Our Year in Germany: November 2012

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Stuttgart!

The guild for a drugstore

The German school year follows the pattern of 6-7 weeks of school, then a break of 1-2 weeks. Summer vacation is about 6 weeks. The first such break was the Herbstferien, or Fall Break. We headed 2 1/2 hours west to the Stuttgart area. Fun Trivia - Stuttgart, geographically speaking, is basically a bowl with over 500 of its streets ending in stairs! On the way, we stopped in Dinkelsbuehl, yet another beautiful, seemingly medieval city.

Note the dipped stone steps from centuries of feet! And here we are near what remains of the old moat.

The traditional exposed timber homes are called Fachwerkhaeuser. Here's a peek at what's behind the plaster. Apparently, all sorts of things were thrown in between the woven wood to insulate and as common in many cities, as the floors went higher, they extended outwards. Taking up less real estate, the owners paid less in taxes.

No need for street signs in Dinkelsbuehl. The street names are just painted right on the corner house.

Know why this little guy is smiling? Because we told him we're finally going to leave this town with the "broken stuff" and go find dinosaur fossils!

This wasn't our first attempt at excavating dinosaur fossils. Andrew and the kids searched at a quarry for over an hour near Berching and let's just say they nearly found one. It was like camel spotting with Eric Idle! So spirits were a little low. Extra thanks therefore to the Urweltsteinbruchfischer in Holzmaden, all 3 kids found more fossils than they (read - we) could carry. This area used to be a prehistoric sea and although the museum boasted enormous, bus sized fossils, we were satisfied with our specimens!

BYO Chisel and Hammer!

Off to Ludwigsburg Palace, one of Germany's largest Baroque palaces. Although it was stunning to see all the fancy ceiling detail and golden everything, the contrast between the crazy lifestyle excesses of the Duke's family and the peasant class of the time could not be overlooked.

The Kinderreich program offered the kids the chance to don clothes from the 1700's and learn dances and formal dining etiquette. We could hardly hold the girls back, Declan on the other hand needed a little prodding....

Meanwhile, the extensive grounds at Ludwigsburg were celebrating a Pumpkin Fest featuring all things Swiss.

The next day, we hit the ultra sleek Mercedes - Benz Museum. It was a tough decision (serious turmoil for Andrew) because the Porsche museum is also in Stuttgart. We saw Karl Benz's creation of the first gas-powered car, the Benz Motorwagen, patented in January 1886.

The first Mercedes-Benz brand name vehicles were produced in 1926, following the merger of Karl Benz's and Gottlieb Daimler's companies into the Daimler-Benz company.

Two interesting nuggets: The name Mercedes came from the daughter of an Austrian businessman, Emil Jellinek, who was an important customer and later dealer of Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Also, MB has recently acknowledged the use of forced laborers supplied by Nazi camps during WWII.

The museum offered a great mixture of political/social history as well as a glimpse of the complex technology central to building the Mercedes Benz conglomerate. Our children, of course, were content to focus on their own buildings....

Then... (are you thinking this is the longest trip EVER? :) Then we visited an indoor swimming park with cool ice towers.

Outdoor thermal pools!

Yes - I am airborne!

The last stop was the Ritter Sport Factory and Museum in Waldenbuch. We enrolled the girls in the Schokowerkstatt program (Declan wasn't old enough) which included a factory tour, museum visit and then they got to create their own chocolate bars and design their own packaging. They loved it! If only there were an adult program...

Anybody need a meter of chocolate?

Meanwhile Andrew, Declan and I hit the store. As with most trips, great to go, but we were all happy to head home when the 4 day trip was over.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Kindergarten!

In Bavaria, you must be enrolled in first grade by age 6. Before that, most kids attend 3 years of Kindergarten. Declan has 24 kids in his class which is made up of 3, 4 and 5 year olds. The expectation is that the younger kids learn from the older. There are 2 Erzieherinnen (teachers) and a student teacher who assists with Kinderturnen (basically gym) twice a week.

Daily Routine – Arrive around 8. There is one Garderobe or coat room for the whole school – yes, it’s that loud. There’s also just one big unisex bathroom (Every time I walk past, I think...Ally McBeal!). Shoes off, Hausschuhe (slippers) on. These Hausschuhe in addition to a pair of rain pants were the only things on his supply list for the year! After shaking your teachers’ hands, it’s free play. Then during circle time, a candle-lit Laterne is placed in the middle on the floor, and kids pull a card which determines the exercises and jumps they do around/over it!

Notice the fingers pointing up?

Singing and finger games and then one kid passes out cups printed with each kid’s name. You can choose tea (usually peppermint or fruit) or mineral water. If I hadn’t been volunteering and seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed Declan would choose tea! Then they all go into an adjacent room for snack time.

Recycling bins right by the snack area

For 40 minutes the group eats up the rolls, giant pretzels or apples brought from home and they hold their little snack box on their laps. As they finish, the kids return to the room (unsupervised) for more play - the teachers stay with the stragglers who aren’t finished yet.

A handful of kids are then pulled each day to do a craft and the Vorschulkinder (kids who will enter first grade next year) meet 2-3 times a week for 15 minutes of numbers/letters/patterns. The philosophy is that children need kindergarten to hone their social skills, academics happens in first grade. After his first week, Declan came home grumbling, “Mama, all we do is play all day. Where are the desks? When are we going to learn?” The atmosphere is very Waldorfish and there is no pressure to join in any certain activity. Kids decide for themselves. As a parent, I was wondering what he was doing all morning because no onslaught of papers and crafts was coming home. Occasionally I’d see new things up in the hall and Declan would point out his. Apparently, the teachers gather it all up and at the end of the year, you get a binder full of your child’s projects.

Some days they have recess (at the teacher’s discretion), then shake hands again and then I pick him up at 12:30. Thanks to MGIS, our girls were prepared German-wise, but Declan struggled with communication the first few weeks. I’ll admit, I had to come up with some incentives to get us through that rocky patch.

Now, he loves it--especially the independence the kids enjoy – one of the games they can choose during free time involves hammering little nails through geometric wooden shapes onto a cork board! So far they’ve had one field trip when they walked to a nearby farm and learned about the potato harvest.

The big highlight of the fall is of course the Laternenacht. Traditionally, the classes meet in the village Catholic church (No one objects to the overlap with the church), there’s a short play and some of the kids nearly say their lines, then St. Martin comes on horseback and as the legend says, splits his soldier’s cloak to share with the beggar. Then the parade around town (30 minutes!) is accompanied by all the familiar Laterne songs. The evening wraps up with a bonfire and huge buffet back at church. Just like at MGIS, it is a magical night!

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Das Haus

New kickstand location

We've been here in Neumarkt 3 months now and feel genuinely settled. We've discovered which light switch does what, what's in that drawer and what happens if I push this button? Some things exist in the States but are just new-to-us (underfloor heating, a motion - sensor radio). Other things fascinate us like this little gem - a built in bread slicer, conveniently tucked away in a cupboard. The blinds are different too -installed on the outside of the windows, they serve three purposes: blocking out ALL light when completely down, insulation against heat and cold and safety. Built in closets aren't very common here. Most homes have freestanding wardrobes or cabinets.

The toilet is not even in the same room as the bathroom. This is quite convenient in the AM rush out the door! When we lived in Kiel, we knew of several friends living in Altbau buildings in which a bathroom/toilet wasn't even in the apartment! It was in the stairwell, half a flight down and usually shared with another apartment. One friend installed a shower stall in his hallway right next to the kitchen. Good thing he lived alone! Now though, our circle doesn't include as many poor students with budget apartments so I'm not surprised that we haven't seen that in the village we live in now which is bursting with young families.

I imagine this is what Julia Roberts enjoyed in Pretty Woman

Our kitchen fridge is a large dorm size and we've gotten into the local habit of going shopping every couple of days. This house has a dryer which certainly isn't a given. All our years in Kiel, we just hung our clothes up on a drying rack. Oh yeah, I am well-acquainted with crunchy towels, baby! I haven't quite been able to make friends with this dryer though. There are 3 versions of dry that you can choose from: Bugeltrocknen (Iron dry), Schranktrocknen (Cupboard dry) and Extra-Trocknen (extra dry). Well, we've tried them all out and in order, they get the clothes approximately not dry, half dry, and 87% dry. Hmm, so even though I'm cleaning the lint trap and emptying the water drawer -- it's a "condense" dryer-- simliar to a dehumidifier, our clothes still feel damp so I've either been hanging them on a drying rack or running them in the dryer a second time. We toast our bread twice as well, right? When in Rome...

In general though we love:

All this space! Our home in Milwaukee is 1450 square feet and here we enjoy just under 2,200 square feet. This does NOT include the basement (guest room, fitness room, bathroom, laundry room and three more storage rooms!) We haven't paid the heating bill yet though....
The neighborhood! I walk Emma and Declan to school, the kids play worry free in the street and there are kids their age right and left. I have yet in all this time to hear a siren -- could I even say that for one whole week in Milwaukee?
The view! We have a playground bordering the backyard and this little insect motel to the left. Amazingly, very few homes have screens on their windows because bugs just aren't such a problem in this climate.
The sauna! Officially it's an Infrarotkabine and Andrew and I love it. We feel all Scandinavian every time we use it. My parents tried it out too!
A personal library! The Grafs are both English teachers and I absolutely love the volume and variety of English books that are just a short stroll across the room away. As wonderfully exhilarating as this exchange is, sometimes my brain is just done and it's nice to check out with something in my native language!
Confession time - there is one other thing, a little secret, we've inherited from the Grafs... her name is Frau Ullmann. Of course, this wasn't our idea and we don't enjoy coming home to scrubbed floors and sparkling bathroom fixtures. Well, the disappearance of various spider webs is a bonus. Ok, and a magically clean microwave is pretty great too. Alright, we love Frau Ullmann but don't tell! It's our little secret ... and the fact that I clean up like crazy before her arrival is too!