**German Chat**everyone welcome* - macht es euch gemütlich

[ZZZen]

reden wir weiter...

hey all - had a busy few days and the week ahead is busy too so not much MN time - dh off all week - cant have him knowing how much time i spend on MN!!!

manina - very impressed by everything in your garden!! i'm a very un-enthusiastic gardener but the house we've bought here has a really well established garden with huge trees and shrubs - we had in-laws here today to help us keep it under control! just wish we had space for some herbs even - i could get enthusiastic for that!!
hope this week is better for you!!

ernest - did you get your interent all up and running?

off for a child free weekend at a wedding in leipzig this fri!! too excited - not sure how those ILs will cope with ds2 - even i cant cope with him!!!

Morning all,

Something very strange has happened - the rain has stopped! Hope that sun is helping put a smile back on everyone's faces.

The Munich lot are all talk and no trousers, come on abroad etc, let's see some animals or summat!

Cannella - child free weekend. DOn't workk your inlaws will cope. You just have to skip off without a backwards glance

My boys started in the local school! Yesterday was 1st day. went really well, and couple of boys from ds1 class called round for him this am to walk to school, ds2 is off to the cinema today, so I think they're both v. happy, especially meeting local kids very pleased, it couldn't have gone much better! Especially as it was total chaos. The school is 2 buildings one has just been totally renovated. The other was due to be done ab September. Builders round on Friday to check it out in prep for work and they declared it unsafe & is had to be spontan evacuated! So Monday morning, ie yesterday, boys 1st day, total chaos as they tried to rehouse half of the school and squeeze 100% kids into 50% of space with no notice. Ho hum. Oh and ds1 is totally gutted - he just had to endure the worst day of his life - aka sports day - last week at IS - and he's just in time - tomorrow is Sports day in new school - he is gutted but we asked the boys to score it out of 10 - 1 being awful, 10 being brilliant. ds2 gave it 8.5 (big praise for him) and ds1 gave it 10. So here.

Yay, Ernest. That is good news. I think that the first impression of a school is good, if they are pleased after one day then that is fantastic.

Not much time at the moment, got to pack and get everything ready for our trip to Scotland tomorrow.

And I promised the DC that we would go to the beach today. Going now before it gets too hot.

sounds good Ernest. Must be a huge relief, lets you move into the holidays in a more relaxed frame of mind eh?

Have a good knees up in Leipzig (or Leipzing as dd calls it) canella. don't spend a second thinking how the ILs will cope. They will have to.

do you Man-o-man I have a feeling the oomph has gone out of your relationship and that's the real problem. Am I right there? (I do SO like to be right). Maybe just the getting in a rut, having kids and being all settled is making you restless. You seem to have a bit of nomad blood (like me). What took you to Outer Mongolia?! Spill the beans...

I think you and dw need a regular night out together doing silly things and having a drink and a laugh. Any hope of it?

have a good trip to Scotland ML!

ZZZ - Mongolia? I went to Ladakh in 1992 to try to climb a 20000ft mountain called Stok Kangri. I got altitude sickness and had a car crash (into a petrol tamker) so I didnt make the summit, but I did lots of other stuff like mountain biking and rafting the Inbdus. Came home and wanted to travel abroad so through the web in 1993 I found a job in Saudi. Lots of desert driving and scuba later I flew back to Blighty (with two cats in tow) in 1999. I ended up in the arse end of Wales, Rhyl working for a company setting up their intranet. Bored to hell I was offered a trip to Mongolia to map their soils. Professionally it was a total cockup - but not my fault, but I met my wife there!

I've been about five times in different parts of the Himalaya, both Nepal and India. I also undertook safaris in Saudi and Africa - ballooned over the Masai Mara with some right !spiessig" miserable retirees. So travel you'll see was a big part of my life then.

Canella - I also have to cut down my addiction to MN! I spent far too much time on it!

ZZZ- We simply need a holiday! Even a break from the rain would help. The inlaws have a place in the Alps with a pool we've just filled so we may spend some time there. I am just worn out after a stressful visit from my parents and lots of other bad luck. Things are getting back to normal. I may have just found a translating job so fingers crossed.

Yesterday at the chemists I asked for Baldrian and Johanniskraut. The lady there had diagnosed me with iron deficiancy in spring as we were veggies then using a biotensor. she tested me again yesterday and sold me some St John's Wort (Johanniskraut) tablets. They are very mild and I think it's working.

Seeyou all later. When we're settled into a few days of sun we'll schedule a meetup!

Ernest - that´s really great news about the school - you must be so pleased.

Canella - have a great weekend.

We went to Köln last weekend and we came back Sunday but left dd and ds with SIL until today and it´s been bliss having some child free time. Mind you she phoned about an hour ago to say they´d been stuck in a traffic jam and dd was feeling sick. I really hope she doesn´t throw up over SIL´s car or she might not offer to repeat the experience.

manina - no wonder you´re feeling depressed - I think moving from that sort of life to a village in Bavaria would be a big adjustment for anyone.

MmeLindt- have a great time in Scotland. Is it the wedding this weekend?

any one else want to tell me about their child free time

I would rather have maninadirndl's old life than live in a village in Bavaria really. Sounds a touch James Bondy to me.

I get bored with daily life (mind you who doesn't?) but my antidote is always to run away to someplace new. I always put that down to having had an unsettled ex-pat upbringing. After a while every new place becomes just another dull puddle and I start looking around again....

note to myself to chant: I must grow up in front of the mirror twice a day

So long as the kids are not tied up at school though, it might be an idea to travel some more, if it's feasible. A friend of mine who married a Swiss took her two toddlers and they went backpacking through Asia for a year or so. Now I don't know if I would be game for that with two whinging dc but it can be done.

Hello strangers! I feel like I still belong to this thread even if I've been quiet for a while. Big things going on and I was ashamed to come back but in all honesty, living separated from your dh and moving back to UK is not as good as it sounds

ach was. Don't be ashamed. Life is difficult. It's so hard to make it right for everyone, isn't it? How are things?

.. mind you I would rather not crash into a petrol tanker come to think of it...

Things are OK, dh is over in UK now for a week, school breaks up in a couple of weeks then we have to try and sort our new lives out.

see any light at the end of the tunnel?

After reading about maninadirndl's old life I am finding myself too dull middleaged tame.

I'm on a really slow internet connection so it's a pain but I'll try to email you soon. I can tell you all though, living back in UK and going there on holiday isn't the same thing and boy has the place changed since I last lived here!

I don't know, I would think living in a Bavarian village is quite adventurous, especially coping with the locals!

So it has changed for the worse?

How is dh behaving towards you now? Has he gone all romantic?

I have to go in a minute - violin lesson. Can't be **ed but felt it wouldn't be nice to cancel. Mind you can never really be bothered with it much. Is your ds still playing his trumpet?

Are you going to return the dc to Germany then and pass up the good secondary there? i think you should tell dh you'd only do it if you could have another three babies very soon. That'll change his tune pronto.

So you're thinking of heading back to Hannover?

ZZZ - it was tbh a bit James Bondy I suppose. I think it was the Ladakh Expedition got me the travel bug really. Saudi was fantastic fun first few years - there was an amazing underground party and bar scene. One compound even had a nightclub on it Caesars Palace we used to dance with nurses till 3am there. It was all going well until about 1995 when terrorists - either Iranian or Al Qaeda - blew up a barracks in Riyadh, then in 1996 the 2nd biggest terrorist bomb in history (Oklahoma was the biggest) blew up Khobar Towers. I lived 6 miles from that and it blew material off my apartment roof. Many expats left after that. The biggest exodus was in 1998 when they were bombing Iraq. Officially Saudi wasn't involved but what were those northbound heavily loaded Tornadoes doing struggling to take off from my nearby airbase? Obvious they weren't delivering food parcels! Flew over my apartment so I saw them!

It was getting less fun, the Saudis were not so nice to us anymore and it was time to move on.

Looking back it was quite exciting. But the stress of living in such an environment makes it easier here in a way. I've had enough of the military industrial complex for a lifetime. Prefer a more organic life now.

having your roof blown off by nutcase terrorists is a bit too much excitement, I agree.

You have not entirely convinced me yet though. Your tale reminds me a bit of Hercule Poirot retiring to the country to grow marrows and yet yearning for a good murder mystery.

Speaking of adventure, mystery etc. What part of the world tempts you all? If you had all the means at your disposal and enough courage, someplace to leave the dc well looked after etc, where would you like to go?

Oh, Zzzen is getting all psychotherapist doc here. Dare I venture in?

I agree that bombs sound a tad too exciting. The boring life is preferable in that case.

Admylin
Good to hear from you. Don't be too disheartened by the reality intruding on your homecoming. How is your DH coping? And the DC? Are they still enjoying school?

speaking of analysis etc where is our own resident shrink. We need her back.

I think I would like to go to Lake Baikal and rent a boat - any old thing so long as it isn't going to break down in the middle of the lake and spend about two months going here and there, stopping where I feel like it. I would also like to go on the Transiberian (Agatha christie again I suppose). Actually you could combine the two quite well.

Don't think Irkutsk is that fascinating but I like the idea of Kamchatka and all the volcanoes (thinking of the general area here). Not sure about the distances. Looks relatively doable on a map

I am feeling tempted, seriously tempted but no one else is (or you all just have more fun).

Got through the violin lesson. Last one for 5 weeks, yippee! So we are off for a yummy Italian ice-cream. I think hazelnut for me.

Zzzen, I had to giggle when I read that Kamchatka looks relatively doable. It's friggin enormous. I'd love to go though, it's got volcanoes and bears, an unbeatable combination in my books. I know the Russian scientist who had almost exclusive access to the geothermal areas there during the Soviet years. She organised a Kamchatka field trip for interntional microbiologists in summer 2004 but that was when I was very pregnant and didn't go

Somewhere between Moscow and Ulan Bataar in 2000 our Aeroflot (Aerofault?) plane landed in a huge duty free somewhere in Russia. I can't remember its name.

My ideal destination would have snow capped mountains and seas with coral reefs - doesn't Costa Rica have those? After all my experiences anywhere basically where it wasn't Communist (think ugly housing blocks from Dresden to Beijing) or anywhere that doesn't have an active Al Qaeda cell! Most of all it'd have to have friendly laid back people. Cambodia had I reckon the nicest prettiest people I have seen so far.

Do any of you know about Montenegro? We went there when Croatia was full a few years back. Found it empty even in July, It has the Bay of Kotor which is paradise on earth. It's often advertised on CNN I think. Recommend it in Europe. I am also interested to see if Albania becomes a tourist destination in the next few years.

Just checking in

Bloody heat wave here and no Rolladen on the windows so it's just as hot in the house as outside. Poor 10 wk old dd suffering

Gracelo I spent most of my childhood sitting in neighbours' trees eating their cherries. Oh happy times. DH, who is from Yorkshire, claims he's never even seen a cherry tree, let alone a peach or Mirabellen tree!

Leave German telly alone, I used to be addicted to Verbotene Liebe (is that still on?). British telly is just as crap surely. I wouldn't know because we don't even have a TV. It's the Apprentice on iplayer for me!