** German Chat ** Alle sind willkommen. ** Frühling läßt sein blaues Band ...

[MmeLindt]

...
Wieder flattern durch die Lüfte
Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte
Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land
Veilchen träumen schon,
Wollen balde kommen
Horch, von fern ein leiser Harfenton!
Frühling, ja du bist's!
Dich hab ich vernommen!

*

Für Deutsche und nicht-Deutsche, Goethe-fans und Gottschalk-fans, für Herzschmerz, Heimweh und Heimatgefühle.

Alle sind willkommen.

I think one of the hurdles re job prospects is the fact that school ends at 12.30-ish, so for mothers, a normal 9-5 or even a part-time job is difficult. But your dinner guest is probably right, admylin, it does seem better here, probably because there isn't so much dependence on credit cards and the such-like. Homesickness is horrible 'cos it's not just homesickness, is it? It's independency-sickness, job-sickness, friend-sickness and everything sickness!! I have a total paddy every 6-8 months and announce I'm stropping off back to England but it's all hot air. Do you need time out, admylin or have really had a gutful?

ZZZen's just made me realise that DD won't be eligible for a British passport; the horror!

Wotcha Ahem, Guten Tag meine Damen. Blimey it's all culchur in here nah wot wiv pomes n' stuff

Seriously, love the title & that we've got new people.

Have been v busy and v cross that RL impedes so much on my MN time. Have been making a hash of several things & discovering (rather belatedly, t'was ever so) that (most) Germans are so surprised when you ring them up and say, "I am so sorry, I should have... it was my mistake..." that they then start apologising to you!

Wanted to add my 2 cents worth to admylin - great that you're off home! Don't know if this would be safe to write in an email but, if I were you, I just wouldn't come back. Was the one-way ticket possibly a blessing? Pack wisely...

After all, your h is compos mentis (if in his own world) - I would be so tempted, my lovely admylin, to just let him sort it all out here and enroll your 2 in English schools. Once you're home, stay. Saw the Chat thread, this goes way beyond expat longings, valid though those are. Do mail me, am at my sodding desk most days.

Thanks for the advice, Admylin. I did go to the doc with DD as she was quite bad this morning, more the anticipation of it being sore than actual pain. I am cautious with her and urinary infections as she had a kidney infection when she was a baby. It is always a way of getting an appointment quickly at the docs, I have found.

Turns out that it is a very light infection, was barely showing up in the urine test but enough to start her on antibiotics while they do more tests. That was probably due to the fact that she was drinking loads this morning.

I have to phone tomorrow to get the results and find out whether to keep givign her the antibiotics.

Admylin
I have been thinking of you all day, and was going to post what Fink was brave enough to say. Pack wisely and think carefully about if you want to book a flight home. If you need anything, let me know. My email is kindersurprise at t-online dot de

Frosch
Willkommen. I was near to Leverkusen until 6 months ago, in Korschenbroich. Shame that I am not there anymore, we could have met for tea and scones. I think you might get muslin squares in BabyWalz in Düsseldorf. Why did you say that your DC will not get UK passports? You just have to register them at the consulate.

I am Scottish and DH is German so our DC (DD 6yo though she would want me to say almost 7yo and DS 4.5yo) are German/British. We registered them both in Germany and with the British Consulate in Düsseldorf. We have not told the Germans that we have British passports for them as they used to be funny about it.

Gracelo
How interesting. One of DH's uncles was a priest, in Fladungen as far as I know. Do you know the name of your relative? You can email me if you don't want to post it on here.

Oh, I meant to mention, Frosch, I am now in Geneva. I am officially a trailing spouse. The lovely ladies here allow me to continue to post on the German thread.

Fink
Good to see you back. We were worried that you had been planting triffids in the garden.

DD is doing homework, and DS is annoying her. better go and distract him.

Mme Lindt,

he was a Meisenzahl. I can never remember which one, there were two of them. His brother was also a priest but a Domkapitular (whatever that is) in Wuerzburg. The one who was in Fladungen later became the priest in my village. That was years before my mother (his niece) went on a bicycle tour with her girlfriends and met my father, married him and moved there.
He must have been in Fladungen in the 1930ties. My mother was very young when she spent the summer there and she was born in 1933. She did not like the milk there, she still makes a digusted face when she talks about it almost 70 years later.

Gracelo
Just asked FIL. He not only knew your great Uncle, he was taught religion by him. He was able to tell me when he moved away from Fladungen and where he went to.

Sadly, Oma is not alive anymore as she would have known more about your family. She used to work in the Rhönmuseum, as did Opa.

Thanks for the advice MmeLindt; I thought that as she will be born in Germany to a German father, she wouldn't be eligble. I'll try it your way and play both sides and not let the other know! I'm wary of annoying the Germans, though, as when I first came here, they told me that I wasn't eligble to stay without doing the 'integration course", as Wales wasn't in the EU (idiots). It took a lot shouty Germlish to convince them otherwise, so I've stayed clear of the Rathaus ever since. Scary!

dc born outside the UK can still get British citizenship if one of the dp was born in the UK. It only gets complicated if you were born overseas. Dd has dual citizenship but we have also not told the German side since they have this rule (or did dunno) that once the dc come of age they are required to choose between any citizenships they have. They may not have both German and something else. Mind you there may well be special regulations for the Welsh...

Wales not being in the EU! How did you convince them otherwise or did you just shout them down (that would take some doing I'd imagine)? Maybe they thought Wales was a kingdom in the Pacific or something.

ROFL at Wales not being in the EU. Although, I have been asked if Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales are all seperate islands.

Do register them with the British Embassy, the Germans don't check up on it. Or they did not with us. We have 2 illegals in our house.

DH is putting the DC to bed while I drink some Frankenwine. He is off to Würzburg for the weekend tomorrow so I am going to need lots of wine to get me through the weekend. DS was really horrible today, just did not do what he was told. Sometimes he really gets me down.

how old is he now ML? (ds obviously not dh)

4.5yo but he behaves like a 2yo.

Cloth ears. Very very selective hearing. Only does what he is told after about 5 tellings or when I am screaming at him.

They were initially confused by my marriage certificate (which is in Welsh and English) and it all went downhill from there! There was much gesticulating and at one point, they told me I had to have a meeting with an immigrant advisor in a 'container', which really put the wind up me cos I thought I was going to be shipped out! I had to wait until DH returned from his travels to sort 'em out... I had it when he's out of the country cos things always go wrong. I totally empathise with fortifying oneself with the vino; it's the only way to get through the absence alone and with sanity intact...

LOL at meeting with an immigrant advisor in the container! (sorry) No wonder you're keeping well away from the Rathaus these days.

Hi Frosch and welcome.

Also rofl at Wales not being in the EU. I mentioned to my group of Abitur students last week that if they go to Wales to study (the school has links with a college in Cardiff) then they could learn Welsh. They were like, 'You mean there's a Welsh language?!'

If you were born in the UK, your children are eligible for British nationality but it will be "by descent" because they were not born in the UK and means they will not be able to pass their nationality on to their dc if they are also born abroad. This is the case with my dc.

guten abend!! love how busy this thread is - typed a big message before but the omputer crashed how annoying!!

Mme lindt - whereabouts in scotland are you from? i'm from SW Glasgow but havent lived there since 1997 - been "down south" although only as far as liverpool and outskirts of manchester since then and now to Unterfranken!! Are you learing french now? my geography is poor - i'm not sure what language they speak in geneva!! i'm keeping my bottle of franken wine for tomorrow night - we're a bit short of money at the mo - waiting for dh's work to pay us back the money for the moving costs so not much wine in the house!

Frosch - does your welsh accent help to speak german - i'm finding my scottish accent definitly helps with the "ch" sound! i've been telling people who asked that i'm from scotland but you can see them looking confused and just thinking yeah thats just part of england!!.

Admylin - hope your feeling better today. read your other thread - hope you were prepared for all the advice you got - some people didnt mince their words!! but i dont know you well enough to comment - just hope your ok!

Can i ask a question about milk? can i really only buy 1 litre cartons of it? in england i'd have bought 2 -3 of those huge ?3litre ones in a week or we used to get it delivered when i was home on mat leave!! we've not got a huge fridge so cant keep loads of those 1L containers! dont know how to find out if there is such a thing as milk being delivered in glass bottles!! i doubt it but i'd feel better about that from recycling point of view altho the cartons are going in our yellow plastic waste which i think gets recylced??

off to bed soon - had so much fresh air today in the sunshin after all that rain in my first week here!! hope it continues!!

Canella
I am from Dundee but have not lived there for almost 20 years. Was 2 years near Aviemore then 16 years in Germany before moving to Geneva last year. Yes, this is the French speaking part of Switzerland so we are learning another language.

I don't think you can buy 3 liter bottles of milk and I am afraid I am ROFLing at the though of looking for a milk man in Münnerstadt.

I was telling DH about you moving to the Rhön and he said that even Fuchs und Hase sagen da nicht guten nacht. He hopes it is not too much of a culture shock.

It is a lovely area though.

Mme Lindt, I just checked it out on dp's enormous family tree, which contains all known members of my family too (so it's really our children's family tree) and the Pfarrer was my great grandmother's brother. I very often mix up my grandmother and her mother because my grandmother died so young and my mother and her siblings were raised by their grandmother. So I was one generation out. I ring my mother tonight and tell her about it. It will take some explaining. The interwebby-Ding is a complete mystery to her.

I also find the idea of finding a milk man in Muennerstadt amusing. My cousin teaches at the Sonderschule there but I havn't been there for many years now. Some parts of the Cairngorms remind me of the Rhoen, all bleak and windswept and boggy underfoot.

AfaIk Germany allows dual citizenship if the parents have different citizenships. My children have German and New Zealand citizenships and I was told (by the Konsul in Edinburgh) that there is no problem with that what so ever. There is also the possibility to ask for permission to keep a second citizenship. British citizenship can be passed on if the parent was born in Britain but not if the parent was born outside Britain but wasn't naturalized. Dp has dual British and New Zealand citizenship, was born in NZ to a NZ mother and a British father and he couldn't pass on his British citizenship to our children. We are long enough in GB now for them all to get naturalized but, geee, would that confuse the Germans.

Wow, this thread is really busy now. Also find it great to have some new folk! Still worried about Ernest, what is she up to these days?

I have got a mega headache today and I'm not sure what to blame it on. It's really sunny and warm, maybe it's the weather or that Frühlingsmüdigkeit or is that in Herbst? I'm going to try strong coffee now.

Hope your dd feels better soon mmelindt, is she off school?

My 2 dc are British by descent too and their first passports were British ones which have expired so they have only German ones at the moment. They want British ones but the cost was just too much at the time we needed new ones and we were still on poverty level student grant money! German one sonly cost 15 or 20 Euro back then.

By the way have you all changed your driving liscence to a German one? I still have one of those old folded pink sheets of paper with my parents address on.

I didn't change my driving license on time so I had to re-sit it in Germany admylin. I had an almighty head-ache this morning too. Mind you I drink such strong coffee in the mornings anyway

Somehow envisioning canella searching the moors for a milkman : "ist da jemand?". You realy have landed in the wops by the sounds of things. Sounds like a healthy place for dc to grow up though.

Must be the day of the headaches, I am suffering too.

I am keeping DD off school for the rest of the week, she is just not right. Grumpy and tired. We will both have a snooze this afternoon.

I did my driving license in Germany so only have a German one. Must find out about changing it to a Swiss one shortly, we only have a year to do it in.

yes, get it out of the way ML because you know the funniest thing about getting my German driving license was I failed the first time although I had been driving for years!

Actually the tester was very nice and we had a good laugh about it. My tennis coach failed his German test the first time too. He'd also been driving for years and I said the thing is (the tester told me) you have to do a great show of swivelling around in your seat and looking behind you before you pull out etc not just checking your mirrors like a regular driver would. So I gave him a demo and he said when he resat the test the guy testing him invited him out for an ice-cream afterwards. He said he'd never seen anything like the show my tennis coach put on and he was getting the cramps trying not to laugh right through it.

tester? Can't even speak normal English anymore.

or is it right even? Thing is with dd learning Italian, we have the DVD on all the time and the granny on it asks in Italian where is the head? (testa) so I'm thinking tester sounds weird now. I mean Prüfer.

Examiner would be right then?

I'd quite like a German one actually as it's handy like a little credit card size with a photo too.

I've never seen those big bottles of milk here either canella. Wonder why they don't have them here. Just did a big shop today so I have a car full of milk and drinks. Couldn't be bothered to trail it all inside so I will surprise the dc with it after school - they can help then we only have to do one trip. It's a pain that we can't get parked infront of the flat on a weekday so I have to trail it all from the garage which is around the corner.