Streupflicht und Schneeschaufel - Winterliche Unterhaltung im Deutschem Eck

[admylin]

All welcome, Austria & Switzerland & any German-speaking Leute too

Snow and more snow here in Hannover! Lucky for us we have a Hausmeister to do the Schneeschaufeln every morning.

Sigh, it does have dodgy written all over it doesn't it mmelindt? I'm worried about the old dear living next door too, she could be a sweet old granny but I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of her.

Anyway, the day is only half over, maybe some other calls will come in and we can atleast look at some other places too.

Off to collect dc from school then take ds to hairdresser. we went on Monday and it's so badly cut we're going to have to go again. This time to a good old fashioned turkish barber rather than go back to the unfriendly posh salon place we went to before (even though I know they should put it right for free)

admylin -sympathies with the flat. It must be so tempting to take the damp flat when you´re stuck in such a small flat.
When we first came to Germany dh found us a flat that neede renovating (yellow walls from smokers). He did a deal with the owner and we (dh really - I was still in England) did all the painting and we didn´t have to pay rent for the first 3 months or decorate when we moved out. Maybe if could do a similar deal you could spend the saved rent on Handwerker.

Ernest - glad everything got sorted with ds3 - it must be such a relief.

Ds has got his Schulanmeldung termin next week and he isn´t starting until Sept 2011. Hessen have changed their rules and I think are trying to identify children who have problems so they can be given more support in their last year in Kindergarten -a good idea if it works.

MmeLindt - I think I´d have sat there opened mouthed if dd´s teacher had started singing Abba at a parent´s evening. Hopefully she had a good voice .

I have to admit the old lady living next door would put me off a bit, admylin - she could be lovely, but you just never know. It's the same with our elderly neighbours - I had my first experience yesterday of what it would be like to cross them (DH contacted the company who built the houses without consulting them first - a long and not very interesting story). I was so annoyed, although DH did point out that even if they live to a ripe old age (he at least is already over 80), they're unlikely to be able to cope with all the stairs in their house for that much longer (the houses are spread over four storeys, including the basement). So that made me feel slightly better!

I never realised until DD1 started school that you could express a preference for a particular teacher, but it seems to be the norm here. Like you said MmeLindt, the problem is that you don't really know in advance what the teacher is going to be like - I only know them by sight and hearsay. The problem is that DD2 is extremely shy and much more sensitive than DD1, so which teacher she has is more likely to make a difference to her - she's very motivated at the moment, loves reading and writing and playing school, so I'm just hoping that she won't have an overly strict teacher who takes away her confidence and love of learning.

Aberita, I hope your dd has a good time this afternoon. In answer to your question several days ago, we do indeed live near Baden Baden, well about 50 km north.

Admylin, I'm sure sweet old grannies do exist in Germany, it's just that I have a hunch she'll turn out to be a cantankerous old bat. Also, the damp problem would worry me, especially as you suffer from asthma, don't you?

Like the sound of the Abba singing, ear waggling teacher, MmeLindt. Dd's old headteacher used to entertain them by waggling his ears. Dd was very impressed.

Why oh why is it still so frickin cold? Nearly got blown off my bike this morning by the Arctic wind blowing across the fields, and then had to wade through a snow drift to get to the tram stop. Still, we're off to Spain for a week over Easter with my family so I'm looking forward to that.

Admylin
We had a landlord in the same building in the first flat we rented in Wü. He was a right nosy bugger, always hanging out of the window to see what was going on in the street. The street was a one way street, and not very well marked so occasionally we would get folk driving the wrong way down the street. He loved to sit at the window and shout, 'EINBAHN!' at them.

One day I came home to find his wife in the hall, very upset. She told me that he had been taken to hospital because as she told me: den hat's der Schlag getroffe'

If he were not such a big bullying nosy person, I would not have found it amusing, but as it stood we were glad to have peace from him. She also had a stroke, not long afterwards.

aberita, what do your elderly neighbours do? This old lady even admitted on the phone that it's hard for her to live in the same place as the Mieter becaus eshe just has to say something when they leave a mess outside or don't park straight.

Hupa, that sounds like a good idea with 3 months free, now just how do I approach that subject with the owner?

Just had a call about a house too , sounds good, just getting new windows put in but needs decorated and all the flooring needs doing. Also it's 50 ? over our maximum budget so could try a bit ao bartering - wish I was good at it.

Planning a trip to south Germany to visit old friends if I can find suitable accomodation and get train tickets booked for Easter.

Our neighbours are actually German and still have a house there, so divide their time between here and Germany. When they're here, they seem to spend a lot of time drafting long incomprehensible faxes to the developers (he used to be a lawyer), getting worked up about what the developer has or hasn't done and generally just have too much time on their hands! They also (with the neighbour in the middle house - we're in a terrace of three) organised for all the trees next to the path between the bottom of our garden and the road to be cut down, which is the reason for the current dispute with the developer - and the reason why she had a go at me a few days ago (DH dared to reply to the developer's e-mail saying we'd only agreed to have the trees cut back and not cut down completely).

The house sounds good admylin - and at least it gives you another option. I'm hopeless at bartering too, but it's always worth trying - they can only say no.

In the end, I didn't need to worry about which teacher to put down for DD2 as the school no longer gives us that option (only which of their friends they'd like to be in the same class as). It all seemed to go well, although DS is very upset that he's not allowed to start school in September too - "Oh yes, I am big"!

Admylin
at not parking straight. Think long and hard about that flat, is all I can say. She will be out there with a ruler and a spirit level.

Well, looks as if we might have to be very nice to the dear old granny. The house was OK and all freshly renovated (except that it had no flooring in) but it had a Durchgangszimmer as a bedroom upstairs.

No one wants to have the durchgangszimmer so we would end up with it and that's fine now but in a couple of years if one of teh dc has a friend over to sleep I wouldn't like them having to walk through my bedroom to get to the bathroom.

So, tomorrow I will go and look at the other flat and se ehow the work is coming on with the damp walls and how much they are planning on leaving for us to do.

Otherwise, I've failed to find accomodation for the planned visit to south Germany. It's not exactly a tourist town so no decent family offers for hotels etc. We might go to Berlin as an alternative, we all want to go and visit the Egyptian museum again and meet up with a few of the dc's old friends, go to our favourite authentic Mexican for a meal etc...

Hope you can decide on one or the other, admylin. I'm sure you're dying to get into something larger and more permanent.

Too bad about the accomodation down south but Berlin sounds nice. My husband has the Easter holidays off as well so we'll probably do a few day trips if the weather's nice, one to Goslar in the Harz Mountains for sure and we don't know what else. Still feeling a bit odd and if things haven't improved by next week I suppose a visit to the doctor will be in order. After last year's fun I'd be happy to never see a doctor again. :-(

Back to the drawing board here! Bad news again - the dear old lady is a geizhals and won't fix anything in her flat , no wonder it was damp! We won't be going there, rather buy our own place than have to fix things in a rented place. The whole place has been stripped of wall paper and she won't redecorate.

She showed me all the corners that she had replastered where the mould was and then she told me she'd got someone to do it on the side as real Handwerker are too expensive and the one she found is polish so even cheaper.

Westvan, hope a few days away will help you to feel better. Atleast try to get loads of sleep when it's half term. I'm so useless at organising trips. Who does it in your house? How do you decide where to go and where to stay? The internet is so mind boggling and I never know where to start or search.

Ooh, that is bad news and you're right, you don't want to go sticking money into a rented place, especially since it's really the landlady's responsibility to deal with stuff like mould and damp. You'd think they'd actually want people's money and would therefore put a bit of effort into it but apparently they don't.

We don't really travel that much but I'm usually the one who organizes stuff via the internet. It can be very confusing though. We booked our trip to Canada back in October so that's taken care of and we'll probably go to Denmark again next Easter and stay in the same town so that's not too difficult to arrange. We once had the bright idea of taking the car to England and staying a week in Cornwall but dropped it because finding suitable accomodation and working out all the logistics was just so tiring and complicated.

Hi, are you feeling better today westvan? Just heard them saying on the radio we'll be getting 14 degrees tomorrow, headache warning!

Just got back from looking at another flat, was OK if a bit on the small side, infact the living room and kitchen and one bedroom were too small so am thinking about applying for it or not until tomorrow. Placed an ad in the paper for this weekend too.

I still haven't got round to booking anything for Easter. Should have tried this morning but by the time I got this and that done and viewed the flat there is no time. Now I'm off to start my Tuesday chauffering job!

Morning. Sun is shining I've given up on my lenten mn ban, too needy for mn wisdom what with ds school & house move.

Ad, too bad about house, but yes, avoid little old lady and her damp. HAve you seen the spongebob film? It seems to be really difficult to get something suitable. I agree too that somewhere where one of the rooms is a durchgangszimmer is not going to work. None of you will be able to tolerate that in the long term.

Shame we couldn't put you up Ad, but I don't think dh would take too kindly to a bunch of strangers turning up. He has a hard enough time with his own dad.

Ds finally had his appt at the Kinderklinik immundefekt ambulant yesterday. It was a bit scary, some of the things she was asking about I'm praying they come back to us with a simple, non scary but definite cause. If they come back and say they haven't a clue I'll be gutted, but am really praying now they don't come back with anything seriously scary. Yikes. Hope we don't have to wait too long.

Hi ernest, sunny here too and mega-headache weather for me anyway. I'm so dizzy this morning but today is last day of school so we get to chill and sleep in abit for 2 weeks.

Hope you get it all sorted out soon, the sooner the better really. That's one thing you can be thankfull for atleast the health care system is ace here. Honestly that's one of the things that convinced me to come back to Germany (well 10%!) as the nearest NHS dentist was a 40 minute drive away in UK and appointments took weeks if not months to come through.

Still no plans for the holidays. Has anyone got any good tips for Germany, where you have already stayed? Dd is studying the north coast of Germany in Geography and she was very fed up that absoloutly everyone had already been to the Nord and Ostsee.

we've been a few times to a Ferien park in Bischofsmais, Bayerische Wald. It's really cheap, has indoor play bit, big playground, swimming pool, (indoor and out), all included; mini golf, horse riding archery at bit extra cost. Never a dull moment, you can go s/c or H/B. Boys' fav. bit is the goats, they'll spend hours and hours feeding them Can't remember the price exactly, but I remember working out it costs about the same per day as a couple of hours in an indoor Spielhalle. The rooms are a bit tatty though, but good enough for us for a bargain break

We are planing a week camping in norther G in August. Or are we deluded?

We stayed with friends in a campground on Fehmarn Island once and that was very nice. Pretty windy up there on the Baltic Sea though.

August can be pretty iffy in Germany - it's either boiling hot or it rains all the time, you just never know.

Yesterday I woke up with a really swollen eyelid so I had two things to whine to the doctor about today. He think the eyelid thing is an allergy and will go away by itself but it's very unsightly and I won't be going out on public for the next few days. The digestion thing needs further investigation and possible another visit to the gastroenterologist. I thought I was finished with all this stuff but I guess not.

I don't know much about the Baltic coast/northern Germany, I'm afraid - it's supposed to be lovely and we have friends who go on holiday there every year, but apart from two visits to Schwerin I've never ventured that far north.

DH thinks it would be nice to go away somewhere over Whitsun after DD1's first communion and I've been put in charge of deciding on where to go. His two suggestions were London (but we've more or less decided to leave that until the DC are a bit older) and Legoland in Germany (has anyone been?). I'm tempted to stay a bit closer to home although have been wondering about Berlin too...

admylin - Any news on the flat-hunting front? I have the same problem about not knowing where to start on the Internet. I use HolidayCheck.de quite a lot for reviews, but generally only after I've already decided on the hotel or at least the area. I also read on another thread about Roomfor5 which has quite a limited selection but looks as if it might be quite useful if we did decide to go to Berlin or London.

I have been to Legoland. I would say it depends very very much on the height of your dc(to a lesser extent the age) I am pretty unhappy with it and wouldn't recommend, but then poor ds3 is v small for his age, so a big disappointment. If it's wet loads of stuff closed. If it's hot, loads of stuff closed (playgrounds cordoneed off cos slides too warm. We only live an hour from it and I wouldn't make the effort again.

Def not for kids over say 11 either. If 1 kid is under say 1m10/1m20 and the other over, you have a nightmare on your hands.

Thought europa park (at Rust?) was much better, that's sw Germany, about an hours drive from Basel.

Westvan hope your eye better

Hmm, maybe I'll strike Legoland off the list going on what you say, Ernest. The DC are about 1 m, 1 m 10 and 1 m 20 - possibly not an ideal combination? It would really have to be worth the long drive - around 6 hours, which is a bit far for a long weekend anyway. I remember hearing about Europa Park Rust when we were in Mannheim, but again it would be a long drive for us. I'm tending more and more towards staying in Austria - we'll probably end up splashing out on a Kinderhotel again because it's just easier. I haven't completely given up on the idea of Berlin though; we were watching Matt Frei's documentary about the city last night and it's really made me want to go back.

Never done Legoland or any other theme parks, I don't even have to condider Disney as both my dc have said they couldn't think of anything worse!

Berlin is top of our list to visit too. Dh even said what about trying a last minute package deal (never been on one of those either) like to Dubai. Have to check it out but I've got a mega list of things to do today (inspired from your flying thread aberita!) which I am half way through so I will probably be too tired to start a search on the internet tonight.

Off to get myself a coffee before I get side tracked.

Luckily my DC aren't into Disney at all either; they recognise Mickey Mouse but that's about it. I can't imagine anything worse than a holiday at Disneyland etc either! We've now booked a hotel in Kärnten for the weekend after DD1's first communion, but Berlin has suddenly become even more interesting now that DH has mentioned we could drive there and so we wouldn't have to worry about coordinating flights and accommodation. As a result, I've spent a good part of the afternoon on the Internet checking out places to stay. Now I just have to persuade DH...

I also had a long list of things to do today admylin (many carried over from previous days...), and did actually manage to get through about half of them before I got sidetracked! Making lists does make me feel very organised, although I still need to work on actually getting the things done...

We haven't done any of the big theme parks although dc keep pestering us to go so we might give in and go to Europa Park this summer. At least they don't seem too bothered about going to Disneyland.

Ernest, we went to the Ferienpark in Bischofsmais about 4 years ago. It was fairly low key but had enough to keep the dc happy and there was a beer tent in the village the week we were there so the adults were happy too! Lovely scenery there, too.

This summer we may go to the Allgäu for a few days or maybe to Berlin.

I've also just booked to go and stay with my parents over Whitsun which I'm looking forward to as I haven't been back to the UK in over a year.

I have to admit my dc love theme parks. We took them to Legoland about 2 years ago when they were 5 and 3 and they had a brillaint time. There isn´t a week that goes by when they don´t ask when we can go again.
We went to Disneyland Paris last year which was dh´s idea of hell, but turned out to be not too bad, mainly because the dc like going on rollercoasters which meant it was fun for the adults.

We´re trying our first Eurocamp holiday this summer in Italy. I must admit this is my idea of hell, but dh talked me round. I´m hoping there will be so much for the dc to do that I might finally get a chance to relax on holiday and read a book.