A Sweet Weekend

The Autumn Fair was on this weekend. Unfortunately we went the day it rained but had a fun time anyway. Thanks to Fraulein M for joining us and taking the Bear on the Bumper Cars...which led the Monkey to drag Herr Fitz on. Someone had to stay with the stroller and the sleeping Mouse so I took the job. We were also able to fulfill a little dream we had 7 years ago. Bread boards with a picture and your name engraved are a real tradition here for kids and we bought ourselves a couple all those years ago and dreamt of a return visit with kids whose names we had not even thought of yet. So now the Bear, Monkey and Mouse have their own, with their real names of course.

That is Herr Fitz with the black and grey jacket (with his collar turned spiffily up)

I think Herr Fitz and I were more excited than the kids when we bought these and we couldn't stop smiling and squeezing hands. Herr Fitz felt so warm and fuzzy he said we should spend more money at the stand, voluntary spending is normally unheard of. I wanted to take up the offer but couldn't find anything I really liked.

Buckets of Fairy Floss and a matching pink Monkey

Chocolate coated fruit. Yum and toffee apples (yuck, even though I have never tried them).Miss M tells me they are amazing. Unfortunately she ate too many other sugar products and had to take her apple home)

The Mouse's first ride. And hopefully the last in a police car.

(even managed to get the Bear in the background)

A salty remedy to too much sugar and our first vegemite in 4 months.

Add in Saturday night spent chatting with our Hungarian neighbours over a few drinks and our Sunday swim and the result is as shown above.

I am back to school this week as my language course begins. Feeling a little nervous but with all the appropriate stationary so it should be fine.

Luckily no pictures

It isn't always beer and skittles here, woke up incredibly grumpy the day before yesterday. Well, that is version A. I prefer version B which goes a little like this. I woke up joyous and whistling (think Disney Snow White where there are little bluebirds flying around her) then kids managed to complain about everything, get under my feet whilst trying to get breakfast and annoy each other so the complaining turned into crying and I turned into the Wicked Witch. Luckily everyone got out the door in one piece, well actually 5 pieces as there are 5 of us and one piece would have been a bit uncomfortable, no one was wearing their underwear as a hat and we even made it to kindergarten/playgroup at a reasonable time. Then I went for a swim. Nothing like a swim and thoughts of Christmas whilst swimming to cheer one up. The swim was so good (I am having thoughts of the next Olympics it was so good) that I forgot Germans tend not to strike up random conversations especially whilst wearing a swimming cap and started chatting to the lady in my lane. Luckily for me she was happy to chat back. I followed this success up with a loud "Morgen" whilst in the showers to an old lady then thought I'd better not push the Australian/ German friendship so stopped talking and started whistling vigorously Snow White style in my head.

Whilst I was using my ability to whistle for the greater good of humanity or at least my family the Bear used his new found ability to completely embarrass his father. We go swimming nearly every weekend (we bought yearly passes and we must now get the best value for money we can) and far from being a well oiled machine we tend to rabble around and have been told off no less than twice by the Schwimmeister (it says it on their shirts) for wearing our shoes in the wrong area of the change rooms. So back to the core issue. Herr Fitz takes the Bear to the showers and I take the girls then we meet up dry our hair and, put our shoes on. When I found the boys this time Herr Fitz was shaking his head and looking a little red faced. Turns out that whilst in the showers 3 very fit young men had come in, and as customary here began showering naked. Bear stood sizing them up for a minute or so then just simply let out his favourite new noise...a wolf whistle. Needless to say the rest of the time felt like an eternity to Herr Fitz and we are still trying to explain to the Bear why wolf whistling is not acceptable.

Accidentally ended up with a house full of people for a pizza cook up yesterday when the weather was too bad to take a gaggle of playgroup kids to the Autumn Fair. It was great fun we had North America and Asia covered this time in our attempt to have all continents present but unfortunately no South America (they are on holidays). Bear may have agreed to marry his friend here after all the hugging and saying of "Ich liebe dich" (very happy he got his grammar correct) and I asked about Miss I in Australia. I then had to explain that while having a girl in every port whilst being practical, is far from polite behaviour.

Had to add the photo of the fabulous traditional (for the 70's) nibbles that Tante G made!

The Monkey has decided to fill the world with song lately which is beautiful even if she has inherited my vocal stylings and the Mouse turned 1 and a half this week and had her second bleeding nose after falling off the sofa (that is just bad parenting I say), at least she didn't drop her mandarin and she just kept saying her favourite sound E! She loves talking and her other words at the moment include ball, teeth, more and woof woof when she sees a dog.

Herr Fitz is also jumping for joy as our TV got changed from cable to satellite today in a random move by our landlord and he can now watch Al Jazeera in not only English but also Arabic. When I pointed out that he can't actually speak Arabic he said it was beside the point. Now we have 170+ channels in about 5 languages. The possibility for channel surfing is immense.

Finalised the grandparent birthday presents for next week (hopefully they will make it in time) and even started a bit of Christmas shopping. For the record I love Christmas and am looking forward to a cold one this year.

We're going to the Zoo Zoo Zoo

Actually we went to the zoo. Tante G from playgroup organised a trip to the zoo for all the lovely playgroup families last weekend, then everyone came back to our place and ate pizza, apple cake (my first from a German recipe) and had a few drinks. The weather was fabulous...though a very thin jumper wasn't quite warm enough. The Monkey loved the bike ride to the zoo as it is as far as she can manage and she had a fantastic tiger experience.

Herr Fitz was totally crazy happy as he got to speak German all day and night instead of just reading it in his office. Our lovely new neighbours upstairs joined us for the evening which meant our dinner party stats were:

loads of adults

tonnes of kids (9 to be exact)

3 continents (Europe, Australia, South America)

4 languages

Even more impressive (for all those extremely geographically nerdy folk like me) is that if illness hadn't prevented a couple of families from coming we would have had all the continents apart from Antarctica. We did try for the complete 7 as we visited the penguins at the zoo and invited them for dinner but, they said they tried vegetarian pizza once before and they'd never do it again.

Since the big excursion it has been Autumn holidays here. Didn't summer holidays just finish? I suppose that you have to take all the warmer weather holidays when you can. That said it was 0 degrees C one morning this week. Luckily kindergarten doesn't take a break as I have got very used to doing all my running around in the morning without the kids. Our other things like violin and gym has taken a break so we have had a nice relaxing week. As we have had a bit of spare time and the weather early in the week was good we have re-embraced the "drop in". This is something Papa B loves but something that I don't often do as it is pretty easy to call before you go somewhere when you have a car. Following the example of fellow Australians Miss F and Mr M who did a "drop in" on us last Sunday whilst riding around we "dropped into" our friends around the corner on Monday and played in the garden. That is the kids played and the Mums 'chatted' ie attempted to talk in a common second language whilst saving the kids from any fatal accidents involving stairs, gates, bikes and fellow players.

We gave into the cooler weather and turned the heating on a couple of times this week. We are still trying to work out the best way to use central heating so there is a fair bit of knob twiddling, waking up really cold and entering the house all rugged up and exclaiming "It feels like high summer in here!" Hopefully we'll get the knack soon.

Throw in a Happy Birthday to Aunty K, bit of light reading from the Prussian House of Deputies for Herr Fitz, attempting to get my computer fixed for me (no photos of those thrilling moments), the general chaos that is meal times and getting everyone out of the house on time, dressing up, a Bear and Mum trip to the library and Monkey, Mouse cubby house building with Dad it has been a really great week.

Come for a Visit.

We have moved into out apartment and are utterly happy. This led me to think why are we so happy and these are the top 5 reasons people should come to visit.

1) We have a shower you can stand up in (ie it has a place to put the shower handle and a screen). It is amazing how uncomfortable a shower can be when you are sitting down. Note: tall people may have trouble with the toilet as it is extremely close to the said shower.

2) Garden and terrace. It is huge and lovely but the cold weather is coming so bring snow gear.

3) There are no stairs!!! except those to the cellar where we do the washing and these can only be used in daylight hours as I still haven't overcome my fear of the 'cupboard monster' who, by the way can inhabit any poorly lit small space.

4) We have been shown (by those in the know) how to buy a bag of cheese.

5) perhaps one of the 20 Turkish rugs is a real flying carpet (the Mouse keep testing them out).

For those who may be agoraphobic, tall, have an overactive imagination, are lactose intolerant or dislike flying on floor coverings OR maybe you're just a little to far away here are some photos.

For the record I spent the morning cleaning before taking photos. This is how the kitchen normally looks.

To the Fields Children

The last two weeks at kindergarten the kids have been sent out to work in the fields picking potatoes and apples. Ok, that sounds a bit harsh, they have had the wonderful experience of walking to the nearby fields to gather potatoes and harvest apples. With the gathered produce they made Reibekuchen which is grated potato, onion and egg and salt and pepper which is then deep fried and served with apple sauce. It is fantastic and a much yummier potato creation than hot chips, though Herr Fitz still isn't convinced. With the apples they are making apple and cinnamon jam...can't wait till they come home today with that.While the children and Herr Fitz have been hard at work I have been doing very important things too. For example (I feel like I am writing a Mr Men book) I have been searching for the perfect tin to house my recipes in as I find a book a little to restrictive and if, nay when I spill stuff on it beyond repair. That said my quest is over and I found a great Dr Oetker (the father of German baking) tin in a book shop the other day when shopping with the lovely Fraulein M.

Apart from slaving over the rice pot and cleaning till the house sparkles 1950's style I have been grocery shopping (which I like) and back in the pool. Two things which are completely unrelated except from a security viewpoint. I have found the German equivilent to wrapping your keys and wallet in your towel at the beach. Having done part of my shopping at one store I neatly pack it in my bike trailer then ever so carefully velcro the "boot" flap down so that it is completely impenetrable (perhaps only to the Amish) and off I go to finish the shopping. The other day at the pool I had to use the towel as a lockable device when I forgot my 1euro for the lockers. As I laid my towel over all my gear ie. jacket, shoes, scarf yes it is only autumn but big jackets are in order I realised that I was the only one who had forgotten my money as my pile looked like the Alps.

I have also developed an unholy love of all things waterproof. We have a huge pile of waterproof pants and jackets. As I also have a pathalogical need to go everywhere on the bike (buses take too long) wet weather gear comes in very handy. My waterproof pants are fantastic. They have zippers down the side so they are easy to get on and off, I don't have to sit down and wrestle them over my shoes like poor Herr Fitz. So, not only are they practical, they feel a little bit like cowboy chaps which always make me think of Mardi Gras every time I take them off. Never fear there is always another pair of trousers underneath.

PS I reduced the sugar by half in the lemon cake recipe (previously blogged) and it was still fabulous. I never normally tamper with sugar content and ridicule those who do (sorry retrospectively) but as we are living in the land of sugar I felt I needed to.

Oh and, very excited about the sounds of cleaning downstairs as it means we can move into our final apartment this afternoon.