Der Herbst ist da - wir wollen aber kein Regenwetter: Life in Germany cont/d

[finknottle]

Too lazy to scroll through the other long one.

Here for Obst und Blaetter - guess what d came home from school singing yesterday?

All welcome, Austria & Switzerland & any German-speaking Leute too

Hope the warning does get quashed, Gabster.
MmmT am so at your 'popping over to France for shopping'
Miserable here too, only 5 C with sharp cold rain. Wet grey days, hate them. Luckily I don't have to go anywhere today, am up to my eyes in school stuff (of a positive nature ) Seem to spend as much time there as at home atm.

D has been counting down the days till Halloween, coming to find me every day and saying wide-eyed, "Mummy, you will not believe this but it is only 5/4/3/2 days to Halloween!" The boys want to go to the party at the youth club and then t-or-t'ing with their friends so I offered to go with d. "But Mummy, that's so boring!" waileth she. H used to take her (read: stand about drinking beer with other dads) but that group's children are all old enough to go alone now.

Both boys have a friend sleeping over tomorrow so I think I shall trade allowing ridiculously late bed-time & unlimited crisps in bedrooms & loud volume Guitar Hero for one hour t-or-t'ing with their sister.

I had a crown fall out yesterday. Serve me right, was doing a gesundes Fruehstueck with the Foerderverein for the 1. Klasse and was crunching on carrot sticks and then had that awful "WHAT is that I'm eating?" feeling.
Shall stick to my ungesundes coffee and chocolate Fruehstueck next time

gab, sorry about dh warning

fn, sorry about tooth.

dc on holiday, so busy w. boys.

Had big talk about THE FUTURE.

strated thread on LO topic - how do we decide to stay or return to UK (I know there's a fair few who'd love to return to UK, but I don't feel like that. I like it here, but of yourse there are plus and minuses for both. So, how do you decide? I'd really appreciate any input, either here on on other thread.

Now gotta get on with German HW before baby wakes up, and dc start killing each other xx

Ernest
Hope you get some good ideas and advice on your thread, was quite a few posts last time I looked.

Finknottle
Our DCs are so excited about Halloween too. We have compromised on the T or T, we have added our name to the list of houses to be visited in the village and will stay home with hot choc, marshmallows, and glühwein. Hopefully there will be a few kids here, and our neighbours are coming over too so that should be fun. It is forecast to rain, and it is only 2degrees here today so no way am I wandering about in the cold.

Aua, at you tooth. That'll teach you to stick to unhealthy croissants. Do you have an appointment with the dentist?

It was lovely here this morning but is raining again. At least I got a walk this morning, through the vineyards.

Oooh Fink - sorry about your tooth. Hope they can pop it straight back in for you. From personal experience, it is just a matter of some more glue, unless the post is unstable/has come out.

Love Halloween or any excuse for fun usually, but dreading it here as the constant door bell rining is bound to disturb DS. But we have a plan .....

Ernest - hope you are having a lovely time with the DCs. Now get on with your HW or there will be no fizzy drinks at the weekend for you!

Had just spotted your other post so going to reply to that one in a bit.

Did anybody else get snow today?

Spookster- hopefully you're right about the glue, lucky I didn't swallow the crown

I'm off in 2 hrs, am supposed to be doing school stuff but have come here to show off my:
ü ö ä ß ß ß ß Ö Ä Ü

Finally switched my keyboard to the German layout as I have a stack of written stuff to do for the school now. It's doing my head in though. I use the laptop in the kitchen a lot and am so used to the US/UK layout that it's my default. So even though my keyboard in my study is German, till now, it's been UK underneath, iyswim.

Am tzping v slowlz as zou see the z and y are the wrong waz around and the - is not a / and I canät find the square brackets to do smilies.
Where are thez- sorrz, they_ oops, ?

Can't find:
square brackets
little hat thing for italics

Am going cross-eyed here! Help!

Success:

AltGr 8, AltGr 9

My @ is AltGr Q

^ found the hat.

Bet you're all pleased

Can't find the single versions of « or » ?

Isn't it amazing how much time you can spend playing with your keyboard and Not Getting Things Done?

Know what you mean Fink. I usually use the laptop during the day and its German. But my main PC is in the bastement in my study, has a UK keyboard and I use it for work etc. Gets very confusing at times!

Have you got an appointment with the dentist yet?

I am like that with my mum's pc, takes me ages to get used to it then I come home and have to get used to the German one again.

< > are the key left of the space bar on my keyboard.

I had a look at the iPhone last week and it had a different keyboard, is there a French one? The A and Q were swapped and other keys too. Twas very confusing. Hope that it can be changed when I get mine, if I ever get it.

I was in the supermarket today, the staff on the Wursttheke have packaging the goods down to an art form. It is like origami for ham salesmen, I have never seen anything like it. None of this bunging the ham in a bag and stapling it shut. No, they carefully place the ham on a little sheet of plastic, then they cover the ham and tuck the ends in, as if they were wrapping a present for the Queen. The finished work of art is carefully slid into the little plastic bag, the end of which is folded over and stuck down precisely in the middle with the receipt.

It takes ages and I stand there and fidget and try to resist looking at my watch.

MmeT - Oops, there they are! Mine don't work Banging head on desk here, never realised how annoying it is & how many symbols are in different places.

Sooo...I have found out how to switch layouts without faffing about with Preferences so will only use the German layout for the official school stuff (as will have type slowly and carefully anyway...) and switch back for everything else. Ah the relief! I can use proper umlauts

Am back from dentist - called Weds, appt this morning, dread to think how long I'd have to wait in the UK. A wee bit of tooth had broken away but she patched it up, glued in the crown and reckoned it should hold. No pain whatsoever. More relief!

Lol at the ham, aren't the Swiss very, umm, particular about how things are done?
S2 has just volunteered without being prompted to clear up and vacuum his room. Thud. Will def allow him more sleepovers.
D is going trick or treating with a friend whose mum called to say she owed me a favour and would I like her to take d? Both boys out too so mmm, tonight, a fire, a film & a bottle of red and the knowledge that for the first time since April I don't have to get up early on a Sat and make sandwiches & pack all the paraphernalia for sailing.

Hope everyone survived Haloween!

Kids set fire to the paper recycling bin here . Was v. surprised for Germany. Firebrigade had to attend!

Hey fink - glad the dentist is all sorted. Relief for sure! Funny, I still have morbid fear of dentists even though it is so fab here compared to UK. That is one thing that puts us off going back - I mean you can't even register as an NHS patient anymore, can you? (even if you would want to).

LOL at the ham origami Mme. I suppose it is like getting posh cakes from the bakers here - only there is a new guy working in the village shop and you can see he hasn't quite got the knack of it yet. Wonder if its like McDonalds - get get a gold star when you can pack meat/cakes, another if you can arrange the stock nicely. What else would earn you stars I wonder?

Hi everyone. Just taken my sister and her dd's to the airport - we had a lovely week and saw abit of Hannover. There's a lovely old cobbled street area that I didn't know about and you can do some very good shopping - just wish I had more money then I could go mad!

Well done for having THE FUTURE talk Ernest. Mine won't have that talk but it's all I seem to be thinking about at the moment. My ds would be going into secondary schooling in September this year in UK and I keep thinking should I just take him or sit it out abit longer here? I really envy you debinaustria - well done for being able to decide!

Glad you had a lovely week with your sister & nieces, admylin.
Halloween was odd here, it's been increasingly popular here, every year more so and this year there were very few t-or-t'ers and we had a grand total of 0. Granted we're in the old fogey part of the village but some of the local children who know us called last year on their way through to the centre of the village & new housing estate.

Apparently there were hardly any children about at all, even the party at the youth club was very quiet. Explains maybe why s2 and d each came home with half a bag (those cotton shopping ones) of tooth-rotting sweets. Maybe it's a backlash? Loads of Germans moan about how it's a rubbish American import

My lazy Saturday was ambushed by a visit Friday afternoon from 2 neighbours from down the road telling me they assumed we didn't know this but the overgrown slopes to the right of our garden belong to us, and the brambles & weeds & gawd knows what are completely out of control and could we sort it? Err, why did the idiot we bought the house from put a fence along the length of the garden? H & I spent 3 hrs with clippers and the electric hedge clippers (sod the Feiertag) clearing only about 4 feet of it. There are another 20 feet to clear one neighbour's wall & the back of their shed and we can't even get to the worst bit. That belongs to someone else we don't even know, and is a thicket about 40m long and 4m wide of impenetrable thorny hedge stuff and half-dead trees. Nightmare.
Shall have to do some phoning around and ask if we can view it from their garden. Several times in the past 2 years I've thanked our lucky stars that all the overgrown brambles & sticky knotty climbers were on the other side of the fence so didn't belong to us

I was surprised too finknttle, the Halloween hype has died down abit hasn't it? We went to a big shopping centre on the 31st and I thought there would be something going on to do with Halloween especially at the ToysRus place next to it or even in the huge Real supermarket but there was nothing at all.

Don't envy you with all the gardening! I'm not very green fingered anyway, have managed to kill all the plants I ever had so I hope I cope with my boxes outside. I should be putting bulbs in now shouldn't I?

Oh Fink, what bad luck. Still, could you do something with the land when you have finished? I must get out in the garden but I never seem to have the time, especially now the evenings have gone. Need to dig the vege patch over and put something on it. Tush who am I kidding - just mowing the lawn would be a start.

Well we survived Halloween - we bought a new doorbell the dog was not used to so he did not bark every time it rang. Actually, is brill and going to do some more work with him so now we can actually get deliveries without the usual whole mad barky dog experience. Would be lovely.

It's a beautiful day here in Munich by the way. Warm, sunny and can't believe it is November and we have not had our first snow yet. Well, we had sleety stuff come down on Thursday , but it didn't settle so it doesn't count.

Finknottle
What a bother, how stupid that the seller did not tell you. Would it be worth getting gardener in with bigger machines?

We had enough Halloween for all of us. 2 parties, one trick or treat, one trunk or treat. Trunk or treat was good fun, organised by DH's work.

I am going to be lazy and cut and paste this from FOOC thread.

Well, I have put some photos of our Trunk or Treat on my profile. Yesterday, as I mentioned earlier, we were invited to a Trunk or Treat party at DH's office. We were unsure of what to expect, we had been told to bring sweets for the trick or treating, pumpkins for a best pumpkin competition and decorations for the car.

In typical European fashion, I took some pumpkins and a couple of squashes as decorations, only to be completely outshined by the American colleagues with their halloween lights, fake ghosts and cobwebs. The winning alien pumpkin was fabulous, and certainly deserved to win. There was some controversy over the second pumpkin as it was open at the bottom which many felt was cheating. :-)

There was a parade for the best costume as well, that DD took part in reluctanly because "we are all winners as we have all made an effort"

One of the women was just reading a scary story by torchlight/candlelight when the pizza delivery guy arrived from Domino's Pizza. I had to laugh when a young American boy asked if they had Hamburger Pizza; I was not aware that such a thing existed.

At one point the older girls started telling the kids that they should get together for the Mummy Rap. I was intrigued, thinking that they had rehearsed a song and had to laugh when I realised that it was a Mummy WRAP, the kids were wrapped in loo roll to resemble mummies. DS thought this was great fun, although he did say that he would like to do the game again at home. I will be hiding the loo roll to save us from an Andrex Puppy Situation.

After this the children went around the cars, shouting Trick (or Trunk) or Treat and were given lots of sweets.

All in all, it was a great evening and the candy was (Gott Sei Dank) Swiss - none of Califrau's neon boaksome stuff

Have you seen the Obama Pumpkins I think some people have too much time on their hands

Morning all - where is everyone? Feeling v. lonely this week. Must be all this talk of re-patriating.

Plus visit to blightly is imminent - next week. Always makes me misog to know time will be limited.

Morning theGabster. How long are you going for? I wish I was going. Just can't stop thinking that I don't want to spend the rest of my life in Germany or following h around depending on his job - I haven't got itchy feet anymore and I want to settle somewhere I can grow old. Depressed bunch aren't we?! Must be the weather, grey sky and drizzle. Ernest's thread set me off even more.

Glorious sunshine here and warm Was just out on my bike, ending up in shirt-sleeves... and yes, it's gorgeous and the trees are golden and red and the vineyards mellow and hazy in the November sunshine - but I want it to snow - so I have a good excuse not to go anywhere near Sleeping Beauty's Thicket
MmeL, gardeners would be lovely - well, they could be smelly and craggy as long as they were up to the job - but we can't afford it atm. Sigh.
It is 20C on our balcony - blue sky, mmm, still no heating on but downside is we have 35 billion fruit flies no longer just in the kitchen but all over the house on every window. Can't leave any glass/mug/crumb out or they swarm. Yuck.

Oh, I hate the fruit flies, yuk. Very difficult to get rid of.

I have just put the fire on and am having a cup of tea and a hobnob (or two). I am feeling sorry for myself today, I just totally lost it with DS. He threw a picnic basket around the hall and I really screamed at him. I am fed up being the slave here and tidying everyones stuff away.

DS cried a bit but he is pretty unaffected by any such nonsence, by the time we got to the school he was chattering away again. DD was very subdued and cuddly, she is sensitive and gets upset.

And I just bought a telephone, was so proud of myself, exactly what I wanted. Then noticed when I came to plug it in that I had bought it in France and they have different jacks for the telephone. How daft am I? Shittity shit, must try and find an adapter or something before DH gets home from his business trip. Damn thing cost 100?

Fink
Try the handwerker website, what is it called, the one that Admylin used for her move. myhammer.de?

lol, just remembered something DS said today. "Schau, Mama, ein Baumädchen"

'twas a builder with long hair and he thought it was a woman. Bauarbeiter, männlich. Baumädchen, weiblich

mmelindt have you ever thought about moving back to Scotland sometime? Could your h work there? Just wondering, Ernest has got me thinking and just can't imagine getting old and still being here. What do you think? And you finknottle? You have a different situation to Ernest and I as you are married to German men.

That MyHammer thing is a good idea. A friend got some men to come and decorate her flat - strip wallpaper, put new up and paint it all and when she worked it out they had hardly earned anything, they were so cheap. She asked them why and they said better that than nothing at all and in between jobs they always filled in with little jobs off MyHammer. Have any of you ever seen a website like MyHammer for UK?

Funny that, MyHammer is German, but they are trying at the moment to build up their British site. The company is in Neuss, and I almost applied for a job there. They were looking for people to mediate between companies and customers in UK. I wonder if you could do that from home?

I never think seriously about moving back to Scotland. DH could never earn half as much there as he does here (and even more so now he has been sent to CH, I am almost embarrassed how much money he is getting) We could just not afford to move back. And I am not keen on it, tbh. I would go if he got a job offer but that is unlikely.

I think it is different when you have a DP/DH from the country that you are living in. I have a friend in Dortmund who is British, as is her DH and I feel that they are much more British than I am, if that makes sense. I think that it is easier for the DC too, they are British/German, and have a clearer sense of identity that a British child growing up in Germany.

Afternoon ladies.

Going for a long weekend Admylin. V. excited as DS has not met the ILs yet. Not looking forward to the stress of flying with baby and DH who has flying phobia. Ho hum. The insomnia has started already as I knew it would.

Yuch, fruit flies, still trying to get rid of the last few here too which is crazy as its gone so cold out.

Have also been thinking want to settle down and love where we are now but we are never going to be able to buy a house here which makes me feel like it is only temporary. Suspect this means we will eventuall find out way back to UK to "settle".

Having a pants day. DS is being a mare with naps again, and have now shagged back by stupidly decided to get rid of the paper recycling as it was reaching critical mass by putting DS in babybjorn and taking it all round there.

I know shouting at DCs isn't idea lindt - but it is just one of those things. Nobody can be perfectly calm all the time and like you say, you are not a dogsbody. They have to grow up learning this (IMO).

Bummer about the phone though. Hope you sort it.

Afternoon everyone.

Haven't been on here so long that my 'threads I'm on' was on 0.

I've been quite busy recently what with the new job and having an old school friend visit last week that I've not really had time to get down. I have started wondering though whether this is it now. As I don't want to put the dc through another move I suspect it probably is and then I start to think about how I'd feel growing old here. Or would I return to the UK at a stage where I'm too old to really make new friends and wouldn't fit in anymore anyway? I don't really have any place in the UK I could call home. My friend from school has lived all her life in the area we grew up in and has a really large circle of friends she has known for years. I've never really had that as we keep moving at least every 5 years and am not very good at keeping in touch with people so it got me thinking whether I am missing out.

Finknottle at warm sunshine as you're not far from us and yet we've had cold mist all day. Don't envy you the garden clearance though

MmeLindt, if it's any consolation I sometimes scream so loudly at the dc that I give myself a sore throat. I always feel terrible afterwards but tis so hard sometimes trying to hold it all together.

Know what you mean about feeling like the slave who just picks up after every one. Some days I tidy and clean and cook what seems like most of the day then when I come to chill out on the sofa in the evening it looks like a tip and the blankets are sprawled out, crumbs on floor again and all the cushions on the floor as if I never lifted a finger.

My neighbour might have a part time job for me some time soon so I might start sharing the workload with the lot of them. They won't know what's hit them!

What sort of job admylin?

My sister told me if we want to come back she will pay me to look after her kids full-time (one has just started school mind)!!!!