February 9th, 2010
It seems every post I write has to do with kids, but that is how my life looks right now! At the moment, both of my little ones are in the midst of the Eingewöhnung process in their respective nursery schools (Kindergärten). My youngest is starting Krippe (loosely translated as daycare) and his sister is starting nursery school. When I signed them up, I was told to prepare to be available during the acclimitization process. Little did I know, they have it down to a science. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, Tips, advice, suggestions, Work and employment matters |
Tags: Berliner Modell, Daycare, Eingewöhnung, expat, Germany, kindergarten, Krippe, Sarah | 1 Comment
January 12th, 2010
Just recently, I went to buy my youngest his first pair of shoes. Ty the aupair came with us to chase Olivia through the store, expecting this to be a short process. He was wrong, of course, because this is Germany, and everything takes just a little bit longer! And shoes are very important and very expensive here, especially for children.
We first took Noah to look for shoes before Christmas when he had just started walking. It had been pretty cold here and even I, the American who doesn’t ever put enough clothes on her kids, thought he might be getting a tad bit cold. But we were sent home from the shoe store. I guess kids have to have been walking for a couple of weeks before anyone is allowed to buy them shoes. Even my German husband was surprised, but around here, we must listen to the experts! (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: au pair, babies, first shoes, Germany, measuring feet, Sarah, shoe purchasing | 1 Comment
November 30th, 2009
It is natural to feel less informed about your country of origin when you’ve been gone for a few years. Such is the case with me.
I still have access to most of the same news sources. My hometown newspapers are online, major news channels are available here in English (CNN, CNBC and so on) and of course there are the blogs. Yet I still feel out of touch with what is really going on back in the old country (by which I mean the US).
(more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: English, Geoff, media, news | No Comments
October 26th, 2009
This sign means the sidewalk is shared by pedestrians and cyclists. It screams: “Pedestrians, watch out for your lives!” Photo: Hyde Flippo.
I don’t think there’s a German over the age of five or six who doesn’t know how to ride a bike. Seeing an 80-year-old German lady zipping along on her bike is nothing unusual in Germany.
I have witnessed rush hour in the small town of Burghausen, Bavaria, which means swarms of bicycles, not cars, going to and from the Wacker chemical plant. In much larger Berlin and other German cities, the bike is also a popular mode of transportation. An estimated 400,000 bikes stream across Berlin on an average day. If we compare the USA and Germany, travel to work or school makes up only 11% of all bike trips in the US, compared to 28% in Germany. Shopping trips account for only 5% of all bike trips in the US, versus 20% in Germany. (McGill Univ. (TRAM) - “Making Cycling Irresistible: Lessons from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany”)
So you might think that cyclists have a special place in the hearts and minds of most Germans. Well, they do, but it’s usually a negative place. The average German motorist despises cyclists (and vice versa). Although Germans often maintain that most people are both motorists and cyclists who should not hate each other, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Once a cyclist gets in a car, a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation takes place as the driver grasps the steering wheel and heads out to do battle with people on bicycles. And there are a lot of them in the average German municipality, large or small.
But that’s a topic we’ll save for another day. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: bicycles, bike lanes, bike riding, cycling, cyclists, Germany, Hyde, pedestrian zones, pedestrians, traffic laws | No Comments
September 28th, 2009
“No HD transmissions” is all you can see currently from Germany’s TV broadcasters.
Americans used to watching hi-def TV from the major networks and on cable/satellite channels are surprised when they get to Germany and discover the total lack of over-the-air HDTV and a dearth of HD programming of any kind. Although Europe in general has been slow to get on the HDTV bandwagon, Germany has been bringing up the rear of this parade. Neither the public TV channels (ARD and ZDF) nor the private TV broadcasters in Germany currently offer any regular HD programming of any kind. DirecTV and Dish Network offer over 100 HD channels in the US. Germany’s Sky offers seven (7)!
The pitiful state of HDTV programming in Germany is surprising for several reasons: (more…)
Categories: History and culture, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: atsc, blu-ray, cable, dvb, dvb-t, Germany, hdtv, hi-def, high definition, Hyde, ntsc, pal, satellite, television, tv | No Comments
September 20th, 2009
When I moved to Germany for the first time in 1992, I was 21 and was going to university in Freiburg. I had never worked in an American office for more than the time required to do a temp job over spring break and had spent summers working at McDonald’s. When I was 18, I lived near Geislingen for 8 weeks, staying with the family of an exchange student who had lived with us for six months when I was nine years old. This was my first encounter with a “real” German home and the accompanying culture rules this entails. It was not a very exciting summer for an 18-year-old woman who had just graduated high school and wanted some adventure. I read a lot of Michener (the fattest English novels I could find for the money), listened, but not spoke, a lot of Schwäbisch, and tried not to make any cultural faux pas. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: closed doors, cultural faux pas, doors, drafts, flow of information, Germany, Sarah | 2 Comments
September 14th, 2009
Here in Baden-Württemberg the school year begins again this week. While my children are not yet school age, we’ve been enjoying rituals associated with this time of year: a last visit to the Freibad (outdoor public pool), buying closed toe shoes for autumn/winter and picking Zwetschgen (Italian plums) off of friends’ trees.
Before I moved to Germany, I had never seen a Zwetschge. Plums had always been round, more like smaller nectarines, with varying shades of yellow flesh and yellow or purple skins. In Germany, I first encountered these elegant, deep purple, slender ellipses hanging low on a tree on Jahnstrasse, the street of my first flat. It was August, my second month living here, when I would gingerly step around the squashed and whole pieces of fruit at my feet, wondering if they were edible. It took several late summer visits to the Bäckerei till I realized that the word Zwetschgen was synonymous with the word Pflaumen (plum) and that the tree on my street was in fact a Zwetschgen tree.
Now that the Zwetschge has entered my life, I have been searching for ways to keep her there all year around.
(more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, German language, German vocabulary, History and culture, Miscellaneous, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: August, German cooking, Jane, recipe, summer, Zwetschgen, Zwetschgenmarmelade | 1 Comment
August 17th, 2009
It’s still summer here in Germany. Along with our annual Mediterranean beach escape, my family and I have been hitting the Autobahn to attend various weddings of friends here in Germany. Since I also had my church wedding in Germany, I have closely observed with special interest the various traditions which take place at these festive occasions. I’ve listed the various games and activities which I’ve seen or heard of at German weddings. These games are usually organized by other guests or family members of the bridal pair. Take this as a preliminary guide, if you will, so that you know what to expect and to perhaps strategically duck out for a smoking break, regardless if you smoke or not.
Cutting a Heart Out: As the bride and groom are emerging newly married from the church or Standesamt (civil registry office), friends of the bride and groom have prepared a sheet with a heart drawn on it. The sheet is held in front of the couple and they must cut the heart out in order to pass. In order to enhance the challenge, they are typically given the smallest pair of scissors such as nail scissors in order to symbolize overcoming the first challenge in their new union. Typically, the husband then carries his new wife through the heart.
Most of the other activities typically take place at the Hochzeitsfeier, the party commonly known as the reception at an American wedding.
Group Art. Guests are invited to paint a square of a canvas. I’ve seen this executed in different forms. The theme could be to draw a heart and personalize it. At my wedding, various guests were given squares from one painting.
One wedding guest getting artistic.
The goal is that the couple will have a work of art to hang in their marital home by the end of the night. If the couple is lucky, they will indeed have a palatable souvenir ready to hang from their wedding. (more…)
Categories: History and culture, Miscellaneous, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: German wedding games, German wedding traditions, German weddings, Jane, weddings | No Comments
August 14th, 2009
The Berlin Wall: Checkpoint Charlie in 1969.
Yesterday marked the 48th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. (I actually wanted to post this on the 13th, but…) During the night of 12-13 August 1961, East German soldiers and other workers began stringing a barbed wire barrier along the intra-German border (innerdeutsche Grenze) in Berlin. As time went by, the barbed wire fences were replaced by concrete: the Berlin Wall (die Berliner Mauer). It was East Germany’s desperate attempt to stop a serious brain drain and what was known as “voting with your feet” (i.e., escaping to the West). Berlin was the most serious “leak” — one that had to be plugged if the East German dictatorship was to survive.
I first experienced die Mauer personally in 1969, when it was still a crude, slapped-together, eight-year-old youngster, not the smoother, slicker version after 1975. (more…)
Categories: History and culture, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: Berlin, Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, Cold War, communism, German history, Hyde, Kennedy | 1 Comment
July 20th, 2009
Baby Stella developing faster in the buff
One of the aspects of German culture which we Americans often find so shocking is the prevalent open attitude towards nudity, otherwise known as naturalism. One of my good German friends is a big sauna goer and explained once to a group of us that her whole family was into it. This raised alarm bells with the other Americans there. “Wait, even your father is naked?” “Where do you look when he’s naked?” “Don’t you feel uncomfortable at all that strangers can see you naked?”
I am not nearly as prudish as many of my countrymen on this issue and have in fact, shed my modesty along with my clothes during a few visits to the sauna. So in the spirit of exploring the culture in which I am currently living further, I think I have found a “naturalism for beginners” course for my baby daughter.
Many mothers and fathers throughout Germany have participated in a weekly activity for babies: the Prager-Eltern-Kind Programm or PEKiP for short. When telling my mother what my younger daughter Stella and I do every Thursday morning, I refer to PEKiP as “naked baby play group.” Basically, we meet weekly with a group of seven other mothers and their babies, born within a month of each other, with a trained instructor for 90 minutes. This group stays together from the beginning (first few months) till age one. (more…)
Categories: Daily life, Expat issues, History and culture, Tips, advice, suggestions |
Tags: babies, baby group, Jane, nudity, PEKiP, raising children in Germany | 2 Comments
