There are so many horror stories I could share involving transatlantic travel. I entertained my babysitter the other day by regaling my worst memories of flights between Europe and North America, some of which involve being sandwiched between an overweight, unhappy...
The GW Expat Blog
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raising children in Germany
Goodbye Deutschland
The title of this post is not meant to be in reference to Germany and its standing at the World Cup. Rather, it is in reference to the fact that this will be my last post on this blog while living in Germany. One prominent aspect of expatriate life is a higher...
Buying Bio (Organic) in Germany
Long, long ago, in 1992, when I first came to Germany, I, at the tender age of 21, had no real idea of what "organic" even was. Who did back then, except a few hippies and tree huggers (ha, ha). I had a few older and wiser friends with small children who bought bio...
Village Life
Sometimes I feel like we're living in another decade in the past. The other day when I was looking at eltern.de, the website for Eltern (Parent) Magazine, there was an ad for the new Volkswagen Sharan model. The Sharan now has an electric sliding door. Although I've...
Movie Ratings — Watch Out!
I had planned to go see the movie "Valentine's Day" with my eldest daughter this past week in English, but the few times it was being shown just didn't work for us. On Friday we finally decided to go to see it in German in the local theater, and because it was "ab 6",...
Buying Shoes for Kids: Germany vs. the US
Just recently, I went to buy my youngest his first pair of shoes. Ty the au pair 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...
Raising “Free Range” Kids in Germany
I'm concluding my Christmas holidays now here in America, so it's natural for me to once again think about how different my life would be if I were living in America instead of in Germany, especially as a mother. Despite all my good intentions to not shop as much and...
Doing Math in a Foreign Language
Many a time I have written about German schools, which sometimes seem to be the bane of my life, but are generally pretty okay. It seems that no matter how good the non-German parent was in school (and in our case, that would be me), when confronted with German math...
The dreaded “Materialliste”
If you have children in school here in Germany, at some point, either at the end of one school year or the beginning of the next, your child will hand you a meager piece of paper called a Materialliste, which is exactly what it sounds like, a list of supplies for the...
Long-term Expats – Are My Kids Really American?
Recently, with the economic crisis and the dreaded Kurzarbeit, we have been thinking about whether the US is an option for us again job-wise. There is nothing concrete happening, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder, how will it affect the kids? I dragged...
Starting them young: Germans and Nudity and PEKiP
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...
Raising a Native “Shpeaker”
My daughter Vera is now a few months older than two, and like many parents, my husband and I have been marvelling and taking delight over her speech development. Like so many German Way readers, we are doing our best to raise her multilingually and have gone the route...
Oh, the Places You’ll Go
If you are an expat in Germany with children, at some point or the other you will probably have to endure that oh-so-anticipated but oh-so-dreaded journey of traveling home to wherever you hail from. If your kids are over the age of 5 or 6, the trip may not be so...
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