Der Weihnachtsmarkt: Glühwein und Waffeln und Lebkuchen

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Hope I typed that right, have lead in my boots this morning. Had a great weekend with lots of Glühwein and Weinschorlen and Nikoläuser.
Didn't get back from a Christmas party till 8 last night and too late to make the Kranz. I usually start decorating on Dec 1st so will do that with d after school and then light a candle tonight.
We're in the UK as well for C'mas but I still do decorations, put the tree baubles in glass vases so even they get an outing.
I love white fairy lights, put some all over the place and in the evenings leave the lamps off and light downstairs with fairy lights alone.

The tree lighting on Saturday was great fun, friends of ours were there and their 13 yr old d took mine to the fire & waited 15 mins in the crowds for Nikolaus while I was plied with Glühwein.
Think my ideal Christmas is Advent here and C'mas day in the UK, then back here for Sylvester. So this year should be good.
Mind you when we're here we have roast beef on the 25th, or goose. Think if I served Truthahn, h would clobber me with it.

Taipo have mailed you.
Have only one school meeting this week but a stack of reports to write. It is very good for my rusty brain but v hard work getting into. Feel rather fragile this morning, housework beckons and all I want is a bucket of tea and an aspirin

Sorry, didn't see the question about Berlin. I know there is one where you pay to go in but it's nice and there is an open air ice rink outside the opera house on Unter den Linden which has a nice Weihnachtsmarkt nearby but quite small. I'll look for a link now of the one that isn't nice if it's on this year! And the nice ones .

here is a nice one a 10 minute walk from Brandenburger tor, touristy area but nice.

this is near the other one and also nice

Oooh thanks for that - they both look really good. It´s just a shame I´ve got the dc with me otherwise I´d spend hours strolling around, but will be lucky to get away with 30mins before the whining starts.

not worth it in my opinion, this one is more like a fun-fair, rubbish on sale and has nothing of the traditional flair you would expect of a German market.

In that case it´s probably very much like Kassel which has no atmosphere, consists mainly of food stalls and cheap tat, hence my excitement at going somewhere rather more traditional.

I'm afraid I'm an old misery about Weihnachtsmärkte hupa, I don't get them. Just avoided them really. Dh didn't mind going there but they get so crowded and it seemed to me just a lot of overpriced stalls and overpriced funfair type rides. Had never heard of having to pay to go to one admylin.

Only been to the one on Ku'damm which is always so crowded, I find it stressful. Unter den Linden is a similar set-up but more space IIRC. One of the outer suburbs of Berlin might have a really nice one, have to say I have never investigated what say Spandau or Zehlendorf has to offer.

Ernest
Sorry to see you so disheartened. Sounds like you are in the first depressive valley. (remember the Expat mood curve) Our trainer said that it was imprtant to get out and about, join clubs, take up a hobby, anything to get out of the house. Easier said than done with a 6 mth old, I know. Any krabbelgruppen near you? The people who fail to climb out of this rut are the ones who break off and return home.

Not that I know where home is anymore. We should call ouselves The Club Of Displaced Women An Trailung Spouses CODWATS

Ernest, sorry you're feeling down. It's so hard isn't it, that initial settling-in period. I used to get really emotional and cried myself to sleep (which I hadn't done since I was a teenager) during the bleakest moments and feeling like bursting in tears at any setback (The thing about the snow clearing would have set me off too because it's a reminder of how hard everything seems when you're new)

It will get better but definitely take ML's advice about getting out of the house whenever you can.

ML, I like CODWATS

Here are some more langos pictures.

OMG how well I rmeember my first forays into the world of shopping in Berlin.
I used to go back home and dissolve into tears, wondering what I had done to make the assistants so nasty.

Nothing as it turns out.

Think CODWATS will have to be in our next title, don't you think taipo?

Berlin is tough, isn't it? I'm glad that at least I didn't have that to contend with here - shop assistants are usually very friendly.

Admylin
How are you finding the cool Hannoveranner? They arequite reserved I found.

Gabster
Just posted in your "bullying" thread. Don't take the comments too seriously on there, I know what you meant.

Ladies and CODWATS, get youselves over to parenting and be nice to Gabster, she is getting a bit of a flaming.

No one sits on our Dr. G and gets away with it! What's all that about? She's not the type to get people's backs up. Honestly MN goes beserk at times, you'd think people were in training to become Berlin sales people the way they carry on.

LOL Codwats

Ernest - sorry our posts must have crossed. Only just read yours. PLEASE don't be down. Events are just conspiring against you a little at the mo. It's all fixable. Have you found your local family centre yet? I think every area has one. Loads of groups and activities and usually the odd free coffee morning too.

Thanks MMe - have promised DH will not post anything else on the thread as is getting silly and I was getting a bit upset. Just goes to show there are always people lurking ready to lecture on their favourite subject area - even if it means ignoring the actual question in hand.

P.S. I think DS is feeling a bit better, thanks for your concern ladies.

P.P.S: DH has just told me his boss has said 99.9% certain he will get the redundancy package, but wants him to agree to leave end of Feb now instead of at Xmas for handover to new bods in the Phillipines (sp?). DH is on holiday from tomorrow until the New Year and so boss has promised to ring him next week with difinitive, final answer and he will have to pop in to sign the paperwork. Fingers' crossed everyone.

sorry the other thread got unfriendly Dr.G. Think every single dm has experienced what you experienced and been unhappy about it. I think those toddler groups are for the parents really, not the kids. They don't really play together much before they are 2.

Where will you be going then, back to the UK?

LOL Zzzen. Just had an image of us as Patrick Swayze to DrG's Jennifer Gray. "Nobody puts DrG in a corner"

Mme

No worries Zzen - I only wanted to know the rules about the whole "how to treat other people's children" thing as everyone seems to ignore behaviour I would not let DS get away with. We are talking about older DCs by the way - 2 to 4 yrs - at coffee mornings not the "krabbelgruppe". Seems my mistake was using the word bully. Ho hum. Talked to my one and only Brit mum friend here and she said Germans just don't do a thing anyway so just extract DS when necessary. Funny how Germans are always so quick to correct my parenting techniques and concepts, yet don't seem to have any of their own.

We are looking at Cambridgeshire - hopefully around Newmarket or the Fens. V. excited. Have been inside most of today "resting" - i.e. surfing potential rental houses and other exciting stuff. Had better go to bed now though as DS is bound to wake at 5.30/6 again tomorrow. Don't do it often but amazingly managed to get him back to sleep by snuggling up with him in our bed this morning. He is so gorgeous and cuddly at the moment. Everybody say ahhhhhhhh.

hupa maybe this one in front of Schloss Charlottenburg? Never been there. Apparently there are over 50 in Berlin.

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=e9J60SoNEGM

What would be quite nice is you could wander roudn the park at the back of the Schloss, let the kids run around a bit. There is a small lake with swans, you can cross it over a small bridge, a little folly and the garden is quite nice.

OMG thegabster, I think I know what went wrong on that other thread. They all have NO idea what it's like here in Germany! Believe me, I went to playgroups in UK when mine were small and I was visiting for a few weeks and it was nothing like the German ones. They have no idea what it's like over here. I remember exactly the same thing happened to us at an English playgroup with the German mums who wanted their dc to be bilingual. They were awful so we banned them in the end and made it a native speaker only play group!

Oh Ernest, I'm feeling your pain. I get good days (when I read about how awful it is in the UK), and I look out of my window to the forest and think "Life is good here".

Then other times when DH is away for the week, it's raining and cold, and everyone is ill I just want to leave. It's so hard to make friends here. All the KG mums are lovely and we always say Morgen, but that's it. I can't believe I can count the number of friends I have here on less than one hand.

DS1 is in a cracking mood this morning, looking forward to meeting Sankt Niklaus in the Sportshalle. We Googles for images together last night, so he could see what's coming.

TheGabster - how's your little one today? I've got the number for the hairdresser in front of me, but I'm SOOOOO scared because I want a radical new look.

Yes, I'm on Facebook, pics n all!! In fact I look at MN and Facebook in tandem as it's got all my friends and family on there (my lifeline to hom, sniffle).

The lifeline to home is important isn't it. I used to have Skype installed and then whenever I was online and a friend or my mum or dad were on line we would chat, sometimes with the web cam on too. Computer can't cope with so much extra stuff now so have to wait and hope we get a new one soon.

Oh yes, we've got Skype too. I chat with my brother and his family too...well, my boys and his boys pull faces and scream at each other while the adults stand back. I can't believe in 15 days I'm going to see my dad for the first time in 13 months. He's not even met DS2 yet. I miss my brother so much it hurts. We're very close.

I really miss having family around too. It's going to be so hard not to be all soppy and tearfull this Christmas when I know they'll all be sitting together and enjoying themselves I try not to think about it.

We need to cheer up abit, this is no good!

I'm a bit surprised you find it hard to make friends in Germany. Perhaps you mean deep friendships?

I always found German people very open and willing to make friends, invite you round, hang about for a chat, meet up, have a laugh, offer advice. Maybe it's having a small child that holds things up. Thinking about it now, I have never had a period where I felt I was not connecting with people and that I was lonely in Germany.

What I found so difficult was officialdom and how people in everyday situations (not potential friends just zufällige Begegnungen), like on the street, in shops, public transport, etc behave. On a private, social level I really always found Germans to be welcoming, easy-going people.

I think I ask for advice quite a lot come to think of it and have found women are always more than willing to help you out with it. I suppose that opens a door. I have to say you can comb the world with a thin-toothed comb IME and not find a nation more willing to take people in hand and go round and help them out tatkräftig.