Huh huh huh. Heh heh. Ok, so I'm a child. And actually it's pronounced more like zax. But, whatever. I'm easily amused. Add to that all the Ausfahrt and Othertypesoffahrt signs all over the place that I still haven't figured out, but like to giggle about and really I should just grow right up.
Today, we spent most of our day in America. We had an Easter Egg Hunt/Battalion gathering that we had to go to on post...something we like to call Mandatory Fun. Usually we skip these types of things, but The Man is the new guy and we figured we should make an appearance. We decided to catch the city bus to the closest post, then catch the post bus to the next post over where the Egg Hunt was being held. We were trying to pinpoint the location of the bus stop when the hotel staff strongly urged us not to take the direct, but tricky route and to take the longer but easier route instead. But, we figured we could handle it. And we did! We made it to the bus stop with no trouble, but once there realized that the bus route we needed didn't run on Saturdays. So, we figured we'd just keep walking and if we hit another bus stop with a running bus that would take us to post, we'd take it and otherwise we'd just knock out the 4km (2.5 miles) on foot. There weren't any other buses, so we hoofed it the whole way. The distance was measured for cars, and taking some of the dillions of bike and foot paths around here probably cut some of that down. I'm not sure how far we actually walked, but I was pretty impressed with the kiddos.
After the Egg Hunt, we caught the post bus back to the other post. Actually, we had some hilarious moments when - after being held up with good bye chit chat with some of the brass - we were sprinting down the road to catch the leaving bus. Then, sprinting down another road to just miss it at it's next stop. Then, finally giving up and flagging the damn thing down between stops. Thankfully, it stopped for us.
We did some shopping at the exchange on the other post, then walked off post and caught a cab back to the hotel. Much faster, and with less whining from Cheeseball.
We were barely home long enough for the kids to choke down half of their hard-won Easter chocolate, when we decided to drag them another 2km (1.2 miles) to Ikea for dinner. Mmmm meatballs and lingonberry sauce. I think moving here is making us extremely observant. When you don't know what the thing to do is and you can't read the signs or really ask questions, you just have to pay attention. The Man noticed that everybody was drinking out of cups, so we had to hunt some of those down so as not to appear primitive, chugging out of our bottles. Then, we had to sit and wait for someone else to get up so we could figure out whether or not we were supposed to leave our dishes or do something with them. Then, after wandering around the store for like a mile trying to figure out where the heck the exit was, we had to sit and wait for someone else to go outside before we were sure we could go out the door we wanted to use. In the US, if a door has an alarm on it, the signs are all red and contain dire warnings of imminent humiliation if opened and, of course, most importantly are in English and therefore legible to us. In Germany, if a door has an alarm on it, it merely has a polite written warning and a frisky looking gentlemen doing I'm not sure what on a green sign. I'm always terrified of opening exterior doors and having them start blaring and everybody looking at me like can't she see the frisky gentleman!?.
Nobody went out the door, so we finally gave up and successfully hunted down the elevators we came up in. We had come in through the sub-store parking garage, because it was the only way we could figure out how to get in! So, that's a very long way of saying that this evening, we probably personally convinced at least a quarter Ikea's worth of Germans that Americans are stupid. You're welcome.
Our extended tour of Ikea allowed me to mentally stock and decorate our entire non-existent house. I assured The Man that it would be no time flat before I had the entire layout memorized and we'd never get lost again. While I intended that to placate him, it might have terrified him instead. Hey, no sweat honey, we don't even need our household goods shipment! We'll just buy all new stuff here! I just hope that didn't induce an allergic reaction to meatballs in his future.
Technorati tags: Germany, Ikea, culture shock
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Friday, April 02, 2010
Fuenf
EDITED: Well, damn. My fancypants title font can't seem to accomodate an umlaut. I foresee that causing some problems in the future...
El niño headed out today for his first day of school since arriving in Germany. Sniff. I had really gotten used to having the little guy around during the day! On the plus side, he came home having learned to count to eleven in German, while Mom is still consulting the dictionary for post titles every day.
After dropping him off at school, we picked up some supplies while still on post and took care of some limited administrative stuff in the few offices open on this German holiday. Off post, the entire city took the whole day completely off. It's really quite impressive, this German commitment to holiday. I mean everybody in the entire city took the whole day off. Hardly any of them even drove anywhere! It was really quite nice, not feeling like we were risking our lives to walk to the park this morning. I will say this about German drivers...they are perfectly comfortable sharing the crosswalk with you.
Other than that, we had a very nice, lazy day today. We wandered over to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner - with low expectations - but it was pretty darn good. Again with the freshness and it may have been Germanized Chinese food, but that was at least some variety compared to the Americanized Chinese food we are completely used to. And it was nothing short of a total trip practicing our wee bit of German with servers with excellent German...with a Chinese accent.
And, it did clue me in to my Cultural Difference of The Day. German culture doesn't seem to be quite as "family friendly" as what seems typical in the US. In fact, we've had new friends here remark that they've found the country to be more dog friendly than child friendly. Our kids are used to eating in restaurants and don't need high chairs or boosters anymore, so we've felt free to venture out.
But, tonight, we found ourselves seated in what had to be the kid room. The restaurant was essentially split into three different rooms, and all of the children eating in the restaurant were seated in one room and every table in that room had children at it. I was thinking that really wasn't a bad idea, actually, until I noticed that a mother and daughter were seated in the room toward the end of our meal. The girl was no younger than 13! Are German 13 year olds known for public temper tantrums or messy eating!? It seemed a little excessive and rather funny.
The interesting thing is that German kids - as a whole - seem to be held to higher standards of behavior than their American counterparts. They are truly more independent - it is not at all uncommon to see kids as young as 5 or 6 walking home alone from school down a very busy road or the age of 7 or 8 biking over to the park with a friend and no adult supervision. In my limited observation thus far, they tend - at least in public settings - to be quieter and more docile than their American counterparts. And, they still don't really seem to be welcomed or appreciated in the way that seems familiar to me in the States. It's difficult to articulate, but there seems to be more of an overall appreciation of children - from smiles and ruffling of hair to comments about them and spoken to them by complete strangers - in the US than here. I don't really expect people to fawn over my children with the language barrier, but it's just a general feeling I don't really get here.
Is that something anyone else has noticed in this part of Europe?
Technorati tags: Germany, children, culture
El niño headed out today for his first day of school since arriving in Germany. Sniff. I had really gotten used to having the little guy around during the day! On the plus side, he came home having learned to count to eleven in German, while Mom is still consulting the dictionary for post titles every day.
After dropping him off at school, we picked up some supplies while still on post and took care of some limited administrative stuff in the few offices open on this German holiday. Off post, the entire city took the whole day completely off. It's really quite impressive, this German commitment to holiday. I mean everybody in the entire city took the whole day off. Hardly any of them even drove anywhere! It was really quite nice, not feeling like we were risking our lives to walk to the park this morning. I will say this about German drivers...they are perfectly comfortable sharing the crosswalk with you.
Other than that, we had a very nice, lazy day today. We wandered over to a nearby Chinese restaurant for dinner - with low expectations - but it was pretty darn good. Again with the freshness and it may have been Germanized Chinese food, but that was at least some variety compared to the Americanized Chinese food we are completely used to. And it was nothing short of a total trip practicing our wee bit of German with servers with excellent German...with a Chinese accent.
And, it did clue me in to my Cultural Difference of The Day. German culture doesn't seem to be quite as "family friendly" as what seems typical in the US. In fact, we've had new friends here remark that they've found the country to be more dog friendly than child friendly. Our kids are used to eating in restaurants and don't need high chairs or boosters anymore, so we've felt free to venture out.
But, tonight, we found ourselves seated in what had to be the kid room. The restaurant was essentially split into three different rooms, and all of the children eating in the restaurant were seated in one room and every table in that room had children at it. I was thinking that really wasn't a bad idea, actually, until I noticed that a mother and daughter were seated in the room toward the end of our meal. The girl was no younger than 13! Are German 13 year olds known for public temper tantrums or messy eating!? It seemed a little excessive and rather funny.
The interesting thing is that German kids - as a whole - seem to be held to higher standards of behavior than their American counterparts. They are truly more independent - it is not at all uncommon to see kids as young as 5 or 6 walking home alone from school down a very busy road or the age of 7 or 8 biking over to the park with a friend and no adult supervision. In my limited observation thus far, they tend - at least in public settings - to be quieter and more docile than their American counterparts. And, they still don't really seem to be welcomed or appreciated in the way that seems familiar to me in the States. It's difficult to articulate, but there seems to be more of an overall appreciation of children - from smiles and ruffling of hair to comments about them and spoken to them by complete strangers - in the US than here. I don't really expect people to fawn over my children with the language barrier, but it's just a general feeling I don't really get here.
Is that something anyone else has noticed in this part of Europe?
Technorati tags: Germany, children, culture
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Vier
Today, the neighborhood really started feeling a bit like home. We started out at the park this morning, as usual, with the intention of walking over to the mall and ended up finding out that just past the bird zoo was...dunh dunh dunh...the mall! Guess we took the loooong route to get there the other night.
When we were there the other night, we saw a little hut set up inside the mall with kids painting easter eggs. The kids were dying to join in, but I didn't know what the setup was and who was allowed to get involved and whether there were official start and end times and if one could just jump in mid-stream, so we dragged them past it and moved on. But, today, they were clearly getting set up and there were a few parents and children hanging around waiting, so I put my big girl panties on and let them step up to the plate. I was nervous about whether the girls working there would say no because the kiddos didn't speak German or whether you were supposed to sign up ahead of time and especially nervous they would try to explain all that to me and I would just answer back with the blank look I've been mastering all week. But, the girls just spoke German to them - throwing in lots of hand gestures - popped some aprons on them and led them over to the tables. I can't tell you how happy that made me. And the kiddos!
Here's another cultural difference - once the kids were situated, the German mothers each said something that was probably like "be good, or no Easter for you" and wandered off. One of them even left what looked to be a two year old in the care of an eight year old and never looked back. And even more suprisingly, they all totally behaved. Like, perfectly. I was totally impressed with the kids, and actually with the moms, too. Total antithesis of helicopter moms.
And thank god mine behaved, too. They're good kids, but they bicker a little and I was just worried because goddammit i'm a helicopter mom. Sigh.
We bought some bread, some gelato, some lunch, some veggies and fruit, some antipasto peppers and shrooms, and really all I've bought since coming to Germany is food. Because it's goooood.
I ordered everything in German and fucked most of that up royally but I at least bask in what seems like appreciation from those who can see that I'm trying. The gelato dude got a serious kick out of my attempts and that made me laugh, too.
We also discovered there was a pool in the hotel and El Niño spent most of the afternoon dramatically suffering the loooong wait until pool hours. It's a lovely pool with a serious spa feel and I could not believe I didn't think to pack bathing suits for myself and Cheeseball.
All in all, Day Vier was a good day and I love it here even more every day. Now, if I could just win this battle with stupid #$@#@!$%% Army housing, everything would be golden. Or goldfarben.
Technorati tags: terms go here, terms go here, terms go here
When we were there the other night, we saw a little hut set up inside the mall with kids painting easter eggs. The kids were dying to join in, but I didn't know what the setup was and who was allowed to get involved and whether there were official start and end times and if one could just jump in mid-stream, so we dragged them past it and moved on. But, today, they were clearly getting set up and there were a few parents and children hanging around waiting, so I put my big girl panties on and let them step up to the plate. I was nervous about whether the girls working there would say no because the kiddos didn't speak German or whether you were supposed to sign up ahead of time and especially nervous they would try to explain all that to me and I would just answer back with the blank look I've been mastering all week. But, the girls just spoke German to them - throwing in lots of hand gestures - popped some aprons on them and led them over to the tables. I can't tell you how happy that made me. And the kiddos!
Here's another cultural difference - once the kids were situated, the German mothers each said something that was probably like "be good, or no Easter for you" and wandered off. One of them even left what looked to be a two year old in the care of an eight year old and never looked back. And even more suprisingly, they all totally behaved. Like, perfectly. I was totally impressed with the kids, and actually with the moms, too. Total antithesis of helicopter moms.
And thank god mine behaved, too. They're good kids, but they bicker a little and I was just worried because goddammit i'm a helicopter mom. Sigh.
We bought some bread, some gelato, some lunch, some veggies and fruit, some antipasto peppers and shrooms, and really all I've bought since coming to Germany is food. Because it's goooood.
I ordered everything in German and fucked most of that up royally but I at least bask in what seems like appreciation from those who can see that I'm trying. The gelato dude got a serious kick out of my attempts and that made me laugh, too.
We also discovered there was a pool in the hotel and El Niño spent most of the afternoon dramatically suffering the loooong wait until pool hours. It's a lovely pool with a serious spa feel and I could not believe I didn't think to pack bathing suits for myself and Cheeseball.
All in all, Day Vier was a good day and I love it here even more every day. Now, if I could just win this battle with stupid #$@#@!$%% Army housing, everything would be golden. Or goldfarben.
Technorati tags: terms go here, terms go here, terms go here
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