Durch die Strassen auf und nieder, leuchten die Laternen wieder... ***Herbstunterhaltung im Deutschem Eck***

[MmeLindt]

Durch die Strassen auf und nieder
leuchten die Laternen wieder:
rote, gelbe, grüne, blaue,
Lieber Martin, komm und schaue!

Wie die Blumen in dem Garten
blühn Laternen aller Arten:
rote, gelbe, grüne, blaue,
Lieber Martin, komm und schaue!

Und wir gehen lange Strecken
mit Laternen an den Stecken
rote, gelbe, grüne, blaue,
Lieber Martin, komm und schaue!

*

It is that time of the year again. Check your lanterns, get enough batteries, start the Bastelaktion.

Sounds like the dss' bedroom. Buying Playmobil at Flohmärkte is their favourite hobby.
I bought IVAR shelves from IKEA, they are cheap, flexible enough to store playmobile pirate ships, and high enough to reach to the ceiling. They make all the difference.

I BANNED playmobile and my bloody SIL keeps buying it. I would not mind if they actually played with it but they don't and it just ends up scattered about the place.

SIL is scarily anal about playmobile. Her DC got loads, every year for birthdays, Christmas, Easter. She started passing it on to our DC when DD was about 3yo (when we had a 1yo who was good at eating the little bits). Their passed on playmobile is still in the original boxes, with no bits missing.

Ours is all in one big box, mixed up with the lego.

I see what you mean about the ewige Student, but they are not all like that. DH started studying the year we met, after working 4 years. He studied in the shortest time possible, not doing the practical semesters as he had worked before studying. He was done in 4 years.

I do think that the German education system massively disadvantages the Spätzunder. The decision is made that will affect the rest of their professional (and with that their private) life at age - what - 11 or 12? When do they get placed into either HS or RS or Gymnasium?

Considering they only start school at 6yo.

Advent calenders, I also noticed them in the shops again, ds is sensible and doesn't want one, dd wants the puzzleball one which costs around 18 Euro but she is unfortunately one of those border line messies so I think I'll have to be hard and get the little picture ones - we just haven't got room to put anything if we don't get moved anyway! Oh and we'll be having some Tannen twigs instead of a tree too if we're still in this tiny flat!

Nighbynight, whatever your dc do, don't let them go into scince, it sucks and you get into debt and earnings are rubbish compared to time in put.

what is scince?

PSML at ML. I knew you wouldn't have gone for an ewiger Student, you need a man with a bit of get up and go, but you know how many ofthem there are/were. It was a lifestyle choice I think and the aim of actually finishing the degree at some stage was a minor one.

I don't know what it is going to be like in 10 years time. Haven't they drastically cut the Studium now to make a sort of Studium leicht -equivalent to a BA?

oh SCIENCE

penny dropped. I must have some more coffee... I'm usually good at reading typos because I make so many of them myself. I was wondering if it was some weird German form of supplementary schooling or something that had passed me by

LOL at scince.

I am always mistyping on the iPhone and making mistakes like that. Sometimes I catch it but sometimes it comes out as gobbligook.

Ha! at me looking for a man with get up and go. I guess I did. He is quite ambitious and driven, but thankfully not to the point of putting his career ahead of everything. He was recently very scathing about a man who went to Sudan to work for his company and accepted that that meant the end of his marriage as his wife could not and would not go there.

Got my lovely neighbour coming over later this afternoon for some TLC and beratung. She is going throuhg a difficult period of her life and needs some handholding.

Oops, I always forget to preview message! I try to write too quick on my way doing 2 or 3 other things. I think I'm going a bit loopy anyway - must be this situation getting to me slowly.

It's quite positive to hear that there is another way apart from going straight through Gymnasium, Abi then uni. A really good friend of ours put his 2 ds's into Realschule even though they had Gymnasium empfehlung - he said much better in this day and age to get a broad education and Ausbildung before going to university. He was one of the science lot. Did anyone read about the Oxford university lecturer pledging a percentage of his earnings to charity? He's on 33k and it doesn't get that much higher unless you are a professor.

I don't know how they did it but the people who live in that flat that we wanted have built their own house and she is cleaner and he works on the Baustelle. A degree doesn't always get you money and a house!

that's nice of you ML. Hope it isn't too sad.

I was talking to a woman a couple of weeks ago and it was so desperately sad but I felt I could not help her at all. Her teenage dd did not want to live. There seemed no particular reason for it and the poor woman did not know how to help her. I really didn't know what to do either. The dd has just had enough of life and can't face any more of it - she has not suffered as far as we know any kind of traumatic experience or is not going through a family break-up or any kind of drama we know about. Horrible really, isn't it? she says she just doesn't see any point in it.

I expect they inherited something which gave them a bit of a financial boost.

That is terrible, Zzzen. Must be awful to see your own child going through such turmoil.

It was fine with my neighbour. She is TTC and had an appointment with the gynae this morning. Her doc is a bit doom and gloom (you might be perimenapausal.. you might not even be ovulating) so my neighbour comes over afterwards for some tea and optimism.

How awful to be told that, when you are ttc.

You are so right about late development. All my family, and ex h's as well, are late developers. I started getting good marks in the school when I was about 15, went on to go to Oxford...if I had realised what the german system was like before we came here, I doubt I would have put my children in it. But we have too much to lose by leaving now.

Guess what I found at the Ostbahnhof in Muenchen this morning?
the christmas edition of British Good Housekeeping!
It kept me occupied for my entire train journey, I read every word of it.

I get the Good Housekeeping delivered. Have a look online, you can get lots of mags delivered for a fraction of the cost of buying them here.

Just checked where I bought it, it was thiswebsite. It cost £65 for the years subscription. Considering we pay about 17eu for one magazine, that is not bad.

I don't think I've ever read a housekeeping type magazine tbh. Am I missing a lot? I keep house as a necessity rather than from any kind of interest in it. Frankly I think I could live in a basic shack and I couldn't really care less. I do sometimes find the image of women sitting by the fireplace cosily making lace to edge their tablecloths and preserving fruits etc attractive in a homely sort of way but I never actually wanted to be that woman.

I think actually I should have been a man but not the 9-5 office worker coming back to his family either. Can't say that appeals really. I would have liked to be strutting about in the Wildnis having adventures (I like to think so anyway).

Oh I love a good magazine to read. Thanks for the link - I might leave it open for dh to catch sight of, what with Christmas being round the corner. Mind you the last time he went to Berlin I asked to bring me a magazine back. I said I wasn´t fussed which one, but not Cosmopolitan (I think I´m at least 20 years older than their target audience). Of course, he comes back with, you´ve guessed it - Cosmopolitan and to make matters worse it was the American edition.

at a GH subscription.

ZZ, it's hard to describe the attraction of GH...the christmas edition is full of recipes and tips for doing Christmas on a budget. Reading it you get the impression that half the population has cancer, as there is a lot about people recovering. It's essentially a very ordinary life that they are describing, not the dizzy heights of the glamour mags, or the perfect home type mags.

I suppose it's because I'm not a SAHM that I indulge in these kind of fantasies. If I was, I'd probably be reading the Economist!

LOL at assuming half the population has cancer from it.

I like looking at pictures of nice homes etc. I can see the attraction but essentially I am not really the mama type at all, or whats her name now the woman who wrote domestic goddess interested in cooking and decorating and filling the home with good things. I like people who are like that and being in their homes but I am really not at all like that myself. Some kind of genetic deficiency I expect..

I admit I do flick through those gossipy magazines with pictures of celebrities in them when I'm in doctors' waiting rooms or at the hairdressers but half the time I don't know who these people are. When I see the sections on how to jazz up your dining room with handmade tartan lampshades and things, I always feel faint and fairly inadequate though

Good Housekeeping is not just full of recipes now though, there are some good articles on other stuff. I do like the recipes and it is not so full of gossip and doom-and-gloom-reallife-stories like some of the mags my mum reads.

I used to enjoy the Marie Claire but have kind of grown out of it, like Hupa with Cosmo. LOL at your DH, kind of thing that DH woudl do.

Actually, now taht I think about it, I think he bought me the first GH that I read. Is that a sign?

Just had to phone the credit card company to find out why my card was not being accepted. Someone had tried to use it in Walmart Livonia in USA, two purchases within 2 mins of each other at a time when I was using the card at home too.

Luckily Visa noticed that it was a bit suspicious and blocked payment, and blocked the card.

something similar happened to us ML when dh's wallet was stolen at the airport in Hamburg with all the credit cards and his driving licence etc. It was a right pain but the idiots gave their own ID (!) when they used dh's credit card in Amsterdam and we had already had it blocked.

How can you not think to use the stolen ID with the stolen card?

PMSL at your dh buying you your first GH though

I've just got my credit card bill for this month and $41 dollars has gone to a company in Baku in sodding Azerbaijan. Arghhhh!!!! How did they do this?!

When my DH is travelling via the UK, he always brings back Heat and a couple of Twirls. I should point out that he reads Heat and I eat the Twirls

ZZZen, you are doing the right thing with your neighbour, even if you think you can't help. Just knowing that someone will listen helps with the pain. BTW, would you rather be a Bear Grylls or a Ray Mears type?!?

Darf ich etwas hier fragen, bitte?
I got myself all worked out how to ask that, and here you all are talking in English!!
I have a question here about shopping in Frankfurt, can any of you very nice and knowledgeable ladies help at all, please?

Frosch
did you mean me with the neighbour? Who' areBear whosit and the other guy?

Hullo all, just wanted to say thanks and not just hop off like a dirty lurker: have read through tons of the school stuff on this thread. Had got myself in such a tizz over German schooling but it's all making a bit more sense now. Ta!

MmeLindt - ZZZen and her neighbour whose DD didn't want to live. And Bear Grylls and Ray Mears are those rugged wild adventurers whom ZZZen aspires to be if she were a man. Or maybe Grizzly Adams