived very few westerners lived and so I was a novelty. THe only other westerners were those who were also JET teachers and so they were well known. I got a lot of looks and stares whilst I was there. Once people knew I was from Australia - they all wanted to ask my advice about their upcoming holidays to Australia and to practise their English.

Cali - that's great! Amazing how something can reach the US so quickly from E Africa and stay intact. The Maasai are very interesting, especially for a small boy

Sue - yes!!!! That is they It really is a small world. She will know me if you mention I moved from Douala to Nairobi.

Back to read more about languages later...

Gipfeli
That is very interesting, and you have taught me my first Swiss-German work, Gipfeli. A very important word it is too.

TheM&M, I'm not amazed at how quickly your parcel got to the US; I'm amazed you have any postal system at all!!! Lagos has just has a few PO boxes for receiving mail at the two Post Offices. There's no home delivery system at all. There are no post boxes to mail anything, which doesn't really matter as there's nowhere to buy stamps anyway. I did have a PO box which mainly my mum used but I've given it up now. People either communicate by phone/email (systems permitting - most of them were down all day yesterday) or DHL and FedEx for important stuff.

Btw, R is dh's ultimate boss - he's a v big cheese! He's been very good to us, getting issues wrt to our apartment sorted out. A is lovely, very warm and friendly. I only know one of her dc as they go to a diff school to dd. They live a stone's discus throwers throw away from us.

OK, if you really want a London perspective I?m happy to oblige. We?ll probably be moving out in a few months, so it?s a good time for me to reflect on living here. This might be a bit long?

To say that London is a series of villages is a truism: those visiting our area would immediately identify it as an offshoot of Russia and Eastern Europe. We live in the middle of the largest Hasidic community in Europe, made up of several distinct groups, each hailing from a different area of Europe and following a different rabbi. Groups are distinguished by minor variations in dress, notably the shape and size of the Shtreimel or fur hat worn on the Sabbath. There are around 20 000 Hasidic Jews living in this small area and families are large: 8-10 children is not an unusual number .

Living in the community yet not part of it is an interesting experience. The Hasidic Jews are ultra-observant, choosing to live separately from their neighbours. Television is frowned upon as an unhealthy outside influence, and most people are educated, employed and married within the community. Religion sets the tenor of life here. The first thing you notice as an outsider is the strict observance of the Sabbath: no shops are open, no cars are used (the useful byproduct is that many businesses are open on a Sunday, including my dentist). After a while you become aware of the daily rituals with their regular prayer meetings. The annual calendar of festivals starts off as a confused mess, but after a while distinct events emerge. The most obvious is Purim, where all the children (and some of the adults) appear in fancy dress and make their way to parties. Costumes range from traditional princesses and fairy tale characters to contemporary references. Last year the contractors Clancy Docwra were digging up the roads to fix the crumbling drains (no tv means any such activity is surrounded by crowds of rapt small boys). Many children dressed up as Clancy Docwra workers for Purim, complete with flourescent jackets donated by the company. Seeing adults in fancy dress is startling: the usual monochrome outfits replaced with clown costumes or (memorable in this multicultural area) a blacked-up face and Afro wig. At night the men drink vodka and sing: the only time of the year when drunkenness is acceptable.

Much of the life of the community is hidden from outsiders, both the celebrations and the problems. They have a local emergency service, the Hatzola, with its own medical workers and ambulances. Schools, retirement homes, businesses are all within the community. As in any community, problems such as domestic and child abuse occur but they are never publicised. Recently (a rare mention in the local press) a visiting rabbi who has done much for sufferers of child abuse in Orthodox communities was chased from the area and had to flag down a passing police car to escape

The only way I find out about much of what?s happening is that DH works from home, is a local blogger and has recently got involved in local politics, being past the age of indifference and well into the age of incandescent rage. Sadly, one of the best bloggers on Jewish life in the area seems to have stopped for now, but the archives are a great read: theshaigetz.blogspot.com/

On a more shallow note, orthodox women's dress looks very classy in winter (long coats, little round hats) and very hot in summer (tights are essential, as are wigs and hats/headscarves for married women). Little boys don't have their hair cut until the age of three, which can lead to embarrassing mistakes in the playground . I think many of our local sights would have been familiar in Victorian and Edwardian London: the hats, the routine sight of a small child being dragged along by their slightly older sibling.

Predjudices abound: when the global situation becomes tense we hear of attacks on homes and synagogues, even stabbings in the street. As this is London, we are next door to the largest Turkish community in Europe and there are suprisingly few local tensions. Most of the unpleasantness comes from ignorant yobs passing through who think it's funny to hurl abuse at local residents from their cars .

Whew! Well done if you got through that lot!

GASP - WOW - Effie, your thread is too too good to read in a rush while getting ready to go out.

Tonight I plan to sit down armed with a glass of red wine and a piece of very good chocolate to give it the time and honour it deserves!!!!! Seriously!

SO.... SO... SO... ANYONE FROM PENGUIN AROUND - because you see I want this thread made into a book asap - because it is dangerous to take my computer in the bath with me (the place of true dreamy escapism reading!!!)

speaking of reading, have we any MNers in Greece or Albania? Have just finished reading this with delight and a sense of sadness that most of it must have vanished by now...

Effie
Fab post, what an interesting area to live in.

Cies signing in after a few weeks' holiday in UK and France.

It's taken me two days to read through the posts since I went away. What wonderful, eclectic and evocative posts they are.

I was thinking about what to tell you all about, and I got my theme from my recent holiday in France. We were in the Midi region, camping near a medieval town called Lauzerte. From time to time driving there we saw a scallop shell symbol on a road sign, but we didn't click that we were on the Camino de Santiago until we went into the town and saw some information boards about it.

Living in Galicia, whose capital is Santiago de Compostela, we of course knew something about the Camino, or Pilgrim's Way, but had never really taken on board the fact that it stretches outside the Iberian Peninsula. I'd only really heard about people starting it in the Pyrenees. But no, the map shows a network of routes, starting in Eastern Europe, Ireland, Italy etc all converging in the end in Santiago de Compostela.

You can tell the pilgrims instantly from the scallop shell that hangs from their backpack or saddlebag. Some of the hikers carry big sticks also embellished with this 'coquille de Saint Jacques'. Also, they are the ones who, when arriving at the campsite, even before putting up their tent, will take off their socks and go to wash them. The bushes around their patch will then be covered in drying socks.

We got talking to one group of young men, probably about 25yo. They came from Paris, and took 2 weeks every summer to walk a section of the Camino. They calculate that it'll take them another twelve years to actually get to Santiago.

Another elderly English couple were bicycling slowly south. They said they were doing it for the challenge, not for any religious feeling, but more for the idea of being a part of a centuries old tradition.

We found ourselves following the Camino, unintentionally, on our route back home, through the Spanish cities of Burgos and Leon, where huge cathedrals show important stopping points for pilgrims. Footsore and dusty, wearing walking boots and sensible sun hats, the pilgrims mingle with camera toting tourists and resigned locals as they find their way to the Pilgrim hostal, where they can get a stamp in their book (to show they've come that far) and a cheap bed for the night.

Cies, Tim Moore,one of my fave (and very funny) travel writers wrtote about doing the route with a donkey.
I would love to do it-perhaps with gaggle of middle aged spinsters wearing tweed.
Had you told me that 15 years ago when i lived in pubs Iwould have fallen about but now it sounds great.

Moondog, can I be part of your gaggle? We could stop at various hostel hostelleries drinking establishments along the way and establish the thirsty pilgrim's guide to the Camino

Effie I never realised just how tight knit these Jewish communities still are. What a great post, see North London is not dull. Where are you moving to next?

Sue I only really remember the youngest daughter who was lovely. But A was full of life and a real centre of the expat ladies.

It would be such a laugh eh?
I like idea of eating and drinking like horse at end of day then crashing out all tired and sun warmed.

Paris fooc

About once a week, due to one of the buildings housing our local big shopping centre, I find myself walking to or from La Defense.www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vx5q4zg_0M

My first impressions of it were rather cold, an international business centre that due to the funky art and massive esplanade lots of skater kids like to hang out at too, initially seemed to me like a place to avoid.

However, it has really grown on me. DD and I treasure our afternoons hanging around, maybe meeting my friend who works in a building that looks a bit like the back of a massive ship, watching the fountain, checking out the current 'fete' perhaps a jazz band, modern dancing, some sort of sport or some unusual sculptures but we mostly treasure just sitting in a cafe me sipping at my egg cup of strong coffee her sucking away on her straw excitedly demolishing yet another strawberry milk and simply watching the world go by! Mmmm!

So, understandably like the rest of Paris and France I wait rather nervously to see what Sarkozy's new 'bling bling' buildings being added to La Defense (for example check out the Phare Tower -en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phare_Tower) are going to do not only to the 'precious' Paris skyline but also to this funky crazy place I call my local high street!

and p.s effie - I hope you don't mind I have copied and pasted your post into an e-mail and mailed it to a few friends of mine. It is so interesting and beautifully written I simply had to share it!!!!

teafortwo . Glad you enjoyed reading it

We're (hopefully) moving to Essex, less colourful but more livestock

No, no, no - Essex is special too just in a different way - where in Essex???... I grew up near Witham and Braintree in a big industrial village called Silver End!

no definite plans yet but thinking about Colchester. First we need to sell this flat (not easy in the current climate) and at some point I will be giving birth to DC2 (due end Dec) which I do not want to be doing in the moving van.

La Defense! My ds got married in Paris last year. As he laid out his posh togs that morning he realised he'd left his shirt at home. He jumped in the car and hurtled to La Defense to buy another, but nowhere was open. He says it will be the only time in his life when he was to be found hammering on the doors of Zara, begging to be let in rather than out.

And thinking about this thread - do you think MN Towers should put a regular FOOC bit in their newsletters? Cos I do!

Message withdrawn

EffiePerine - your post was so interesting and also so relevant to me at the moment.

I am currently reading a book called Blood Matters about genetic medicine and genetic testing.

The auther has a genetic mutation (as do I) which means that her chances of breast and ovarian cancer are increased.

The book explores the way genetic decisions are shapping the way we think, about whom we marry and the children we may have.

It also covers the fact that a lot of the testing that is avalable today is down to the Jewish communities, as they are often closed communities and that Isreal is in the forefront of this research.

Moreover it basically expalins that Judaism is not a religion but a race of people, which took me some time to assimilate.

I find it difficult to understand that I have private healthcare that will not cover me to have preventative surgery (espeically as my risk of Breast cancer is as high as 85% and my risk of ovarian cancer 65%), but the NHS does and has (I had my ovaries and tubes removed at the beginning of the month).

My private healthcare will cover me if I get cancer, but not to stop me getting it. I am so thankful of the care and understanding I have received from the NHS and find it hard that other countries do not have such a system. What do people do if they have no health cover - what happens if they get sick.