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.

Oh, dear. I have been distracted by lunch.

Weightwatchers Quiche with salad. The DC are getting fish fingers today.

LOL at the indoor swing with draught protection.

Still got all afternoon for the office. Going to have a cup of tea first.

Procrastinate? Me?

OMG girls beat me over the head with a wooden bat, would you?

I feel I need it. I lose dd today. It was on the way to orchestra. I knew violin was going to be trouble. .. She is found and returned by the police. I recover from that.

I got this posted to me from my ex. What does it mean? Why is he posting me this? I'm I supposed to see some meaning in it or is it just a nice song:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAtduX-X__g

Just listened to the first couple of minutes Zzzen, did he write anything about it?

How is your DD?

He wrote:
"This is for you ZZZen" Enjoy it.

dd's fine thanks

Goodness, just heard about another pupil running amok in a school, Augsburg this time. Why on earth do they do this? I don't understand it at all:

"Täter wartete mit der Axt auf Flüchtende
Erste Augenzeugen berichten vom Amoklauf in Ansbach: Demnach soll der Täter mit einem Brandsatz versucht haben, Schüler aus dem Klassenraum zu treiben. Auf dem Gang habe er mit einer Axt gewartet.
.Ein Schüler des Ansbacher Gymnasiums hat das Vorgehen des Amokläufers als planmäßig beschrieben. Der Täter habe einen Molotow-Cocktail in ein Klassenzimmer geworfen und dann vor der Tür mit einer Axt auf die flüchtenden Jugendlichen gewartet"

Threw a molotov cocktail into the classroom and waited outside with an axe (!) to attack the dc as they fled the room.

Honestly what's wrong with our teenagers these days? They have everything and throw it all away

oh, that is horrible, Zzzen. Funny, isn't it that you worry about stranger danger and falling into ponds and stuff like that when the DC are wee and when they get to a certain age you start to relax, then you realise there is a whole lot more to worry about.

I am off to hand in my Deutsche Führerschein, and get my Swiss Permis de conduire. Once you have lived in Switzerland a year, you have to get a Swiss licence. Nice wee moneymaker for the Canton, if you ask me. CHF 120 for the new licence. Then when we eventually move back to Germany, we will have to apply to get our German one back. The Swiss send my licence back to the Germans.

AIBU to miss my German driving licence already? It was such an important moment in my life, passing my test and going straight to the office to get my licence. I am a bit sad to hand in the wee pink licence. Especially as I know I will not get it back, the new EU ones in Germany are the credit card sized ones.

thats shocking zzzen - you think you're kids are safe at school but really you never can be too sure! dd was late home yesterday - she gets the bus from right outside the school to our village but she was 15mins late coming home. i was frantic and really didnt know where she was - she's not got a mobile phone for school but wonder if this is what she needs. In the end the bus had a problem with a flat tyre and they'd had to wait for another one - its the not knowing that was eating me!

is your dd ok now zzzen after her trauma the other day - hoe did she get lost? did she go the wrong way?

mmelindt - i totally understand at you being upset about your licence - its so exciting to get the first one - i didnt get mine till i was 25 so it was really special by then!
i'm sad about giving up my UK mobile phone number - i couldnt get out the contract till now without paying a penalty but now that it ends soon i feel a bit sad - i've had the same number for 11 years (creature of habit!!) so i get your sadness this morning!!!!!

i need to get off here and go and do some housework - but i look a right mrs mop - i've got my hair piled up in a towel with a deep conditioning treatment on it - german water is ruining my already dry and frizzy hair!! just hope no-one rings the bell!!

have a great weekend - anyone up to anything exciting?

dd is fine thanks. Maybe it was for the good in that it is a kind of a wake up call for her. She has a habit of running off ahead, however often I ask her not to do so, she always does it. She has always been like that and, at the same time,she is a dreamy type often mooning off into a world far far away, it isn't the best combination. This time she was on her scooter, zooming off ahead as per usual. Then stopped to look in a shop window and mooned off I suppose. When she looked around again, she couldn't see me. I had no idea where she was, I thought she'd gone on extra far ahead so was rushing to catch her up. Just a silly chain of events really. I was going back and forth and ever further ahead looking for her, she backtracked looking for me so we moved ever further apart, till the bakery took her under their wing and called the police.

Argh kids.

I don't understand at all why teenagers go running amok killing people at school. I find it somehow extra drastic the way this boy did it. I know frightening and attacking, even murdering is always as bad as it gets, however you go about it; but throwing a molotov cocktail into two classrooms seems somehow a different level, an escalation, and actually attacking people at close range with an axe is beyond belief really.

Nothing exciting going on here this weekend. Usual flat hunting so rush out as early as possible to get the newspaper (and Brötchen) then it'S my birthday on Saturday but who wants to celebrate getting older? We might go for a meal but dh is interviewing someone for a job so depends how long that takes.

The news that shocked me this week was that little girl who was attacked and thrown down a drain behind a building after she'd been to Hausaufgabenbetreung. She should have been home around 5pm and the police search dog eventually found her still alive at 1am down the drain. No one knows what happened as she is still in a coma .

There´s some really awful things happening at the moment. That with the 9 year old was really shocking. If they hadn´t found her so quickly she would have probably died.

Yesterday a woman in the next village here set herself on fire. She had been having realationship problems and when her partner turned up to speak with her she was waiting in the garden and had already doused herself in petrol. As soon as he got out of the car she set herself on fire. She got flown to a burns unit, but with 80% burns is unikely to survive. He had been having an affair and I could understand if she was angry at him or the other woman, but I can´t imagine what state you would have to be in to set yourself on fire.

Zzzen - hope you and dd have recovered from your ordeal.

Anyway a change of subject. Can any of you tell me when children move on from using du to everyone to using Sie to adults eg. teachers. Dd has just started school and says everyone is still using du to the teacher. Dh says he can´t remeber, so I was wondering if any of you could throw some light on the situation.

admylin - I know what you mean about not celebrating getting older, I´m the same, although I never say no to going out for a meal. Hope you have better luck this weekend with the flat hunting.

Hupa I remember in Berlin the dc in Year 4 started to say Sie to the teachers but dd in Year 3 didn't. Funny, she automatically used Sie when she went into to Year 4 in Hannover.

Sitting and rhe office waiting to be called. I have surrendered my pink schein and am waiting to pay and (I hope) collect my new one. I hope I understood correctly. I has to sign a form saying that I recind my application to be able to drive an ambulance or fire engine. Apparently they have different catagories here and the german one would have allowed me to do so. Not thta I often have the urge to drive an ambulance.

Admylin
poor girl. That must be awful for the parents. I don't watch much tv now and only watch the news about once a week and I must say it does me good. The horrible stories really get to me. I hear about anything greally important on the Internet and the rest just flies by me.

I find I do not have enough grey matter to absorb stuff like Ushi Glass and her latest flame/face lift. Or what dieter bohlen and boris Becker are up to.

they all used Sie from year 1 on in our schools hupa. Du was just for the Erzieher at kindergarten, school was totally different, all adults were "Sie". Can't recall dd having had any adjustment problems really since in Kiga they call the Erzieher by first names and at school it is all Herr X and Frau Y so it feels different anyway. She will pick it up, I wouldn't worry.

DD is 7yo and has started to say Sie when playing hotels with DS. He is the guest and she says "Kommen Sie, ich zeige Ihnen Ihren Zimmer"

we will have to watch that as she has little experience speaking German to strangers.

I suppose over the years I have heard so many horrible stories of dc being picked off on their way to and fro school and being found dead, that in a way this is yet another of those horrible stories but the school thing is unbelievably shocking for me. One thing is pedophiles and other violent twisted individuals out and about as they are everywhere unfortunately looking for easy targets. Another thing is a teenage from a reasonably stable home environment in a safe sounding place attending a reasonable school ready to commit murder. Doesn't seem at all right to me.

Look at Ethiopia or someplace like that, wouldn't the kids there be thrilled to bits to have have the chances this amokläufer had. I don't know what they are going to say is the trigger, but what ever it was I bet it wasn't all that bad that he couldn't have just dealt with it without attacking people with molotov cocktails and axes.

Thanks for the quick replies. It sounds like she´ll pick it up fairly naturally then from the other children. I wish it came that naturally to me .

I agree Zzzen - it´s completely beyond my understanding as to why someone would want to do such a thing. How do they even come up with such an idea?

ooh surely you don't say "du" to random adults hupa?! You will get into trouble for that.

I do think it's the kind of thing they learn from older dc etc. Just like we, in English, learnt which words were appropriate for use with friends only and which words we could say to the teacher in class, our grandparents etc.

a friend of mine who is Danish got into real trouble with a German busdriver when he duzt him because he spoke German with no accent at all so the busdriver assumed he was being cheeky. I think if a foreigner mixes up du and Sie, people don't really get all that het up about it.

Unfortunately I do. Then after about 5 minutes I realise what I have done and then try to decide if it is worse to carry on with du or to suddenly change to Sie. Usually I try to get through the rest of the conversation without using either which leads to some pretty contrived sentences.

LOL I think everyone (even German native speakers) do that skirting around the du/Sie thing. I know I said a lot of weird things with "man" constructions, i.e. "man muss wahrscheinlich X machen. Ist das nicht so?"

Ha ha ha how intelligible! Instead of "was würden Sie tun?"

I wonder has anyone ever asked, "gehen wir zum du ´über/wollen wir uns nicht duzen?" and got the answer "nein!"

i sometimes wonder if the du/sie thing will ever fade away? our generation are so much more informal with each other - the people i've been introduced to here have all introduced themselves by their first names so it seems strange to then use Sie? just wonder as the older generations die will Sie become less used?

but what would i know - i'm only here 6 months and never really in a formal situation! dont think the Spielplatz counts as a formal situation!

has it really only been six months? What about the GP and the dentist canella, didn't you try out your "Sie's" there? I'd just take my cue from the Germans, if they use du, I use du; if they use Sie, I use du etc