Endlich Fruehlingszeit in the German Corner

[admylin]

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

Thank goodness it's over at long last! That was a long winter. Welcome Spring!

only got 2 mins and there was so much to read and reply to i've run out of time!

but admylin we booked our ferienwohnung from here - thats where we got last years hols too! on every other website they were asking for nearly 1500€ for a week at the Ostsee - there is only 5 of us and there was no way dh was paying that for a holiday in germany but this website had some more reasonable ones!

ignore the previous message - wrong website

this one is the better one

Thanks canella, will check that out later.

got a few more mins to catch up with MN!!

admylin - sounds like your ds's BF's mum is having a rough time - how old is she? must be a hard situation all round if the dad doesnt speak much german - those kind of situations are tricky in your own language with all the terminology but if his german isnt so good. hope you managed to get thro to the hospital yesterday!

ernest - you sound like you've got a busy few months ahead!! we've been a few times on the overnight ferry from Hull - rotterdam - i love travelling to the UK that way! its just relaxing to miss out on all those extra hours of driving (although it is obv still far to get to rotterdam!).

so i had the first of my german tests today - it was like a citizenship test - i need to sit it to pass my course. there was only 25 questions and i needed to get 13 to pass. absolutely sure i've got enought right!! but one fo the easy ones i got totally wrong - i had no idea what SPD stood for! (thick emotion!!)

so off to start my taxi few hours!! dd is off to piano, ds1 to football, dd needs picked back up from piano then dropped at a party then ds1 needs picked back up from football!! all in 90 mins!! will def be on te wine tonight!!

hope you all have a good long weekend!

just a quickie - going quietly mad trying to buy clothes in germany - the size thing is depressing me!! so the kids are playing, dh is having a snooze and i'm buying things from next!! in my normal size!!! feel less depressed already!! and just seen that dorothy perkins do delivery too - they were my fave place for tops when i was in the UK!!

Hi everyone,

Wow, I haven't posted here for ages. Doing much better since the doc put me on medication mid April. I lost about 15 lbs from being ill and I'm hoping it will stay off but it wasn't a very nice way to lose! We leave for Vancouver June 19 and I have NO summer clothes and no desire to go shopping. I can never find shorts or jeans to fit here.

Happy Belated Birthday to Ernest and admylin's ds! My birthday is on Tuesday so I'll be baking my own cake as usual.

Hi westvan, glad you're feeling better. I definately have an American body - we went into a shop in Houston and I tried on 2 pairs of jeans which were perfect fit and bought them straight away. Never had that before, usually have to try 10 pairs in atleast 2 different shops here! I've still got them but they'r ewearing abit so I'm fed up at the thought of replacing them!

Thanks for the recipes by the way (tofu) - we love it, our new found food instead of meat.

Canella, when do you find out about the test results? I have to get back into German study, I'm on the level of Große Sprachdiplom of the Goethe Institut if I remember rightly. Just scraped through the Kleine Sprachdiplom by luck because I guess most of the den/dem stuff!

westvan - nice to hear from you!! glad you feel a bit better! hope you have a nice birthday on tues! hope we hear from you again before your hols!

think i have to wait 6 weeks for the test results - its the oral, listening, reading and written ones this week! not troubled by it - think there's no chance i'll ever understand the den/dem thing. just not sure what i'm going to do for lessons from now on - there are no more round here! and i'm far from fluent!!!!

how do you go about doing langauge tests? I gave up with the VHS as dh work too unpredictable but I so so so want to improve my german. At home I have no motivation if I have to do it by msylef.

Going away today for 3 nights in Hotel near Bayreuth with only ds3 & dd. Ds 1 & 2 at trip with Hort. Going to be very off being away from my eldest 2 till friday and very very weird being parents of only 2 children.

DD had a tick at the weekend. It was a tiny thing on her eyelid, right in the lashes. I noticed it on Sunday night and thought it was a grain of sand or something and tried to brush it out. Saw it was still in yesterday and tried to get it off, again no luck, and only then did I twig it might be a tick, it was so tiny. Amazingly dh just happened to have a pair of tweezers in his back pocket and got it off, and it was a tick - it crawled away! Feel a bit panicked as it was on so long - should I take her to doctors, can they do anything? Or just keep an eye on her?

just call the Goethe Institut and they do the tests at certain times of the year, don't need to take a coure.

haven't encountered ticks sorry, don't know. Tick near the eye - cringe... Hope she's ok. If I am ever concerned about anything, I call the paediatrician, they are always very helpful and give phone advice too. You don't always have to go in.

Canella's ds had one inside his pants I recall (things I rmeember)

oh ernest i am the tick expert!! we seem to be living right in the middle of tickland!! and your right some of them are so tiny!!! we do tick checks every night at the mo!! kids know the drill of where i want to look!! but i understand your worry - when ds2 had his first one last year i was crying cause it had prob been there a few days before i noticed it!!

zzen you remember the strangest thing - yes ds2 did have on his willy last summer!! really had to shield his eyes as i came at him with tweezers!

you dont need to take them to the doc if they've had a tic as long as you got it out! ds2 (him again!!) had one the other week on his neck and one of the legs got left behind but it came out in a few days - its just so important you get the head out! but they dig right in so gently does it!

but just keep it in the back of your head now that she's had a tick in case you think she's poorly anytime soon- i think munich is in the infected area for ?FSME - i always forget what the initials are. we thought of getting our kids vaccinated against it but heard some horror stories of kids being poorly after the vac so not had them (or us) done!

I know, the weirdest things stick in my head

hope she is ok ernest. What are ticks good for anyway, I'd like to know?

yeah what are ticks all about? like wasps and mosquitos - never sure of the good things they do!!

ernest - hope you're having a fab time being the temporary parents of 2 kids!! life must seem so much easier for a few days but you'll be excited to get back to them by fri!!

Not sure about ticks, but I could tell you all about ants as DD1's homework over the weekend was to find out why they're useful! We even ended up going to an ant exhibition in Linz as we spotted a poster for it on the way back from my ILs.

We've all had the FSME jab as we're in a risk area and it's one of the routine vaccinations here. It only protects you from FSME and not Lyme disease though, so we still have to check for ticks. Remembering the boosters is a bit of a pain; I'm sure at least one of us must have been due to have one this year but I haven't got round to checking. It's a bit like passports; one seems to expire every year!

Happy birthday westvan (bit late I know but I am uselss with birthdays) - did your cake go down well? What did you make and did you go out to celebrate? You'll be counting the days I imagine for the big visit to Canada.

I was so scared of ticks when we lived in southern Germany, we had to check the dc every night and my 2 have really thick hair and I was scared I would miss one behind their ear in the hair line. My main problem in summer is usually moskitos but up to now we have only seen a couple so maybe the long hard winter killed a few of them off.

Ernest - have a nice break, I bet you can't wait to get them all back together though. You (and canella) are so good at organising things - infact Linzer you are too - you're trips were planned ages ago I remember you doing it (Berlin soon isn't it?)

I still have nothing planned because the upcoming move is on my mind, and then the relatives coming but no exact dates etc. I'm just thinking of the expenses that we're going to have, every move costs a fortune in some way or other.

Hi all hope you don't mind me butting in with a few Qs.

DH and I are seriously thinking of moving to Germany, ideally Munich. Ideally for a few years but unlikely to be permeant. We have both lived in Germany before, I'm really missing Munich and would love to return.

Our biggest problem is that we want to home educate which we know to be illegal in Germany. DD is 4 and DS is 1.
Am I right in assuming that compulsory education begins at 6 in Munich?

Does anyone know how long a visitor can stay before the authorities insist you send your DC to school?

Are there any Montessori schools that do 1/2 days in the city and surrounding areas that you would recommend?

Does anyone have any property websites they could recommend?

Sorry for so many Q's

You can get away with homeschooling if you don't register but it sounds as if you want to stay quite a few years so how would you go about being insured (health insurance) and you wouldn't get Kindergeld I suppose.

The majority of schools are half-day in Germany although they are trying to introduce Ganztagschulen more and more. Traditional primary school would be from 8am to 12 or 1pm at the latest. My 2 went to that sort of primary school in Germany and in the afternoons we had plenty of time to do English - I had some books from UK to help with reading and we did maths and lots of activities together.

Check out areas you would like to live in to get an idea of the cost of renting/buying in Munich area here: www.immobilienscout24.de/ you can do a postcode search or street search and the nearest 1, 2 or 5km etc.

Hello, quick message while dd asleep. Having lovely break. Missing the boys, esp ds2, is that odd to miss 1 more than the other? (guilty mother emoticon). I fo miss both of them of course. Maybe it's because it's ds2's 1st trip away, and with his ADHD bonkersness exuberance, I worry about him more. Looking forward very much to seeing them tomorrow, but trying to manage my expectations wrt them being delighted to see me ds3 has told us he's having a great time without his brothers and doesn't want to get them back

I don't think you can get away without registering, can you? Everything us tied into it, ESP for foreigners? I live in Munich ( outskirts not city. What area you looking at specifically? There's a highly thought of Montessori near us I think. Depending on birthday, ds could be almost 7 before have to attend school - ds3 starts in September 2 months before he turns 7, but they seem to be changing the rules often. I'm away at the moment, but when I get back I can give you the number of a very helpful lady whose job it is to help foreigners in Munich with their kids in the german school system.

Home schooling us out, so you have the choice of regulat german state school, private german state school ( much vgeapervthan private school in UK I think) and IS. IS are £££££££&&& and tbh I don't rate v. highly (understatement) my ds 1&2 spent 1 year in IS then we switched to german primary - v happy with experience so far.

Hi Thank you both for your replies.

admylin Thank you for the link thats been useful.
Health insurance forgot about that!

Ernest Ideally we would like to live around Grefelfing-Planegg-Krailing area.
Thanks Ernest I'd be very grateful for any extra info when you have the time.

I'm no help with education in Germany I'm afraid, as we live in Austria (I have lived in Germany too, but before the DC were born and nowhere near Munich).

You have a good memory admylin - yes, we're off to Berlin next Thursday. I'm trying to be a bit more organised with our holiday planning this year, especially the summer holidays. We're driving down to Italy for a week in July and I'll also be back in the UK for 2-3 weeks, so that just leaves 5 to 6 weeks of being driven mad enjoying some time with the DC at home.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your break, Ernest - I'm sure you're really looking forward to seeing them both again tomorrow, though.

forgot how expensive it is to rent a house in Munich! Going to have to go to work on DH to convince him we want to live in an apartment.

How long are the summer holidays in Austria linzertorte?

We're on the last month of school now, they keep coming home with their grades and it looks as if the teachers have set the grades already so the last month is just coasting really as the work they do will not be added to the end reports.

Finished my proof reading last night so decided that today was wash the windows day. They were really dirty so they look extremely sparkly now and my arms are aching!

School is closed for nine weeks in the summer - oh bliss . Actually, I can't complain too much as Kindergarten only closes for three weeks (we'll be back at my parents' for most of that time) and it will be nice to spend some time with DD1 on her own.

You must break up early then, admylin. We don't get the grades until the last day of school, when the children go into school to pick up their Zeugnis and are out again by about 8.30. How are preparations for your move coming along?

My housework has been sadly neglected recently as I have too much paid work in the mornings and no energy in the evenings. I really need to do some decluttering - some days I just feel like throwing it all out and starting again from scratch.