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A German Education

by | Jun 12, 2012 | , , , , | 0 Comments

I am going to attempt to explain the German education system in the simplest terms possible. For those with further education who can handle the exceptions, I have listed them at the end.

When a child is born in Germany, it has the right to a place in a daycare from the age of one year, starting in 2012. Daycare is referred to as Kinderkrippe, Kleinkindbetreuung or Kindertagespflege, although the latter only refers to the care of children in private homes with a Tagesmutter, not to a daycare center.

From the age of 3 years until they are old enough to start first grade (usually age six by the end of September), children attend Kindergarten. Kindergarten in Germany is usually mixed-age preschool and American “kindergarten” all jumbled together. The preschools on offer are almost all publicly subsidized, and fees vary in each city. Often the fees reduce with the number of children you have (and they don’t even have to be attending preschool), sometimes are linked to your income, or taken from a table based on the number of hours your child attends. There are preschools that are half-day, some are all-day, some serve lunch and some do not. The good ones have a waiting list, and for the most part, parents wishing for their children to start after their 3rd birthday need to get them registered at preschool by February of that year.  The number of spots varies from state to state – in Baden-Württemberg, space is tight, especially in Stuttgart. In Berlin, there is much more on offer. read more…

Meet Freude: More Korean Food in Leipzig

by | Jun 4, 2012 | , | 0 Comments


NOTE: Updated for 2024.

I know that you’ve waited over a month for this follow-up post on Korean food in Leipzig so let’s jump right in.

The family and I went to Meet Freude in the Südvorstadt neighborhood of Leipzig. This part of town is a quick Strassenbahn ride or ten-minute walk from the city center. With universities in close proximity, it has a fun vibe and this stretch of the Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse (aka the “Karli”) boasts a long row of specialty food shops and restaurants such as vegetarian, Italian, Spanish, and Indian.

Entrance to Meet Freude Korean restaurant in Leipzig

The entrance to Meet Freude in Leipzig. PHOTO: Jane

When we first drove by Meet Freude, we weren’t quite sure what to make of it. As mentioned in my previous post, it was a cafe and had a tiny menu. With interior colors of light green and white, this place was cute. Little trees and hearts here and there along with two large stuffed animals sitting in the Ikea high chairs waiting for us as we walked in, it reminded us of a cafe that could be in the university quarter of a Korean city.

We were all offered cinnamon tea upon arrival – not very traditional, but neither are we. As two main sells on the food menu were Bibimbap and Kalbi, that’s what we ordered. We were not disappointed. read more…

German efficiency and Berlin’s new airport

by | May 28, 2012 | , , , | 0 Comments

There is a German term for “German efficiency” – several in fact: deutsche Gründlichkeit, Effizienz, Fähigkeit, Leistungsfähigkeit, Tüchtigeit. German efficiency can be found gloriously in German doors and windows, in energy use (hall lights that only turn on if there’s motion; escalators that only start running when you step on them), in ecology (waterless urinals, low-flow toilets), in Bauhaus architecture (“less is more”), and in German manufacturing (think cars and giant turbines).

On the other hand, German efficiency can be very much overrated. The cliché can become mythical and frustratingly elusive. Germany’s often impenetrable bureaucracy is a case in point. Or Berlin’s new airport, where German efficiency has disappeared entirely and turned into raging incompetence. read more…

Spargelzeit

by | May 21, 2012 | , , , | 1 Comment

The first whiff of anticipation comes in early April when you notice the odd crate in the supermarket, labelled “from Spain” and extortionately priced. You keep your eye on the incrementally falling price over the following fortnight. And when it hits seven euros a kilo and the label changes to “from Germany”, your mouth begins to water. Then the man with the muddy apron sets up his simple stall in the street, red crates overflowing with carefully aligned knobbly white sticks, sorted by thickness. Only at this point do the restaurants follow suit and proudly announce their new menus on pavement blackboards. This is when you know Spargelzeit, “Asparagus season”, has truly arrived.

There is possibly something a little ritualistic in the German attitude towards white asparagus. One of the few vegetables to which seasonal scarcity still applies and, to my knowledge, not so widely eaten outside of Germany (in Britain we always eat green), here it is considered a rare delicacy and an annual cause for occasion. Almost all restaurants (even the local Italian) bow to the traditions of this unusual vegetable, incorporating into their Spring menus with strict adherence the prescribed dishes: asparagus with potatoes and hollandaise sauce (or for simpler palates, melted butter); asparagus with potatoes, hollandaise and scrambled eggs; for carnivores, asparagus with potatoes, hollandaise and slices of cold ham, and finally a gorgeously creamy asparagus soup. read more…

An Expensive Lesson in the Laws of the Land

by | May 14, 2012 | , , | 2 Comments


For most of my first year in Germany I didn’t drive.  I come from a small Canadian city with no major highways, and so the thought of the autobahn seriously freaked me out.  I was, and remain, very surprised at how easy it was for my husband to simply turn in his Canadian license for a German one, to be handed a company car, and to then just be on his way.

Sure, GPS is a miracle for those of us who need to navigate to work that first day, or to the nearest food market for the first time, but such technology has yet to explain to me what the yellow diamond sign means, what the white squiggly line on the road means, and what I am supposed to do when someone is riding a horse in front of me.  Many expats, like my husband, cope with various expat situations, like driving, by relying on observation, common sense, and hoping for the best. I offer a cautionary tale however, of common sense, and how it may not always be your most reliable guide.

Mirror

Do you know the German laws concerning reporting an accident? PHOTO: H. Flippo

After a few weeks of observation and a little practice, I felt confident enough to drive alone to the market one town over, some near-by restaurants, and to the shore of the Rhine river to walk the dogs. When my parents came for their first German visit during Christmas 2008, I had no problem offering to hop in the car and run to the store, after realizing we were missing a very key ingredient for our homemade eggnog – rum. It was Christmas Eve, the big celebratory day in Germany, and the stores were just about to close. I had to be quick, and so did everyone else. Like most stores in Germany, there was no parking lot, which meant I had to parallel park (a much-needed for skill just about everywhere in Europe). And I did, proudly.  There were rushed Christmas shoppers everywhere, running around the Kaisers market with their Raclette cheeses, bottles of Gluhwein, and of course the cookies.  It was chaos. And when I returned to the car with my rum, I was dizzy with the Christmas spirit. As I then cranked the wheel to drive out of my parallel spot, crack, I smacked the corner of the car parked in front of me. read more…

Good Night, Sleep Tight, Watch out for the Crack!

by | May 7, 2012 | , , , | 1 Comment

Maybe you have visited Germany on a trip and noticed that the hotel beds were a little funny. Large, generously proportioned, down pillows, down comforters. But strangely, when you sink into the middle of the bed you find, well, it’s lacking. There’s a crack down the middle of the bed! And no covers there either. German “king-size” beds are really two twin beds sharing a frame. What about the covers? Also twin.

And guess what: it’s like this in their homes, too. This was a shock to my newly-married-assumptions-about-life when I came to Germany. Like most young couples, we bought a bed frame at IKEA. We went to the mattress store to buy a good mattress and when we got there I realized we would be buying two good mattresses for our one bed frame. I spent some time thinking about this, then asked if there was some kind of filler for the gap. There was, but it created a speed bump, which to me didn’t really solve the problem. read more…

Korean Food in Leipzig

by | May 1, 2012 | , | 2 Comments


NOTE: Updated for 2024.

In pursuit of finding decent food in Germany, my family and I tried out two of the three Korean restaurants in Leipzig during a visit to the city. It is a high risk undertaking to try a Korean restaurant in Germany as it can be very hit or miss, with a high probability of a miss. Over the years, I have had traumatizing experiences in Heidelberg and bearable ones in Frankfurt and Düsseldorf.

Bibimbap at Korean restaurant in Leipzig

Bibimbap at a Korean restaurant in Leipzig PHOTO: Jane

The first of the three Leipzig restaurants, Korea Restaurant Kim, was unfortunately a miss. Located in a small non-descript shopping arcade in the center of the city, my husband had a feeling even before we went that it wouldn’t be particularly authentic. After reading a review or two online, it was apparent that there was a lot of duck and chicken on the menu. While Koreans do eat chicken, it’s more of a secondary ingredient or specific to dishes such as Korean fried chicken (yum!). Korean beef barbecue is better known. Pork, fish and other seafood are more often prepared and eaten in Korean cuisine, but duck is more the exception. Seeing it on the menu raised our gringo alarm. In general, the menu was very uneven. The restaurant is not a specialty house such as for barbecue or oxtail stew, but at the same time, it did not have a well-rounded generalist menu, just a handful of Korean classics and then a few variations of the aforementioned duck!

We decided to try it anyway since it was an easy walk from our holiday flat and had family-friendly hours, i.e., it opens at 5 PM. Some of the positives: The restaurant has a big aquarium with huge fish that fascinated my kids. There was a friendly waitress who was part Asian, but didn’t speak Korean. Not to seem unfairly discriminatory, this raised another gringo alarm. While I am aware that plenty of ethnic restaurants have “non-ethnic” servers and nonetheless serve delicious food, this seemed to correlate with our growing suspicions of this particular restaurant’s lack of authenticity. read more…

Germans: We don’t need no stinkin’ apartment numbers

by | Apr 23, 2012 | , , , | 2 Comments


It never really dawned on me that the Germans don’t use apartment numbers – until I lived in a German apartment house. The only way the postal carrier (Postbote/Postbotin) can deliver mail to the correct apartment in even a large apartment complex is by the surname on the mailbox. In my case, not even my own last name, but that of the people I was subletting the apartment from. And my apartment complex in Berlin even had a Hinterhaus, another building facing a courtyard behind the front building, and all of them were five stories high. Yet the only numbers in sight were for the floors. (Some German apartment buildings do have unit numbers… BUT they are usually not used in the postal address for some reason!)

My first reaction to the lack of apartment numbers (Wohnungsnummern) was, “How ridiculous is that?” But then I remembered that the Japanese don’t even have street names in most of their cities (except in Kyoto and Sapporo). They use block section numbers in a confusing (to us Occidentals) address system that makes the Germans look like the height of logic and reason. The Japanese also write a postal address in the reverse order of most of the world: starting with the geographic location and ending with the name of the recipient. read more…