somewhere between facebook and flickr sits fiona

Hey Willie Wallacky, it's International Day!

2012-01-31T11:36:00.002Z

There was a wee cooper that came from Fife
Nickety nackety noo noo noo.

Jings! It's no International Day already, is it? Awa'! As much as I would like to blog in the style of The Broons or Oor Wullie, I just can't keep it up. I seem to be heading down a wee Scottish blogging vein these days. Can't be helped with International Day coming right up behind Burns Night. I didn't get the email about International Day from the school until one of the other parents started talking to me about how she was "bagsying shortbread" as her international food, and when I didn't dive in with a "No way! That's not fair!" she realised that I hadn't been informed that we were going to have to bare our Scottish roots for all to see, and unleash our spectacular(ly bad) Scottish cooking on a class of innocent tiny children.

You'd think our house would be awash in tartan breeks (trousers) and sporrans, but we appeared to be a tartan-free zone much to my horror. The quest as revealed in the forwarded email was to send your child to school in their national dress, bearing some home-made foodstuffs from their home country (enough for all to try and with a comprehensive list of ingredients supplied). Not exactly easy, but I quickly Googled 'How the hell do I make a kilt when I can barely sew', and then swiftly chucked that idea and wondered whether I could pretend we were half-Greek and just wrap her in a sheet in some approximation of a toga, and sling a can of Irn-Bru into her rucksack. And I was more than disappointed to discover that there isn't an Edinburgh Woollen Mill in every town in the world. My mother does not believe this and says there MUST be one in Berlin - God knows, there's a market for it, they like their hellish-looking knitwear here too. And by Sunday night I would have run into any one of their 6 billion UK branches, launched a bag of cash at them and bought anything that I could have squeezed Orla into.

Instead though on Saturday I had to face the awful truth that I was going to have to make something. So I decided to make life as easy as possible for myself and take them literally, for I made her a national dress. My process leaves a lot to be desired. There were no patterns involved; just a lot of freehand drawing on the fabric (which I couldn't help thinking would make lovely cushions) with my expensive artists pastels (I appear to be lacking dressmakers chalk, but anyway, pastels come in much prettier colours) and confident if mis-judged cutting.

By Sunday, I had most of a smashing tartan dress that even Houdini would struggle to get on and off. Using my best imagination I decided I would construct *something* using multiple pieces of elastic and buttons that would have enough 'ping!' about it that a 4 year old could get all their wobbly awkward limbs through. I thought it was going to be a work of genius; there were moments when it was starting to look like something you could patent, and then after one shoulder contraption was finished I tried it on the reluctant model again and realised it looked crap. Plan S (by this point) was sew it up, hide the mess of elastic, and work on having one shoulder strap open with a button. I saved that until last night. Which was also the point I had saved to learn how to use the automatic button-holer on my sewing machine. 2 hours later I had it! Wey hey! Go me!

I daren't even tell you how badly the making of the potato scones went. Pity the poor wee kiddies having to eat them....

*UPDATE*
We were able to collect my mum's parcel from the Post Office today that was meant to save my bacon. Alas, it was too late for Orla, but at least I have a very happy boy!

Help ma boab, Hamish! Yer roots are showing!

Michty me! Some links:
DC Thompson shop (publisher of The Broons & Oor Wullie)
How to make a kilt
Scotland's other National Drink - Irn-Bru

Tae a haggis supper...

2012-01-25T15:10:00.003Z

It's Burns Night! You know Robert Burns, don't you? Famous Scottish poet? From my home town (well his house is a 15 min walk along the road from my mum & dad's; not that he's in much, it's mostly full of American tourists these days). Anyway, tonight's his night.

Would you recognise him better if I stuck him on a tin of shortbread?

The 25th of January is Rabbie Burns' birthday. He's 262 years old today. Luckily we Scots don't celebrate this marvellous event with a cake and candles. Instead there will be Burns Suppers happening the whole world over, where you'll see many a kilt, a wee dram or two, and a hell of a lot of haggis being spoken to and stabbed with a dagger, or a knife (whatever's to hand).

Haggis is possibly the most famous Scottish food most people can think of. It's made up of sheeps heart, liver, and lungs (all minced), mixed with oatmeal, onion and suet (and seasoned) traditionally encased in the lining of a sheep's stomach. Nowadays though they tend to come in the kind of casing that they put sausages in, but you can still get your hands on a proper one in the butchers. Being of a 'faddy' type myself, I must admit I am not a fan of haggis. Never have been. And haggis is tradionally served with neeps (turnip) and tatties (potatoes, usually boiled) and I was never much fond of those two things either, so I suspect most Burns nights I have dined on toast.

Seeing as I am not really one for traditional Scottish fare, it might not surprise you to learn that I won't be boiling up a haggis for 3 hours this evening (or microwaving it, as I understand you can do these days), nor will I be popping out for 4 of these....

from:The Art & Mystery of Food

the traditional ye olde (deep fried in batter) Scottish haggis supper, available at all good Scottish chip shops, because beside the fact I don't like it, they're quite hard to get your hands on here. I am told that the KaDeWe don't stock them (shocking, isn't it?), but you can get them tinned in Broken English, the British shop here in Berlin. Tinned almost has as much appeal as deep fried in batter, doesn't it?

No, we won't be having haggis tonight. Indeed, shame on me, I only realised it was Burns Night when I was wished a happy one this morning when I met a friend for coffee, and we had already made our dinner plans for this evening. You see, Stevie's gone off to Derby for a few days, and we've been left the car, so in fact, dare I say it... we're heading to IKEA for some decidedly un-Scottish Swedish meatballs!*

* As my just desserts for this heinous crime, I am going to be spending the next few days sewing a kilt for Orla to wear to 'International Day' at school on the 30th. Never having made a kilt, I have high hopes for how it might turn out!

The art of procrastination (in a morning nutshell)

2012-01-24T13:27:00.000Z

I woke up knowing that I have some forms to fill out. Once I get Orla's packed lunch made and her breakfast out, and roll into bed with Hamish for his morning cuddle while she eats, then it'll be time to get her dressed and off out the door, and get Hamish fed and dressed. Only once that's done, and usually once Hamish is off to Kita (but not today) then my day starts. And I remember that I have to get these forms filled out.

I am walking from the kitchen to the living room when I glance at the table and see what I was working on last night. It wouldn't hurt to just paint a little more in while I am still in the mood and feeling enthused. It's the sort of thing that you can paint in small amounts anyway, so maybe just a little bit. You know what? I should really take some photos of this. I should send something to Sarah because all she's had is that teeny sketch, and it might have been hard to visualise. Ah, my battery needs charging. I should sort that out now while I remember. Which reminds me that I need to charge my phone as well. Where have I left it. Must be in my bag.

I'll just charge my camera battery for a short time while I make coffee so that I can take a quick photo to upload. Oh, is that some Schoko leibniz in the cupboard. Gaarrgh...yes it is, but they've been sitting since last summer, and gone all soft.I might as well clear out this cupboard first. Ok, so, coffee. Then I'll just get this photo done and uploaded, and then I can do those forms.

Should I just do those flags? I should. probably. Because it's going to annoy me not knowing if that red is going to work or not. I should just do it. Ok, so upload and get it into the secret album on Facebook. I'll just check my notifications and emails first. Let's see if there's anything happening on my Fionagray.paints facebook page. Ugh. Nothing. No wonder I haven't posted on the blog for ages. Might as well just do a quick one with this picture while I know where it is. Just a quick one. It will take no time at all. Oh, my stats are up! I wonder why? Oh there are links from Pinterest, I wonder if it's anyone I know, I'll just take a look and see and quickly check if there's anything new that catches my eye.

20 minutes later. I should get on to those forms, but I should just check my email first. Orla needs 'national dress and food' for International Day on the 30th. I bet that Tam O'Shanter hat is in a drawer in her room. Maybe later I should take Hamish down to Idee and see if I can buy some tartan fabric to make her a kilt. Snack time. Which means peeling a cucumber and chopping it into lumps for Hamish. I'll have some of that nice cheese that Lynne recommended. I should send her a quick text and thank her for Sunday. Which reminds me, I need to wrap Ofek's birthday present and see if I have a card somewhere. Really should go to Idee after I fill out these forms, because I am pretty sure I'll need a card.

Interlude to make a track for Hamish and his trains. Back to the table to finish the ribbon on the present. Those flag poles are going to annoy me. I must at least get rid of all the white space on this picture. Then I'll be able to put it out of my head until this evening. I consider whether I should outline everything in pen once this is finished or just leave it. I would do it now except for the fact that I know I am going to rework the hill sections so that they look more blended. I might need a finer nib pen because didn't all of mine run out before Christmas when i was trying to draw on some surface that just sucked the ink out of them? i must get to Idee later. Or maybe a grey pen would work better than black. I check how fine the ones I bought in that chemists are. That would be great actually. Right. Flag poles and then forms.

My blood sugar feels a bit low. How can it be lunch time already? I'll get Hamish ready and we can nip round to Nah und Gut for something for the lunch. God, my blood sugar is really low. I might peg out before we get there. I eat a bar of chocolate and then decide just to make ham sandwiches. We can go out in a bit. I haven't even put on any make-up yet. I'll do that now. And then sort those clouds. And put on a DVD for Hamish. And maybe get those forms done. I should blog about this. It'll only take a minute and he's watching Thomas the Tank Engine anyway. I could do those forms when he has a nap. If he has a nap. Or I could do a bit of painting. While there's a bit of light.

The less you care, the happier you will be.

2012-01-20T20:50:00.000Z

bear sea rescue.

God, I was in a foul mood. But, today I feel good. Very good!

I am working on solving Hamish's Kita problem out one way or another. All the hitting which I have spoken to the Kita about over the past few months is getting Hamish down, and the final straw seems to be his best pal smacking him one in the face. I get it. So, it's all in hand. I'm going to speak to the Kita manager on Monday; I would really like them to sort this out once and for all because the staff are nice, and there are people working in Hamish's class who I really like. There are others I have less time for, so if it comes to it I will strike a deal with them where every time my son gets hit, spat at, bitten, punched, I get to do the same to the staff member of my choice. I can see her with the Sport form getting a bit of a raw deal... ha, ha!

But seriously, if this isn't something they feel they can resolve then I will just remove him completely and find somewhere else. This little episode has made me feel much better about the prospect of returning home. And in actual fact I feel more at peace with whatever outcome we end up with. Whatever happens will be fine.

I am still making plans for the possibility that we get an extension to our secondment, and still making plans for if we decide to stay on without the secondment extension, and now I am making plans for if we go back to Derby. Admittedly, the return to Derby plans come down to me having a darn good think about what colour I am going to paint the walls (very, very pale grey?) and where I might have a plate wall, and whether I could talk Stevie into a carpet the colour of purple heather. It's hardly major life decisions... unless you count being stuck with a really bad carpet colour choice for quite a few years.

Having a bad Wednesday? We have a form for that.

2012-01-18T11:51:00.001Z

{This post is punctuated with my favourite gloomy photos of Berlin just to cheer me up*}

I made a fool of myself this morning by crying at Kita.

Hamish was screaming like a banshee and I had been wrestling his coat and boots off of him while trying to talk calmly to him. But that wasn't working and as I was putting his stuff in his cupboard and closing the lock he was screaming at my heels and unlocking it and grabbing all his belongings back again.

Normally, this wouldn't happen. it's never normally as bad. But today was a screaming and howling all the way there kind of a day, and normally even if this did happen I would have the time to sit and cuddle him and make him feel better, and the time to get him settled and playing and looking for his little friend.

Today however, I had to get back to the apartment as quick as possible in order to wait in for a guy coming to change the water meters. And of course, because the child-to-staff ratio is so high here, there wasn't anyone who could help me just deal with Hamish.

So I ended up shouting "Enough!", which caused all the other mothers to stare at me - honestly, do German mothers never shout at their children?, which made me feel like some kind of foreign outcast, and then after some more screaming, calm talking, and further wrestling of coats and boots from tiny, claw-like, vice-gripping fingers, I gave up.

I was running out of time, and I had to get home. So, I told Hamish just to get his boots back on, and I helped him on with his coat, and it was at this point (with parents still staring at me), that one of the staff came up. I said 'I must go', and figured she knew the score. Instead she started lecturing me about why I hadn't handed the form back in for Hamish to do sport. I tried to explain that I was having 'some difficulties' and that I ~~couldn't give a crap about~~ didn't have the Sport form. No kind words; no "He'll be fine here"; no "Let me take him so you can go"; just "Why have you not completed the Sport form?".

So I cried. And I left. On the plus side, it's a reminder that it's not all good times and lovely living here. There are still times when I feel like such a total outsider here that the prospect of going back to the UK in five months is a comfort. If it comes to the point whereby we know we are definitely going back and I am having serious second thoughts about it, I think I might take myself to the Burgeramt and apply for a new parking permit or something without having all the correct paperwork with me. That should sort that out.

{*Should you wish to flick through a few more of my photos, dreary or cheery, feel free to visit my flickr page}

Before every party, I Google my guests

2012-01-16T09:59:00.000Z

The spy who went out in the snow.

Ssssshhhhhh..... the neighbours might be listening!

There are moments when I think that it would have been wise to have thought about this whole blog thing prior to starting it off. At times I have my regrets that I have used my own name and used photos of myself and the kids and all that malarky, and obviously if I had done that I could talk about anything I like without worrying about people I know either Googling me and finding out things about me that I wouldn't really want them to know, and I could have a good old moan about all the people who thoroughly annoy me, and I could talk about other things that I'd like to talk about but which I am rather reticent to because I want to keep some things a little more private.

But I didn't. And it's not that big a deal really. Sometimes though there are little moments when people say things to me and I jolt thinking, "How did you know that?". Sometimes I am surprised by the people I know from real life who read my blog. It's never who I think it would be.

Last night I spent some time trying to find out how strangers see my 'timeline' on Facebook. That was a whole lot of not much fun. For yesterday afternoon we went to a New Year/New Baby/New Neighbours party (yes, really, it was 3 times the fun) downstairs in our building. And about 30 minutes after we arrived the hostess and I had the opportunity to chat for a bit and her opening line was "I know your daughter is at the British School, but your looking at ###### School, aren't you?".

I couldn't help but be shocked and ask "How did you know that?". There was a slight pause and then she gave me an answer which didn't really answer my question, and eventually took it off topic. I could have pressed her, but my brain had already bolted back upstairs and was logging into Blogger, searching posts for references to this. It was just my body that was locked into being polite, and stayed drinking coffee for a while longer, and comparing apartment sizes with the rest of the neighbours.

For there is no way that this woman should know this. I haven't mentioned my plans to any of my neighbours, and I don't believe that we share any friends that would have mentioned this fact. So, the first thing I did once we got home after stopping Orla from crying, getting Hamish a drink, making the dinner, getting the kids ready for bed and settling Hamish down, was check out my blog and when I found no reference there, I checked Facebook. And then I considered that the apartment might be bugged. (Which led to some really bad dreams)

So, I might be a little more cagey about what's happening with us and our staying/going/relocating plans for a while. At least until things are little more settled.... and I have checked the lightswitches for tiny microphones.

Thinking outside the brown cardboard box

2012-01-10T19:58:00.000Z

'Heaven knows I'm miserable now'

'You've got everything now'
(and for a bonus point, name the album which I have never owned but am strangely referencing in these captions)

The decorations in our house are down; the Christmas markets have been dismantled; and yet yesterday, for one day only, it was Christmas once again. For finally our big, annual box of Christmas goodies arrived. And there's nothing more fun than opening a giant box of presents you have already opened when you haven't seen them but have longed for them for ages* (*or just over a week which can seem like ages to a 3 and 4 year old.).

This year we shipped one box less than last year. Not for any reasons pertaining to the recession, but because Stevie is starting to resist allowing new things into this apartment given our potential return to the UK in just under 5 months time. Still, very little can dent the joy of enthusiastic parcel receivers like Orla, Hamish, and myself, and we were more than satisfied.

The only dampner on the day was the news from work headquarters that we may not be able to request a years extension to our secondment. Stevie, immer upbeat, says that "this just provides us with more options". But still, I feel a little sad. I am just not ready to go back to Derby.

While I do miss my friends from there, I now feel like I have some really good friends here. People who I not only want to keep as my friends for years to come, but also whom I wish I had been able to have met sooner. People who share my new, altered view of the world; people who understand how awful & amazing all at the same time it is to live here and make me laugh like mad about it; people who...I am beginning to feel settled with. And the thing is that I would miss them terribly in a way that I didn't have to miss my Derby friends, because then I was departing on an unknown adventure, and the excitement of that offset those feelings, whereas a return to Derby feels like a trip into the known, and not much of an adventure at all.

BUT, of course there are things about a move back that I would love. So in fact, I am not wholly against the idea. In fact, let's face it, the fact alone that I have known that I would/could return is the reason I have been able to enjoy my stay in a foreign land so much. I could never deny that I have adored my little safety blanket.

And now, we have options. And more than likely over the course of the next few months, I'll start talking about what those are for us. In the mean time, my job is to investigate them and see which ones would realistically work for us as a family. And options are good, for in the very least I will have loads of big brown boxes to open somewhere, be it in Derby, Berlin, or somewhere in between.

New Years Intentions

2012-01-03T14:13:00.001Z

Apparently only 12% of all resolutions made are achieved. That's not that hard to believe really. The top 5 resolutions year on year seem to be 1. Lose weight; 2. Save money; 3. Fall in love/get married; 4. Read more books; 5. Keep an notepad of awesome moments. Most people, well, Americans - they were the ones who were surveyed, but I'm going with it, give up after the first 2 months. I've read this year that some people are making lists of 'New Years Intentions': a thoroughly modern idea for the commitment-phobic amongst us. And perfect for those who can't deal with failure.

My own list of failures featured on my last blog post is likely to roll over into 2012. Apparently this is NOT good working practice. You are meant to scrap anything that you didn't achieve, and start afresh. Though re-phrasing seems to be allowed. So, if for example you failed to shift that 30lbs last year, this year you could say that you "intend to eat healthier/take more exercise" - see that "intend" in there? I am so very modern in my commitment-phobic-realistic-goal setting.

I haven't really got any strong feelings for resolutions-slash-intentions for 2012. Instead Stevie has been making some for me. Aside from that I have had a few thoughts that may end up being resolutions.

1. Lose 5kg. This is Stevie's 'Happy New Year. Here's a resolution for you' idea. I would like to lose some weight and he has said that if I do it he will buy me an iPad. (We do love incentive schemes in our house!) As yet we haven't negotiated on the memory it'll come with, I feel there's plenty of time for that, dear reader, oh yes. It seems that 'thinking thin', my previous strategy lacks any kind of proof that it works. So I may actually have to do something *shudder* to make this happen. I hate to say it, but I have my fingers crossed for a really bad stomach bug....

2. Blog less, do more. It would be nice, wouldn't it? I noticed when I was in Scotland over Christmas that I didn't miss it, and didn't feel like I had anything that I was bursting to blog about. In fact, I quite revelled in the additional time I had when I wasn't stuck to a computer. Though now that I've typed that I realise that if I gained an iPad (see resolution no.1) then my online time is likely to surge, not decrease. Ah well, I can't succeed at everything. But in fact, the thing which led me to this idea was that Stevie keeps talking about how we will potentially be moving back to Derby in May. Yes, I know, it's making me panic too. But while I was lying awake in bed worrying about that prospect, I also thought that if that happens I will stop blogging. When I announced this to Stevie he seemed to think I was just full of the 1st of January blues. But the truth is if we were to go back, I am not sure beyond the initial horror of repatriation shock and settling back in, that I would have anything to blog about. You know? Obviously though I would pick it back up again when we realised we hated being back (despite the wondrous supermarkets, M&S, year-round sales, English speaking people, tv on tap, etc, etc) and move to Canada.

3. De-clutter. Last year I wanted to get rid of all the remaining baby stuff. I think my plan was to start using German eBay and the first thing I wanted to sell was the highchair. This year I am totally vowing to sell the highchair. As handy as it is for holding coats in Hamish's little bedroom, it's got to go. It may also be a fond farewell to my Phil & Ted's, two cotbeds, and a whole lot of toys that are too young for both of them. The toys drive me to distraction. every time I embark on a clear-out, O & H decide to start playing with the stuff again. It will have to be done in the dead of night. Oh and here's another one: I vow not to feel even the tiniest pang of guilt this year when I hoover up every last Playmobil flower that I come across. Seriously, do they make those just to drive mothers mental?

And that's about it. Doesn't sound too unattainable, does it? What are your goals for 2012?

somewhere in amongst 2011

2011-12-19T16:44:00.000Z

When exactly does life change from a year taking an interminably long time to pass, to each year zipping by to the point where you are in December saying to yourself "But January was only a little while ago and I haven't even done anything yet!!"? I can't remember when this might have occurred. It seems to be somewhere between my teenage years where I simply couldn't wait to be 14, 15, 16, 17 all the way up to 22, and now. Was it having kids? Do they do this to you? Probably. I am pretty sure they are to blame for the wrinkles under my eyes too.

And so, here I am at nearly the end of 2011 and I'm not sure that I have actually managed to get much done. Why, I haven't even finished tidying up yet! I'm pretty sure there is ironing still to be done from 2010. (Actually, I have barely ironed since 2007, but I like to keep up a pretence of domesticity, so stick with me on 2010 at least).

I went and had a peek at my 'somewhere...somehow...' list of things I wanted to get done in 2011 to see how many/few* (*delete as appropriate, or maybe not as I don't want to be seen as a complete procrastinator - and that's putting it nicely). So what exactly have I done? Not much it would seem at first glance from the list. Things will definitely be sliding on to my 2012 list. Here's a quick recap:

improve my cooking skills
Well, I tried. Honest I did. And I think I have gotten marginally better. At the very least I would say we are eating FAR less pork than we started out on when we moved here. And that is something we are all VERY grateful for.
learn to properly use my camera
Alarmingly, I have only got very slightly better with my camera. I was so very chuffed with my attempts at tilt-shift effects (not even done on the camera but in Photoshop!), that I got a bit lazy. I have started using different settings on it though and I adjust my exposure more, but still... oh, and I don't think that I really have improved over the course of my 365/Photo-a-day project which is what I heard would happen. Bah humbug.
enrol on an evening course for something creative (in German)
Well, not an evening course, but I did go on a sewing course - I still want to go to pottery classes.
take my sewing machine OUT OF THE BOX and learn to use it
Yes! I did! See above. At the lovely sewing cafe Kinkibox in Friedrichshain and while my skills are limited, I did still make a dress for Orla.
make cushions for the living room
No. I haven't even got the fabric. Maybe next year....sigh.
sort out my horrible hair
Well, I have certainly had some hair cuts and highlights this year with varying degrees of success. I *thought* I had it sussed by finding an English hairdresser at Toni & Guy in Berlin. At the moment my hair is brown...but it seems to have been done poorly and already is fading out a bit and showing where my old highlights were. Will I never be hair-happy here???
No.6 I haven't many photos of the brown hair with fringe.
read more books
Oh yes! I really have! And I am so pleased with that. I still go to bookgroup as well. I didn't bother with the BBC's Big Read list as I knew I wouldn't either be able to complete it, or give up on it - do I really want to read a stack of Jacqueline Wilson books?? Not overly. But I have managed 35 so far!
get to at least B2 level in German
Alas no. I stopped for a ahem...short break at the beginning of B1 and haven't returned. I may go back if we get an extension.
set up an etsy shop
The shop is set up, there's just nothing in it yet. Total laziness on my part. No excuses.
travel round Germany - Regensburg, Bamburg, Augsburg
We saw a good bit more of Germany this year. Our summer break took us right down to the south and we worked our way back via Wiesbaden, Frankfurt, Stuttgart on the way home.
see at least 4 other German cities - Hamburg, Munich,
Yup. Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and I can't even think where else. But I know I did.
earn some money from illustration - take part in Kunst Supermarkt 2011
Well, I have sold some prints this year, just not through my etsy shop or through Kunst Supermarkt. So a partial success I think.
start a 365 photo/sketch blog
Tickety tick! Not only did I start and pretty much complete (I have no idea how I am missing 20+ photos) my Flickr 365, but I have also maintained my fiona gray . paints blog and FB page.
do something different - The Night of the Jumps - The Harlem Globetrotters
Yes. And I have to say it's been lovely having the opportunities on our doorstep to do this. We plan on trying more things next year too. Starting with 'going to a show' - I have been to theatres and things but variety and these sort of Blue Man Group shows, never. It's time to try it, I think.
make a concerted effort to do more artwork
As no.13 says - yes. It's all here.
paint Orla's dolls house in pretty colours
Yes. I think I got that done quite early in the year. Best to start with an easily achieveable one, eh?
hang pictures on the living room walls
Hmm... I have hung a couple, but the reality is that our walls are huge and our pictures look silly and far too small. But I have hung my Tiel Sievl-Keevers 'Patch Apple' and some artwork by Orla that I framed.
get a lovely photo taken of the kids
I kept meaning to get my friend Sarah to do this for me, but I kept forgetting. But I did like my photos of the two of them jumping on the bed rather a lot.
make that Cath Kidston handbag!
Not done. I keep looking at it and I immediately think: "I will rush this and make a complete mess of it. " And so it slips into 2012. Maybe I'll start with that.
get round the Berlin museums and galleries - the Kennedy Museum, the Bauhaus Archiv, the Jewish Museum,
Yes! Since my holiday from German classes I have managed to see an awful lot more than I ever could do with the kids in tow. So nice! I have a list of places to visit in 2012 already. Can't wait.
make some kids duvet covers and pillowcases
No. Of course not. I blog. How would I have time for that????
get more organised - cupboards, toys, clothes, etc
Marginally. I have given stuff (clothes) away to friends, books to the school, cleared out a few cupboards, but *still* haven't done the toys because the kids keep playing with the things I think they are finished with. Orla has just re-adopted the Fisher Price house for Polly Pocket and her friends who will be joining her at Christmas. I must be stricter about doing this (preferably before Christmas, but who am I kidding??)
sell things on German eBay, starting with the highchair!
No, but I have nearly bought stuff on german eBay. I have at least changed my account settings. I am getting rid of that highchair in 2012 FOR SURE!!!!! It is currently being used to hold coats in Hamish's little bedroom.
have just a little bit of a nice bright colour in my hair
No. And I am kind of going off this idea. Probably won't happen. I can imagine getting fed up of it fading and having to re-do it.
find a good babysitter & have a night out with JUST Stevie
YES! YES! and thrice YES! In fact we have had 3 different babysitters. Our first and male babysitter is moving to Ireland in january, so we have started using the girl of Hamish's dreams before she goes to Uni next September, and then last week we used our neighbours daughter after speaking to her mother who said she was looking for babysitting work. It wasn't until she arrived to do it that we found out she was 13!!!! Luckily, they live literally across the hall, so her mum was on hand, and I guess she probably had most of the same toys as the kids..... :-S
do more creative things with the kids
Oh, yes. And it's so traumatic to me as they rip and manically glue and glitter that I can't even bring myself to talk about it.
have my nails done
Alas, no. A definite for 2012 I think.
do more cooking/baking with the kids
Yes. With really quite ugly, unappetising results most of the time. But we've done lots and they really enjoy it, and Orla eats more dinner if she's involved in the making of it and gets to taste along the way.
look after a plant & not kill it
Still not my forte. I've tried. But I am sticking with cut flowers. My fake orchid is still doing well though...
to read ~~the rest~~ some (I've read 38 so far) of the '100 book challenge' listed on Facebook. I can't read 62 (when it includes War & Peace) in a year.
Not a one. But I have read lots of books. See no. 7 for details.
cycle more after winter, to the point I consider 1 of those trailers for the kids
Oh yes, I cycled. And every time I had one of the kids on the back moaning about it, I hated it. The sooner they can both cycle unaided the better. And I didn't get a trailer. Couldn't bear the thought of them both moaning away behind me.
read a novel in German
Ha! You're kidding right? I still have half of my book of German fairy tales to read. I have barely read a German newspaper - though to give me some credit (well very little really) I do occasionally buy German Elle Deco. But I'm much more of a fan of looking at the pictures unless something catches my eye.
...to be continued....
Yes, I think we can say it will have to be continued. Roll on 2012...I hope it brings less procrastination, more magic telly, speedier blogging (I spend far too much time on the internet), and good health and happiness to us all - you too fellow reader. Hope you had a lovely 2011.

Let's hope Santa is real

2011-12-17T08:47:00.000Z

Last year I was in a panic because I felt like I had left all my Christmas shopping until way too late, and the way things were looking it appeared I only had about 3 shopping minutes until Christmas, and that was going to have to be done in the airport. Toblerone, anyone?

But that was November. November! What I wouldn't give for November and all it's juicy shopping days now. But here we are, beyond mid-December, less than a full week until we fly back to the UK, and I am so behind schedule that even if there was a schedule, I might as well crumple it up into a ball and eat it.

It's hard to believe I am in a worse-organised situation than I was last year, but there you go. It's hard to emulate those people who announce on Facebook that they have completed all their Christmas shopping, have it all wrapped, cards written, and are sitting with their feet up drinking wine, and spraying the internet with their smugness at the beginning of November, when all I can do is feel sharp, stabby, feelings of hatred curdled with jealousy towards them. It's just not me either. How can you feel festive in December if you don't have the joys of frantic impulse shopping,very late night present wrapping, and glorious panic, if you have nothing left to do in December.

If only I had known that we would have had weeks of children (ok, child, but one is enough) with bronchitis and pneumonia, followed by visitors, followed by adult illness, horrid events, more visitors, more illness combined with a complete inability to actually undertake any task beyond trying not to appear to my guests like I might just drop to the ground... and there you have have it. A month where it might have been nice to not have to do anything.

Normally the internet is my friend. He saves my present-buying bacon time and time again. But I seem to be lacking the patience to trawl and price check and go back to other sites and blah, blah, blah. I have a pile of presents for my nieces sitting in a corner of the dining room that I should have posted at least last week. But I still need to find a box the right size and that seems like a task requiring too much energy and brain-time.

So, I am reaching a place where nausea and tiredness are taking over and strangely giving me an inner calm. I can hear them chanting "None of this really matters. Put the internet down, give the children all the Christmas chocolate you have gathered, and go and lie down in the bed beside the man with the raging temperature. And sleep.".

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

2011-12-12T09:18:00.001Z

But it's hard sometimes.

I have found myself lying to our neighbours in the past about our shopping. I don't know if it's because all of our neighbours tend to shop daily with bi-weekly trips to the market for fruit and veg, but none seem to do a weekly supermarket shop, and if any of them catch me unloading the car and loading the lift with a weeks worth of groceries they tend to have something to say about it. Most times I tend to get caught when we have visitors coming, and then I suppose we do have a bit more shopping to do, but with 4 adults and 2 kids (or more) in the apartment that's only to be expected, right?

The first time a neighbour commented on the quantity of shopping I was loading into the lift I felt really guilty. I have no idea why, it wasn't any more than a normal UK weekly shop - less even than a full trolley-load, but when someone actually says to you that you seem to have bought an extraordinarily large amount of groceries, well, I can't help but feel that I have somehow made an error. So I lied that time and said that we not only had friends staying for a week (true) but that was our groceries for the month, totally not true, but it seemed to satisfy her.

Anyway, we have friends staying with us again this week, and I went off to buy the shopping. I was just taking the last of the bags into the apartment and was heading out of our door and up to the lift when I saw our upstairs neighbour eyeing up our crate of beers. I said 'Hi!' and she said "That's an awful lot of beer!" in a quite accusing manner. I did that quick look across, look up multiplication and saw that I had bought a crate of 20 as requested, but still felt the need to say "We have friends staying for a week this week" - totally making sure I said friends in German in the plural. And she looked at the crate of beer in my hands again and said "That's still an awful lot of beer".

What can you do? I haven't the patience to even say in English "5 beers each does not make us alcoholics", so I just smiled and said goodbye.

Later that evening Lucy, our unlucky downstairs neighbour came upstairs to collect the kids to take them back to her apartment so that they could feed the cats. I have mentioned Lucy before as she is one of the 'Canadians' a race seemingly much loathed by the rest of our neighbours. I told Lucy about the beer thing. She told me that I'm lucky that they like me enough to even speak to me. They just get cheeky notes through their door and if they get a 'Guten Morgen' on the stairs then they're lucky. We don't really know what it is that has made our neighbours despise the various Canadians that have lived here, but maybe they shop and drink even more than we do. Good grief!

The Mr & Mrs Matching Coat Mystery

2011-12-08T15:29:00.001Z

How does this happen?

Mrs: "I want a green coat"
Mr: "Funnily enough, I was just thinking the same thing"
Mrs: "What style were you thinking of?"
Mr: "Oh you know something with a huge pleat from the top of the back, you know making it 'swingy', and long, with great drape. Lichen? What were you thinking? Lichen or moss?"
Mrs: "No WAY! Oh that's freaky. Do you want a fur collar too?"
Mr: "Yeah, but make mine detachable, you know so we don't look like freaky twins."
Mrs: "I'll call our tailor"

I was just heading to the shops when I saw this lovely couple outside the KaDeWe. There are moments when I am glad I am lugging my camera around in my bag instead of other probably more vital items. I probably wouldn't even have noticed them had it not been for the huge darts on the back of their coats. But it made me wonder: where do people go to get his and her matching coats?

I'm not talking about the his and her Berghaus brigade. That's easy enough done. And I guess it wouldn't be too hard to rock the his and hers Burberry mac look, but these are like, proper normal winter coats. (Well, maybe not normal, but you know what I mean). Where are these shops? Or do you have to have a tailor?

It's a total mystery to me. And I'm not even going to start on the subject of why you would want to be wearing the same clothes as your partner.

2011: The year I wanted to lick my son.

2011-12-06T07:58:00.001Z

Farewell to longish lie-ins on Christmas.
I was woken at 5am by someone shouting "I need the front door open!"
For it is Nikolaus, the 6th of December, fill your boots with chocolate, don't confuse him with Santa, time.

Marek? Who is Marek??? Who cares. You had me at "hello".

I believe in Nikolaus. Mostly because this year he seemed to have been thinking of me too. The kids put their boots out just before they went to bed, and just before I went to bed I handily remembered that I had forgotten to fill them. That would have been a bummer for the early risers this morning. I would have had to have said that patently their behaviour hadn't been deemed good enough this year and empty boots meant that they were in for a darn good spanking. However, when I opened the door last night to my delight, the boots had already been filled! With Lindt Santas. And not just that. But 'Marek' above was sitting on the doormat. In true Cinderella style, I know Marek was left for me, because he fits in my boot. And as for all this sharing nonsense the kids are coming away with, well, it's funny how I only hear that word when they're not the ones skipping in circles up and down the hall, cradling their Santa-shaped-built-for-diabetics-who'll-happily-take-another-zillion-units-of-insulin-just-to-cover-this-breakfast. Uh-huh, you want to share? You can have the ribbon at the top.

Orla, who seems to have inherited Stevie's self-control has gone off to school with a small chocolate hippo (that would have been from me obviously - totally off-theme) which she's keeping until lunchtime. Hamish on the other hand, sat in a huff because he wanted to eat all the chocolate for breakfast and was being forced to eat at-least-some-toast before being let loose on a Lindt Santa. I don't know who he takes after to be honest. Must be some distant relation on Stevie's side...

There goes at least 50 cents worth down the drain.

And I can honestly say, this is the first time ever that I have thought "I'd quite like to lick your hands clean" and had to steel myself to say "Let's get you to the bathroom without touching ANYTHING on the way".

Links:
'The Local' gives the lowdown on Nikolaus (http://www.thelocal.de/society/20111206-15915.html)

But most of all, I don't want this...

2011-12-01T20:14:00.001Z

I just read on a blog about a gift giving service called GiveEmThis.com which uses your Facebook eh...'stuff ' to select presents for your friends and family... or yourself.

Sounds like my idea of fun! So I went on the site and allowed it access to all my details and ran myself through their ginormous computing might to see what the perfect gifts for me would be. After all, we need to test it's accuracy, right?

I have the feeling that status updates and comments on other people's statuses are not probably that indicative of the kind of gifts that you like. Unless of course each day your staus is something like "Today I would like a Kitchenaid mixer in ice blue".

Alas, I seem to talk about messenger pigeons quite a bit. I don't know why either, but there you go, I'm complex like that. But let me tell you what GiveEmThis.com came up with for me. Before you go getting your credit card out and asking for my delivery address, here's what I don't want.

Dear Santa,
I really would be quite saddened if you were to 'make' me:

This book: 'Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird' (I'm swithering on this, it could be a good read couldn't it? Actually having just looked at it on Amazon, it get's fantastic reviews - I shall post an excerpt of one review below)
Mermaid Songs (I have never heard mermaid songs, but I am 100% sure they would make my ears bleed)
Kushion Kraft Void Filling Paper (though it would be handy for packing the boxes I have to ship back after Christmas, but hey let's save that special one for Stevie to get me)
A Somalian 10 shillings rope edged coin on an 18" chain (honestly save the US delivery charges - they have this kind of crap in the Argos catalogue, and I would have a better chance of returning it)
4, yes 4, commercial sausage stuffers (Honestly how much sausage chat do I do???)
Palm Tree Crystal Necklace in Monkey with Banana Gift Box (I know it has crystals on it, but that's still not selling it to me)
A Huntingdon Snubber Hard - I don't know what that even is, but if you want to send me the $92 I will definitely, probably not, order this for myself. Sadly the link to buy it doesn't work.

But most of all, what could possibly make you think that I would ever want
a Solid Brass Rodent Jaw?

I wouldn't say no to the 48 Cadbury's Creme Eggs though. That would make up for having to send back all that other guff.

Need I say, this is not a sponsored post?

Excerpt from one Amazon review on the Pigeon book:
"Though I must also confess that the revolting chapter related to the gutting and lung-ing of squabs elicited a whole series of voluminous UGHS! and BLECHS! The mental picture you provided was gruesome enough to force me to consider going totally vegan.

The man who wrote his doctoral thesis on spider hearing was intriguing, can you write his biography too?

And you also left me wanting to know more about the man who wrapped himself in tinfoil to keep himself warm. Sally Bananas was fascinating and I was riveted by the chapter devoted to Mike Tyson. Despite never meeting him you captured something NO ONE has ever done before... You showed his subtle and poignant humanity and made me wish the whole world could know him THAT way. "

Sounds like a fun read, huh? I might suggest it to my book group.

Giveaway! on Fiona Gray . Paints!

2011-12-01T08:11:00.001Z

Come on over and 'like' my Fiona Gray . Paints Facebook page, leave a comment, and share the love, and you could be in with the chance of winning a lovely print!

: I dream of greeny

‎*GIVEAWAY!!* Now that Fiona Gray . Paints has 100 Facebook fans, it's time to celebrate with a GIVEAWAY! All you need to do is share the Fiona Gray . Paints page on your FB wall and encourage your friends to come along and 'like' too, then leave a comment on my FB page telling me you've done it and what your favourite Fiona Gray . Paints image is. Easy! *

The first person drawn out of the magic hat on Monday 5th December will win a lovely print of 'I dream of greeny' - my rainbow paint tubes (above). Then 2 lucky runners up will receive either a print of the green paint tubes ('The greeeenest of greens') or the blue paint tubes ('Blue in the face').

*P.S. All new followers who join before the 5th December and leave a comment with their favourite image will also be entered.

1000 steps... round the KaDeWe!

2011-11-22T09:40:00.001Z

Main: The Princess & the Pea window display. Inserts: Outside the KaDeWe. No matter the day there will always be a crowd outside waiting to get in at 10am.

It's Christmas time in the KaDeWe. Last week the windows were shrouded while the displays were perfected, but it didn't stop people trying to peek. The theme this year is 'fairytales', and it's been done beautifully. I couldn't wait to see the main foyer display. So I waited with the daily crowds (instead of going to the supermarket) and decided it would be the perfect time for another 1000 steps!

30 steps...

If you don't have a silver hand-held mirror that rests on a silver platter, then don't worry: they've got it! Christmas comes in all shades. These pale lilac baubles were rather lovely, though my camera hasn't quite captured their true colour.

Oh, and inside it's just lovely. The foyer is packed full of beautiful things. A zillion things that I wouldn't say no to. Admittedly, that would mean that my house would be chock-full of Christmas tree decorations and scented tealights, but I could be happy living like that. Especially those little tealights that smell like the essence of Christmas and come in the teensiest little ceramic casserole dish complete with lid. Oh, and they have a fine selection of festive fascinators - my favourite was a jaunty cup of tea with lovely ribbons, but I'm not sure if it would coordinate with my snowboots, so I've left it for now...

50 steps...

Main: birdcage and birdies, the tree of many baubles and Christmas products piled high. Inserts: Louis Vuitton boots, and the most gorgeously illustrated book of fairy tales. I esp. like the purple cover.

Enter into the world of eclectic prettiness. I have fallen for their gilt birdcages which are dotted around the outskirts of the foyer. They sit atop golden pillars, displaying little feathered or glass birds to clip on to the branches of your tree. Want, want, want...the whole lot. But the foyer complete with all it's overflowing displays is dominated by the KaDeWe's very own ginormous Christmas tree. It's the place to stop with your baby or your boyfriend and have your photo taken for your Christmas card, or more likely your FB profile pic.

300 steps...

For the girl who has nothing and wants everything: a crystal studded DeLonghi coffee machine; Red Westco scales: totally worth the money as turn them around and they're a CLOCK!; I do need a hole punch for Orla's school newsletters...

So I skipped the rest of the ground floor which is mainly populated with the cosmetics department and handbags. Which is nice and everything and there are probably more exclusive brands than you'd get in other department stores but really, most cosmetics departments have the same 'look' so I just bypassed it on my tour. The ground floor is also home to an outer perimeter walkway where there are lots of little individual stores. It's here that you can find Prada, Gucci, Tiffany & Co, Chanel, etc, and the lifts without a view. If you are in a rush, avoid the glass lifts in the central atrium, you'll be waiting forever.

I also skipped the 1st and 2nd floors. Menswear & Ladieswear. I couldn't be bothered and I thought I might run out of 'steps', so I went to the 3rd - home of bed & bath, childrenswear, hairdressing, and the creche of joy. But I haven't sorted my photos of it. I love the 3rd floor. I can never get tired of gasping at 50 euro Armani baby bottles, or choking over a completely plain tiny baby t-shirt that costs the same as a return flight to Scotland. And the creche, well I adore the creche and the 3 hours of FREE fun they allow me.

So onwards and upwards to the 4th floor - homewares. When I first arrived in Berlin my neighbour's famous words to me were "Buy your fruit, veg, fish, and meat from the market. For everything else there's the KaDeWe". As I couldn't find a single shop selling mops, I did what my neighbour said and went to the KaDeWe. Alas, while the KaDeWe have most things, they do not stock mops. Unless they are studded with diamonds...

500 steps...

They do have a 'My First Barbie' but I'd rather have one of these. Left to right: Van Gogh Barbie, Gustav Klimt Barbie, Sinatra Barbie, Elvis Barbie, Grace Kelly Barbie, and Farah Fawcett Barbie - all 50 Euros each - uh-huh-huh, ooohhh, yeah!

Next floor up and it's toys, stationary, books, and technology on the 5th. I love the toy department. It's not the best one I've ever been in, but it's nice. They have a great selection of Playmobil & Lego, and a lot of Steiff, and Haba, and their play food selection is to die for. Admittedly the play food is far more expensive than the real thing, but you are paying for cuteness, and eh..the creche staff wages.

Lego Santa is back in town; the glorious English-language section of Hugendubel in the KaDeWe; the big Steiff bear who costs more than your house is worth.

600 steps...

We're still on the 5th but we're round at the Hugendubel franchise. This is my usual first stop hangout when I drop the kids off at the creche. There is an English-language section - look that's it you can see right there! This is the place that is responsible for some of my stranger forays into literature. I just buy what they have that I haven't read. Especially as I haven't really been in the mood for crime since I got here, so I limit myself to 1 bookcase. But it's made me more experimental, and on top of that, there are seats where you can just sit and read as much of a book as you can in 3 hours and then put it back! Yay!

800 steps...

Hello! It's lucky you are protected by glass or I would throw myself at you.

Just one floor up on the 6th is the KaDeWe food hall. It's great. You'd like it. I promise. It's everything you could ever want at a price you can barely afford! There are unusual, hard-to-get-hold-of things and there are everyday things. I like the bread counter and the cake counter with the lovely little petit fours - they do the tiniest little chocolate eclairs that are only about 3 cm long and a cm wide, they have the broadest range of loaves I have seen this side of the city all displayed beautifully. There are little restaurant stands dotted throughout the food department which are on the ok-side of a-bit-dear. Stevie and I have frequented the Chinese restaurant a couple of times where you can watch your food being prepared as well as watching the world go by and it seems pretty reasonably priced. Really I want to be one of the people hanging out in the Moet bar at 10:30am, having a little glass of champagne while I meet a client. Those are my kind of meetings! Behind the Moet bar you can find the fresh fish; fresh to the point that some of them are in tanks so you can point to the one you want. Around this part of the food hall there are oyster bars which are always busy. Ah, oysters and champagne, or even oysters and beer...if only I liked oysters!

You can buy tea from giant ceramic urns, and choose wurst and cold meats from a massive selection. There are walls of sauces and condiments, a whole section dedicated to different chocolate companies including Godiva. And of course there's the 'American section' which I adore. But you could do all your regular grocery shopping here too. There are fruit and veg sections (see below) which stock everything that you could hope for. I read on someone else's blog that they didn't think people actually shopped there, but that in order to be a proper food hall it was a requirement. I can confirm that I have seen on quite a few occasions people buying potatoes or apples or in fact a whole shopping list of perfect quality produce.

The KaDeWe food hall. This bit has the more exotic things like baby pineapples and plantains, but you could also buy just a regular apple, onion, or orange round the corner.

1000 steps...

Part of the glass roof on a sunny, blue sky, November morning. The seasoning station where you can add herbs, oils, dressings, and spices to your lunch. Nice. Bottom: Dessert. Kids in the creche? Why, yes, I think I will have the strawberries!

From the 6th floor there is an escalator (or lift) which takes you up to the restaurant and bar on the 7th floor. (Just before you get on the escalator you should take a moment to admire the huge Brandenburg Gate which sits in a glass display cabinet. I never gave it too much examination before, but it turns out it's made of 50 kilos of marzipan and took 150 hours to make by hand) In the restaurant the food is displayed no-less beautifully than you would expect. Everything looks totally delicious. You can buy salads and so on by weight, there is a lovely selection of cakes, always at least two soups, and a wide range of hot meals all freshly prepared. But it is quite dear. You can however get perfect strawberries and cream all year round - but let's just say, you'll pay for that pleasure.

The restaurant itself is set in the roof of the KaDeWe and has great views from the giant arched window which faces out on to Tauentzienstrasse and Wittenbergplatz. You can also see the Fernsehturm from here which is the only place round this end of town that I have actually seen it from. But mostly it's nice just sitting under the glass roof, with a beer, and a new book, and two kids having a great time in the creche 4 floors below. Aaahhh.....

More photos on my Flickr

Advent calendars galore!!!

2011-11-17T13:35:00.001Z

Have you noticed the sudden glut of advent calendars on the market? When I was a kid you just got one where you opened the little doors each day and there was a different picture behind. That was pretty exciting. It was especially exciting if the door for the 24th was extra big. I could barely contain myself. As I was growing up I remember the introduction of advent calendars with chocolate in them. In fact I can still taste the horrid cardboardy taste of that awful brand Kinnerton. To give them their due, it says on their website that they offer a 'dairy-free' chocolate filled advent calendar (you can find a downloadable order form on their site). As I recall even way back in the 80's you'd be hard pressed to taste any dairy in that chocolate. Now maybe their recipe has changed since then and it takes much better, but I am in no rush to try. Especially when there are Milka advent calendars on the market. (Kids ones too - here)

Hello, I am made for mummies. Oh yes I am! That's why I am priced at Euro 13.99 - no way you're spending that on a kid. Plus I have more child-friendly versions for them. Cheaper too. Look you could hang me right beside your side of the bed. I have a lovely satin ribbon. Why not buy one for both sides of the bed to balance the room? He doesn't like chocolate anyway....

See? This is the one to get the kids (or maybe store under your pillow). It's only Euro 5.49. Not as pretty as the mummy one, but not as much chocolate either. 200g versus 329g...

Of course nowadays it is possible to even order your own branded advent calendars with chocolate in. And when I say 'branded' I mean YOUR OWN brand. You might need to order 1000 of them to get a good price £1.76 each per 1000 I saw somewhere, but you could sell them on to your friends, hand them out to promote ..eh...diabetes.... or just eat them all yourself. That would be 24,000 chocolates. You could build a little cairn around yourself and eat your way out.

Anyway, prepare yourself for some pretty awful photographs. I was in the toyshop and I wanted to sneakily take some photos of the new breed of advent calendar - those with gifts! Last year, we had 2 Playmobil advent calendars but I saw the range of alternate advent calendars on sale this year and I was very tempted.

Here we have a car construction one, followed by two Star Wars ones.

I have also saw a Hot Wheels one (ah, it's in the photo below) which I thought gave you a car behind each door but it's one car with lots of bits you can interchange. Not that great for the overall cost in my opinion, and no use really for anyone under 5 really.

Here we have some of the Lego advent calendars on the top (Hamish rather fancies the Lego Police one) and then the Hot Wheels one. On the second row you can see a couple of the Playmobil ones, followed by something to do with volcanoes and jungles and then the girl version with a unicorn. I have no idea what's in these. Bottom row: more Playmobil and the My Little Pony & Filly ones you can see better below...

I like the Lego ones, but what puts me off is the fact that they say "Other sets will be required to create this scene" or very similar wording to that effect. Really? Well, that seems like a bit of a swizz. Cause I would like to think that what you see on the box is what you get in the box. So what are you getting? A brick behind each door? Probably not much more than that. If it takes you longer than one day to create say the Christmas tree then that's just too much waiting for a child I'd say.

I am a big fan of the Playmobil ones, though I have noticed that they are a fair bit more expensive in the UK. At the moment you can get these for around Euro 12.99 in places like Kaufland. The toy shops are a bit more expensive at around Euro 14.99. This years' Playmobil themes are: Princess Wedding; Santa & Woodland Animals; Pirates; Dinosaur Expedition; Santa's Post Office; and the Knights one. In fact, I've just seen that most of these are reduced on the Playmobil.de website to Euro 11.99. Which is good, but if you add on the delivery charge you are back to the original price...might as well wait until after Christmas then buy one for next year in the Karstadt sale.

Finally here we have the My Little Pony and the Filly advent calendars.

Orla would love both of these. I did think about getting her the Filly one but it was Euro 19.99 (which seems to be the more or less standard price for these gift filled advent calendars) and it was just too expensive. Especially if I think about the fact that I would need to buy one for Hamish too. Euro 40 makes me kind of choke. Orla would probably also really like the Barbie one or the Littlest Pet Shop one (Both not pictured), but I thought they were kind of dear too.

So there's a lot of choice out there. Of course looking at these I can't help but think I should buy a nice wooden one with little drawers and fill it myself and use it year after year. There are loads of them here and they're all very pretty. So what would you choose?

Guardian article on advent calendars v selection boxes
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/poll/2011/nov/17/advent-chocolates-calendars-or-selection-boxes)

Advent calendars for cats (I know, this is truly mental, isn't it?):
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=advent+calendar+for+cats&x=0&y=0)

Gawd-awful Kinnerton advent chocolate:
(http://www.kinnerton.com/Products/Seasonal/ThisChristmas/CharacterConfectionery.aspx)

1000 steps from.... kita

2011-11-14T13:24:00.001Z

I undertook a little project this morning. The other day Morganmuffel of Anglo-Deutsch was set a little project by Linda of Dummy Text to walk one thousand steps from her front door and take photos every so often. Sounded like a fun idea to me. But seeing as everyone knows what me and the kids look like, our real names, etc, etc, I decided to preserve our last shred of privacy and not start at our front door. Instead I started at kita. So this is not far from where I live. Unlike Morganmuffel's and Linda's, mine is more like an architectural tour. However, it's a nice way to see parts of the city so I may do more of these setting off on different directions or from different locations in the future.

150 steps...

This is the Ellington Hotel. It's a vision of 1920's streamlined architecture. It's a lovely hotel, with what looks like lovely restaurants and very lovely modern rooms. At one point around this time last year they had a Veuve Cliquot bar which I could happily have whiled away the hours in. Alas, I didn't have the funds or the babysitter to be able to partake of this particular service. Along the side of the Ellington there are a few shops. My favourite is Florale Welten, a supremely stylish flower and 'lifestyle' shop which always has stunning displays.

200 steps...

Just a further 50 steps along from the Ellington Hotel is Peek & Cloppenburg's flagship Berlin store, a modern glass 'skirted' building. You'll see this in all the modern architecture books about Berlin. It is rather pretty. It was designed by Professor Gottfried Böhm, the only German to win the Pritzker award seen as the 'Nobel Prize' for architecture. Another building you'll see in the srchitecture books is Nike Town which sits diagonally across Tauentzienstrasse from Peek & Cloppenburg. Quite why it merits even a mention is beyond me, but then I'm no architecture expert. (You'll see it in a minute.)

220 steps...

Across the road from Peek & Cloppenburg (or rather in the bit in the middle of the two lanes of traffic on Tauenzienstrasse) you have a good view of the 'Berlin' sculpture, or the 'knot/spaghetti thing' as I call it. It was designed by Brigitte Matschinsky-Denninghoff and Martin Matschinsky in 1987, and is actually meant to represent a broken chain, showing the broken link between East and West Berlin. Today is the first time I have seen it in about 10 months or so. They removed it while they dug the living daylights out of the portion of land it sits on. But obviously they want to have it back in place in time for all the Christmas market tourists.

As you may be able to see from my ropey panorama above there's quite a lot going on in this part of town. From left to right: All the Christmas decorations are going up for the festive season. There are a couple of giant trees usually dotted along Tauentzienstrasse and Kurfurstendamm (which extends from Tauentzienstrasse). The KaDeWe (known as the Harrods of Germany) sits behind those trees, then we have Peek & Cloppenburg at the junction. Crossing over you can see the Berlin sculpture, and through that you can see (kind of) the Gedachniskirche, the famous bombed church which was left standing in ruins after the second world war. It is undergoing restoration work so it's under a lot of white panels (Follow the link if you want to see how it normally looks). If you head in this direction you end up on Kurfurstendamm, known to all as 'the Ku'damm', Berlin's famous boulevard in the West, where you can find all the designer shops. Moving further to the right you can see Nike Town, as I mentioned earlier. Is it just me, or is it nothing special? Anyway, most men like to drop by there when they visit. And then we finish up with a continuation of the street which leads you to the Berlin Zoo. Wikipedia says it is the oldest and best known zoo in Germany, and the most visited zoo in Europe. I imagine me and the kids have contributed quite substantially to that last stat.

350 steps...

Instead I wandered along Tauentzienstrasse towards the Ku'damm. Christmas is now officially on it's way! This morning along with all the street decorations being set up, all the Christmas market stands are being put in position and stocked up. The Christmas market around Breitshiedplatz and along Tauentzienstrasse and the Ku'damm is, I think, the biggest one in Berlin. This morning I saw the catering equipment going into the food stalls and the shelves being stocked already with those wooden nutcracker soldiers. From what I can tell the markets don't start until the 21st November, by which point we should have lots of pretty snow adding to the atmosphere. Yay!

450 steps...

I had intended walking towards Zoo station, famed for it's U2 connections, and it's seedy past. But my path was blocked by the barriers surrounding the Christmas market at Breitshiedplatz. So I headed a little further along the street. My 'neighbourhood' is chock to the brim full of souvenir shops. I thought I'd share with you some of the highlights. I am always surprised by the number of people who buy these bags. More than that though, I wonder where they keep getting this endless supply of 'wall' that they've been happily selling to millions of tourists since the Wall came down.

1000 steps...

We're at the last stop on my mini-tour. We're at the corner where the Ku'damm meets Bundesallee. I thought I'd finish up with another very modern glass building (of which I know zero), the rotunda of the Cafe Kranzler, and some signs telling us what else is around.

And that was the end of my 1000 steps. I should get one of those widgety things so we can group all these 1000 steps together. Let me know if you plan on doing one too. I hope you enjoyed mine.

Laterne, laterne, or the one where Stevie buys us a house-pony

2011-11-11T07:50:00.001Z

Like he cares how many trees I cut out...

It's Laterne Fest time again. Seems like hardly any time at all since I was last coated with a fine layer of PVA and glitter, but here we are again. Last year it was all a bit of a mystery to me. I had no idea who St. Martin was or what exactly the celebration was meant to entail. All I knew was that I was told to make two lanterns out of cardboard and tissue paper and anything else that I could find that was highly flammable, insert two burning tealights, and set my children loose, swinging them and whacking each other until every last hair on their heads and eyebrow was burnt off. Fortunately, I had just misunderstood, and what I was actually being asked to buy was a 'Leuchtstaebchen' - which is a tiny light bulb on a stick powered by batteries and often with some kind of flashing mechanism. (Also doubles as a weapon/switch in the hands of a toddler, so you'll be able to coordinate your body glitter with the bruises across your knees and thighs).

Of course if you are embracing integration into German life with gusto, you can buy a 'traditional' kit and with a "Viel Spass!" to your toddling 2 year old flame-swinger, cast aside all your UK/USA Health & Safety ingrained paranoia. The irony of course is that your decidedly-non-German child will expose you as the hapless foreigner as they wander around setting light to all the other kids lanterns as they bash them together. So I would probably recommend spending an extra Euro or two and getting one with a bulb.

As regard the lantern itself, well you have 3 choices. You can buy one ready-made (most tend to look like paper ball-type lightshades with pictures printed on them); you can join all the mummies at Kita and make on on the day of your Kita's Laternefest (I have heard that it is normally a far more civilised affair at other Kita's, but it's a real 'elbow-sharpening' event at ours where there can be nearly 100 parents squeezed into a small room at a time all desperately snatching the nicest bits of paper); or you can make one in the relative peace and calm with or without child input.

In actual fact my greatest concern last year was not that there was a possibility of my children inadvertently setting the Kita alight, but that I didn't know what the 'theme' was meant to be. I assumed that all the lanterns should be decorated with let's say pumpkins or something representing the occasion, but it's a freestyle decorating event. Last year I made both Orla & Hamish's lanterns though they chose the materials. Hamish went for some lovely translucent flame printed paper that I thought would be hideous, but actually worked quite well. They also chose sparkly coloured card which I used to cut out the letters of their names - as I was clueless on the theme thing I decided to go 'neutral' in case ballerinas and tigers were a real no-no.

This year my work is greatly reduced as Orla is making her lantern at school. Hamish is interested in making a lantern as far as choosing the materials and giving the odd bit of art direction goes. He chose a black lantern frame with blue translucent paper, and green holographic sticky-backed paper. I was worried by my eh... creative limitations with the black on blue thing (I considered 'bruises' as a theme), but I decided on making it a dark sky with a green holographic forest and I am adding some foxes and a moon. Hamish heartily approves. Phew. I've started on it, but I have until next week to get it finished and I am bored of cutting out trees already.

Orla's Laternefest is this evening. Sadly, I don't think I can go as I already had plans for tonight. So Stevie will get to do his first Laternefest with Orla & Hamish. I was looking forward to it as well, especially after I did a double-take on the school newsletter which says "If the weather is kind the event will be held outside. There will be sausages and hot chocolate available after our lantern-lit walk through the woods. In order to cover the cost of the ponies we will have to ask for donations on the night.". Do you think we get one to keep? Or will we be eating horsey-sausages???

Links:
Info on St Martin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Martin%27s_Day)
Idee Laterne supplies (http://www.idee-shop.de/shop/index.php?page=vt_findologic&keywords=Laterne)
Songwords to 'Laterne, Laterne' - lower down they have the full song in both German & English (http://www.mamalisa.com/?p=444&t=es)

urban eyesores and satellite dish art

2011-11-10T17:14:00.000Z

This is one of my favourite buildings in Berlin. From the first moment I saw it I was hooked. I don't blame you if you're not quite as struck by it as I am. But if there's one thing that the Pallasseum is, it's striking. It can't help it. I think when I first saw it I may have said "Wow! That's ugly!". But over the time that I've lived in Berlin, the more I have driven past it, or more accurately, under it, the more it has grown on me.

It's not just it's giant scale that I like, it's the pattern of it. Driving towards it, you are struck by it's repeats towering over you, but within those repeats there are some little gems of detail. Portions of family life and individuality. One of those things are the satellite dishes. My love for them is limitless. I just think they're great.

Have you seen the pictures on them? They're kinda cool, huh? Not just that, but they are art. The Pallasseum has gone from being a social problem to a bit of a success. With the help of the people who live within it's 514 apartments the building was revitalised both structurally and socially. In 2008, artist Daniel Knipping was visiting a friend in Berlin when he came across the Pallasseum with it's hundreds of satellite dishes. He came up with a project to display images personal to the inhabitants on the dishes thus inverting the idea of the dishes bringing images into the home. The images are printed onto canvas which is stretched across the dishes and doesn't affect the picture quality received by the dish.

Aside from the "robust" design of the Pallaseum built in 1977, this wonder of architecture hides a little secret. Well, not exactly hides and I suppose less of a secret and more of an urban eyesore were it not for the monstrous scale of this housing block distracting from it. For not only does the Pallaseum span the road allowing the traffic to flow through it, it also is built over a huge World War 2 concrete bunker. Almost impossible to remove the building was built 'around' the bunker, one of many situated above ground around Berlin.

P.S. This post is a little bit of a cheat. I wrote it for my fionagray.paints blog, but I just love this building so I thought I'd just post this over here too. Feel free to come on over to fionagray.paints and have a browse. Aside from urban eyesores I also like lovely rainbows and pretty things and patting kittens.

Pallas Strasse & the Pallaseum links:
http://www.architectureinberlin.com/ information regarding the bunker and some better photos of it.
http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/archiv/ein-kuenstler-hat-die-satellitenanlagen-am-pallasseum-verschoenert-schuessel-mit-motiv,10810590,10721592.html - article on the art project by Daniel Knipping.
http://www.daniel-knipping.de/de_projekte_innennachaussen.html - Inside Out - The website of the satellite dish project by Daniel Knipping
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/das-wunder-vom-sozialpalast/1439746.html Pallasseum - history, context

"We're not in Karlsruhe anymore, Toto". - or repatriation shock pt. 2

2011-11-04T21:25:00.000Z

Part two my repatriation story. So what did I find out (/Google)?

"Repatriation shock lasts three times as long as the culture shock endured by new expatriates."
-eek! That's a bit of a shock in itself. Why is that the case? Surely it should be just as long as the initial culture shock if not shorter because you know what you are going back to?

"For many expatriates repatriation back home often becomes the most challenging relocation experience. They arrive back to discover that not only things have changed in their home country – but also that they have changed and they no longer feel like they belong at home. They feel disconnected both from the country and from the people that used to be their friends and acquaintances; they miss the status of being a foreigner and being special; they struggle to fit in; and they often feel as if they’ve lost some degree of freedom." - Global Coach Center.

That's a worry for me. I haven't kept up with what is going on at 'home'. Not only do I know very little about current affairs in the UK: if I am honest I have thoroughly enjoyed living in my 'bubble' where I don't watch the UK news (beyond occasional glimpses of BBC World News, which is a bit more global than British) or read newspapers, or even for that matter watch the German news, so what news I do get is gleaned mostly from the internet and what I hear on the radio in the car. Not only that, but I haven't got a clue about what has been happening in a social or cultural sense. I haven't seen a 'Big Fat Gypsy Wedding', can't talk about the people on Big Brother (though I stopped watching that years before I even left the UK, so that's not really an excuse), and haven't been much to the cinema, and I don't know whether all my children's friends are busy having sleepovers and talking make-up and Nintendo DS games or ....well, doing something else.

Some common symptoms or situations that repatriating families encounter*:

irritability/ resentment
sense of difference and disconnect
disappointment
inability to concentrate
low morale
change in values/attitudes
marital conflict
fatigue
parent/child conflict
educational/adjustment problems for children
depression
feeling unappreciated personally/professionally
decreased productivity
loneliness

*Source: 'Reverse Culture Shock (or Why Do I Hate Being Back Home?)' by International HR Forum

The reasons given for 'reverse culture shock', as it is known include the fact that most people plan pretty thoroughly for their move abroad. You are in the mindset for moving abroad, and if, like my family you are moving abroad because your company wants you abroad then you may get some assistance with the move and settling in. Often when you move back home there isn't the same kind of support for settling back in - it's just something you are expected to get on with. More and more companies are starting to recognise that they need to support their employees more with their return, as the statistics for employees who end up changing their career or returning to a life abroad are higher than you might imagine. From personal experience, we know three couples who have worked in other countries and have returned back to the UK in the past year. All of them have said that they would either like to move back to the country they had lived in or were hoping that they would be able to get another foreign assignment in a different country.

From the various articles I read I've read that around 25% of people who have moved abroad because of their employer resign within 2 years of repatriation. And I am pretty sure that I read that this percentage increase to 33% within 4 years.

The big factor seems to be the unexpected changes that you notice on your return. Whether it's a change in politics, or the dynamics or structure within your previous group of friends, or work and school, these things all seem to make a difference. And of course, it can be the feeling that you've changed while those around you haven't.

"I noticed my frustration levels rising with people who have never worked or lived abroad, or worse, with people who travel regularly but have never lived abroad." - Trevor Hall comment on the Repatriation article by Global Coach Center

Making friends with other expats, even when you return to the UK because they are the people who 'understand' "people who hold a similar world view"

"When we return to our ‘home’ culture we will more often than not connect most easily with people like ourselves who have lived overseas as that is what sets us apart from others." Ruth Forsythe - Global Coach Center

Yikes! It makes me come over all uneasy... enjoy the links below and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this too.

Links:
Repatriation shock by Shelter Offshore
One woman's experience of repatriation in the UK by Shelter Offshore
Repatriation & belonging by Global Coach Center
Paper on problems with repatriation for employees and their families by by Andreason, Aaron W, Kinneer, Kevin D

"There's no place like home" - or 'the worry of repatriation' (pt 1)

2011-11-03T13:52:00.001Z

And why would you look at the Brandenburg Gate when there are giant bubbles to marvel at?

I can honestly say that I hadn't really thought much about repatriation. Of course it's always been on the cards, we are due (at this current time) to return to our Derby home in June 2012. Occasionally we have had chats about whether we want to stay on here; for an extra year, for a few extra years, for....ever....and while I practically get a funny shiver at the thought of staying anywhere forever, the prospect of another year seems nice, and another couple of years? Well, maybe, that would be ok too. But equally, I feel, or thought I felt, fine about going 'home' in June.

After all, what's to worry about? We still have our house, I have primed myself for the worst case scenario in terms of it's condition after renting it out for two years and am hoping that I can only be pleasantly surprised that it'll be better than my imaginings. Stevie would go back to work in the same job or better probably. The kids would go back to speaking English and still have their friends in the UK. Both of them would start at school where everybody would speak English as a first language and life would be nice and easy for them. I would have all my UK friends to go back to and all the wonders of UK shopping, and magazines and books!!! (Oh how I miss going into a bookshop and having more than a couple of shelves to choose from!). It sounds easy enough, a breeze even.

But October brought with it a couple of things that really got us thinking. Thinking specifically that going back might not be as easy as it appears on the surface. The first thing was a visit. Our visitors came to see us, not Berlin. Which is fair enough. I think we can be very enthusiastic about the city and we really like taking people round all the sites and showing them just how much this place has to offer. I'm pretty much convinced that no matter your hobby or interest, Berlin will be able to show you something on that topic that will rock your world. These visitors though weren't interested in the sites, the Brandenburg Gate, the emblem of the end of the Cold War garnered barely even a first glance never mind a second. We asked them (an adult and a child of under 10) what they were interested in, what they liked to do, and they said "nothing much". The adult liked going to the pub (tick) and playing on his iPhone (....we don't have one), and the child likes her/his Nintendo DS, watching DVD's and not an awful lot else. So we took them to the Zoo. What kid doesn't like animals, right? Well, um, this kid. It took a bit of persuasion, and when we got there he/she lacked any enthusiasm and wanted to leave because it was smelly and dirty.

Nothing to see here: even during the Festival of Lights.

The rest of their trip followed a similar vein, it was pretty much 5 days of iPhone apps and disinterest. The only thing they seemed to enjoy was Legoland, so that was good, but by the end we all felt a bit down. It made me think that life in Britain leans far too much towards an indoor life, where playing is becoming more and more often an activity done on a computer, and less inclined to getting out and about and discovering new interests. Of course even I knew that that was a sweeping statement, and not at all the way that everyone behaves in the UK. What we were looking at was (hopefully) a very small segment of society, but it still made us think. The weather for example is much better here for getting out and doing things. There are far more sunny, summer days, spring and autumn can be rainy, but mostly it is dry and unlike in Scotland where we were during the half term break, even if it has not been raining the ground is still wet! Winters here of course can be hard. We can have snow from November through to March, but it is manageable. The weather is a big issue for Stevie. He far prefers it here because he can get out and do things with the kids and enjoy it rather than look out the window and think it might be better to stay in. We led a far more indoors life in the UK even though we did still go to lots of places and take the kids to zoos and aquariums and see steam trains and all those sorts of things.

The other thing that happened was that I saw someone's Facebook status and it made me sad. It said:

"Anyone clued up on these Android tablets. Looking to buy one for a 4 year old for Christmas and no idea where to start?! HELP!!"

I hope I don't need to explain why that makes me feel sad. I realise that not all parents of 4 year olds will be buying their children iPads, but by the same token it's not uncommon for me to read on FB about friends whose 4 year olds will "do anything to get to play on the iPad!" or "really needs their own iPhone just for the apps". The more of these things I read the more I feel like things are changing if not beyond our recognition, but beyond our comfort zone. I can't think how to really describe it. I just have this weird feeling of losing that feeling of belonging to the 'group' and it's wrapped up with kids having iPads, packs of pre-peeled boiled eggs (admittedly I was looking for a link to the pack of 3 you can buy in Morrisons at the sandwich/newspaper bit), and big plastic tubs of fridge pack Heinz baked beans (to see it in real life is to make a sound like 'uuuggghhhhh....'.

And with all these things in mind I started to Google that frightening word 'repatriation', and oh...that leads me on to part two ...tomorrow when I'll tell you what I found out.

We don't need no education...yet

2011-11-01T13:39:00.000Z

Warning: This post is quite long and honestly, is possibly only of interest to ex-pats in Berlin who have children below school age.

This week is Berlin's school application week for all the little children due to start school in September 2012. And to be honest I never thought that I would need to be bothering with school options in Berlin - given that I was gently told which school Orla would go to, but in the past few weeks a number of things have happened that suddenly jolted me out of my blissful ignorance, and set me on a trail of investigation on this very subject.

First off, we have been talking about whether on not we will be in Berlin next September. Stevie has floated the idea of having his contract extended to his boss given that budgets will be decided in the near future, but we have heard that you don't tend to hear if you have had your contract extended until very nearly the last minute. As in, a months notice or less. The hope is that you'll crumble early and take a local contract. But we are very much still undecided about our future here. And school is becoming the number one deciding factor in that decision.

If we don't get an extension, and decide to stay then Orla needs a new school. I had thought of that and casually thought 'oh well, I guess I will just take her along to the Nelson Mandela school and get her in there'. Patently, I am very naiive. I haven't been through the school application process in the UK before but I had heard it can be pretty nerve-wracking, but somehow I just thought it would be less problematic here in Germany. Especially as the school of my choosing is a bilingual school - how many people would honestly be needing that? I think the current figure is kazillions.

I met up with a friend for an early morning beer in the top floor bar or the KaDeWe. The beer it became apparent was essential as she told me of her sleepless nights worrying about whether or not she'd be able to get her child into a school in Berlin. By the end of our conversation I was a bundle of nerves (especially as the application window was to start before we got back from our October break) and all of a sudden the poster in the lift at Kita heralded information I knew I just had to be able to read and understand before it got me to the 4th floor. In fact, I considered stealing it to translate at my leisure, but it would have poked out of my bag, so they would have had me pegged as the Schulanfanger Poster Dieb before the half term holiday even started.

Luckily for me I found it on the internet as I was Googling like mad to find out what I needed to do. It's a good place to start if you need information on what you need to do. But here's my guide to applying for bilingual schools in Berlin.

School Open Days start in October and these are useful to get a feel for the school and it's culture if nothing else. You can also learn more about the application process from the staff. Most of the Open Days are scheduled before the registration process starts, but funnily enough, occasionally they are slap bang in the middle of the registration period. Why? Nobody knows.There are theories but who can say...
You should (not) expect a registration form through your door about now. I say 'not', as quite a few people have told me that their registration forms arrived too late and they just went to the school regardless during the registration week to register their child.
You need to find out what your catchment school is. I hadn't a clue. And after a long search I eventually found a page where I could enter my street and postcode and it told me. And now I can't find that page again...but I will if it kills me!
If, like me, you failed to go to any Open Days, you could in theory have a look to see what people on ToyTown Berlin are saying. But, it's a bit frightening. Honestly, I probably wouldn't look if I were you. I looked and then I didn't sleep very well. Admittedly, you probably wouldn't sleep very well after reading the thread on where you could find American beer in this city, but that's Toytown for you. There's a market right there for a Toytown Berlin Anger Management course.
The best thing I have found is to speak to people: kids in the park, parents at parties, friends of friends - it's actually quite a small expat world out there, and there's bound to be someone who has kids at the school you want your kid to go to. You hear good stuff and bad stuff of course: someone stopped us outside a cafe in the summer and warned us that we should never send our kids to JFK as unless we were with the US Embassy our kids would be treated as second class citizens. On the other hand there's a German woman I know whose son has started there and he loves it. Can't say anything against the place. Everything about it is fantastic. And the same goes for all the schools. You have to just make a decision and go with it.
Registration: So then what you need to do is go to your local Grundschule where you would register your child if you wanted them to just go to the local school. But, if like us, you feel that your child needs to be in a bilingual school then you need to ask for the following: "Antrag zur Aufnahme eines Kindes in eine andere Grundschule" which is a form you need to fill out giving your reasons why you want your child to go to another school. You will still retain a place at your local school until you tell them in writing that you are not taking it up. (Though someone has told me that some of the local schools are also over-subscribed - it's a joy, isn't it?). Oh and you need to take your passport and the child's passport and your registration document (the one where you had to register into your local area) and any other relevant papers.
Then once you have your 'release' form completed, you then need to go to the school of you choice and register your child there. If it's a bilingual school then you need to register them (and possibly have the child tested) as either a native English speaker or as a native German speaker. And here's the rub. These schools are very popular. Hideously popular. There's no point putting more than one school in the boxes where you can list 3 options. The bi-lingual schools won't even consider your application if they are in 2nd or 3rd place. It's first choice or no choice.
Most of the schools have an equal split between places that are given to Germans and places that are given to native English speakers. With a maximum of 28 in a class that means there are 14 places up for grabs. And with an awful lot of Germans competing for those 14 German places and far fewer English speaking expats competing for the other places what's happening now is that German parents are training their kids up to pass the test to be classed as a native English speaker, and thus increasing their chances of a place. So, it's not just a case of turning up and thinking you'll get a place automatically.
And then you wait to find out if you have been granted a place. Presumably if you don't get a place you can go on a waiting list and in the mean time your child would go to the local German Grundschule and receive 'language support'. Home-schooling is not an option even if you fancied it as it's illegal here.

Admission by birthdate: In my haste to find out all about the process I didn't read the poster correctly. Here's one thing to note. The admission criteria based on the child's birthday is different in Berlin to England. I simply assumed Orla would be going to German school next year but it runs from 1st January 2006 to 31st December 2006 births and not end of August 2006 to beginning of September 2007 as we would have in the UK. On the poster it does say that children can be enrolled with birthdays up until 31st March 2007 (which is the bit I read and the bit that would seemingly say that Orla should start school) but this is only if "your child has no need for language support.".

And because of that, yesterday instead of running around with my German-English Dictionary and all our passports in hand, I managed to relax and was able to let out a sigh of relief that I don't have to go through this... just yet.

We still have an issue with what we do if we want to stay and a local contract for Stevie is the only way to do that. It would mean that Orla would drop out of school and have to return to kita (nursery) for another year. And that doesn't really sit well with me given that she had a bad experience getting bullied in her German kita, so I wouldn't be happy sending her back to one to struggle with her German again which puts her in a difficult position of not being able to defend herself, and so if I then have to go into battle for a bilingual kita place and don't succeed in getting one then what do I do? Go home? Maybe. It seems odd too to take her from school where she has been learning to read and write and do maths to then put her back in a 100% play environment. I don't know that that's a bad thing, but it just seems odd to stop their learning once they've started.

the sinister rabbits of childrenswear

2011-10-16T14:28:00.000+01:00

I know you 'boys in tights' Googlers will just love these.

Last week I was ready to publish a nice 'boys in tights' post to show our latest discovery. Hamish spotted these beauties in H&M and was determined to have them. Aren't they boyishly pretty? I have to admit I am becoming more than a convert to boys tights. I think it's because they are just much more pictorial than girls tights. I would find it hard to resist tights with bears and foxes and racoons too if I was still a kid. As luck would have it we also spied some 'daddy-style' boxers in the same print.

But just before I wrote this post I read Plan B's post 'The strange taxonomy of children's clothes'. She writes about how in the world of children's clothing animals are divided into two camps: boys animals and girls animals. Not by gender as in boy doggies and girl doggies but as Plan B says there are animals which only feature on boys or girls clothes. To quote:-

Boys' animals:
Reptiles and amphibians (all sorts), insects (all sorts except butterflies (and ladybirds)), lions and tigers (but not, it appears, leopards), hedgehogs, alsatians but not most other dogs, crustacea (all sorts), bears, sharks and whales, aardvarks, dragons.

Girls animals:
Cats, rabbits, horses, most farmyard and domestic animals (though I remain uncertain about goats), all small rodents (except rats. Rats don't seem to feature strongly on children's clothes of either gender); dalmatians, dachshunds and yorkshire terriers, butterflies, fish (other than sharks) but not crustacea, seahorses (do they go with horses or fish, do you think?), birds (all sorts except parrots), zebras, unicorns.

Parrots, giraffes and elephants, turtles and most Australian mammals appear to be unisex.

The question Plan B poses is who decides that racoons are for boys and yorkshire terriers are for girls? It's a question that really grabbed me. The sort of topic that I am really interested in. And it got me thinking and for a while I was a little stumped. I got in touch with a couple of friends who I thought might have some insight into this. One has worked in design for many, many years imparting his excellent knowledge to people like me. He thought that there were 'no rules' regarding which animals belong to each gender, rather the way in which the animal is styled and coloured can determine which gender it was suitable for. I can see that; in fact hedgehogs could actually feature on clothes for either girls or boys depending on how 'rounded' or 'cuddly' they are depicted. For boys, when I think of hedgehogs, they definitely have to be more 'true to life'. My friend also asked me to consider "sinister rabbits and horses" on boys clothing. That made me laugh, it sounds far too much like a bad dream.

Prada Collection Spring/Summer 2012

My other friend works for a designer in Paris. She spoke about motifs used in womenswear where anything goes. She sent me some links to next Spring/Summer's Prada collection which has a vintage car motif as a core feature of the collection. It's very pretty and I guess that women's prints don't often feature more 'male' motifs, but as she said, times have changed and now at events such as Indigo prints are no longer really split into categories as buyers prefer to look through everything for something that catches their eye. Childrenswear is different though. It's definitely not, anything goes.

But in writing this all down to Plan B, I had a thought. I couldn't say that I have ever really consciously thought about which animals are for which gender, but shout an animal at me, and I could probably tell you without a pause which gender it should be for. And why is that? I bet you can do it too. I mulled it over for nearly a whole day, until the only conclusion I could come to was that it comes down to the ferocity of the animal and/or the ickiness.

Foxes, bears, sharks, alsations, etc, all a little wild and/or ferocious:- all for boys.

Dolphins, rabbits (patently the normal, non-sinister variety), little birds:- not really very ferocious, and def. more for girls.

In my view the only insects that I am happy to handle are ladybirds and butterflies (and caterpillars actually but they are def. in the boy category) and thus these are the accepted girls insects. I may throw in a dragonfly as well as they come in pretty colours, but most other insects are a bit 'icky' and thus more boyish.

But, there are also exceptions to the rules. Cath Kidston has a terrier motif that features on both boyswear and girlswear. I'm betting pandas would bite you, but they are quite girly, aren't they? But then again, maybe because they are vegetarian that knocks them down the ferocity scale. What do you think? Do you think it's the ferocity of the animal that determines which gender it is allotted to?

Like son, like mother

2011-10-10T10:57:00.000+01:00

Orla has decided that she really, really needs a camera. I am always harping on about how much better it is here in Germany because the children play with traditional toys, yadda, yadda, and aren't asking for Nintendo DS's as soon as they pop out of the womb. I do believe I can be heard to complain quite often about parents who give their children digital cameras when they turn 2.

But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since both of mine see me with a camera hanging round my neck on a near daily basis, and have to put up with the mamarazzi documenting their every move for posterity. We went out yesterday to see my friend Beth running in the Asics 10K run round the west of the city. And she did really well and we shook our non-Pot Noodle-brand pot noodles at her and her friend as they ran past us breezily (Beth is from the town in Wales where they 'mine' Pot Noodles), and afterwards we went to the Zoo, which is where Orla decided she really had to take a photo of me and Stevie. I've only ever let her use my little Canon before that is on it's last legs, so no great loss if anything happens to it, so this was her first try with my DSLR. I think she did well, don't you? And of course, then Hamish wanted a shot........

'The Secret Vice' by Hamish

Talk about nervous? As I put the strap over his head I was bracing myself for the noise of it clattering off the stone steps at the mountain goats as he got himself into position. Hamish's style is less traditional portraiture and more 'covert operation' style. As you can see, he's not the only one with the secret pink dummy problem.

pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 2

2011-10-06T21:48:00.001+01:00

'pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 1' is here.

So last week at my diabetes consultant appointment I just said 'yes' to going on one of these sessions. It just popped out as a standard German response without me thinking. And so today I turned up, full of dread to see what they had in store for me. Except that when I turned up, it wasn't a group thing, it was just me and sitting down I was asked "So, what would you like to talk to me about?". I could barely get beyond the thought blaring in my head, which of course was "Nothing". But I managed to come up with something that I thought might avoid too many difficult talking points. So I said I was interested in hearing about the insulin pump. That it had been many years since I'd been talked through it and that maybe it would be a good option to consider.

And that is how I have ended up sat here tonight with a canula stuck into my stomach with a metre's worth of clear (narrow) plastic tubing hanging off it. Seriously, even I know I deserve all I get. And it's quite uncomfortable. I haven't even got a pump attached to it, just tubing which I have to say I am feeling squeamish about snagging on my clothes.

I felt squeamish enough just inserting the thing in, to the point that on the way home there were a couple of moments where I thought I might just faint rather than think about my bag knocking against it as I walked. I'm sure you don't want to hear all the in's and out's of insulin pumps, but here's some bit's you might be interested in. They are about the size of a mobile phone and as a woman they suggest that you wear it in your bra. You have to sleep with it, and when I queried that it would be like sleeping on top of your mobile phone which sounded slightly uncomfortable, it was scoffed at. I am tempted to sellotape an old similar shaped mobile on to my side and see if it wakes me up when I roll on to it.

Similarly to a mobile phone it makes noise: it beeps when it is running low on batteries and when it is running low on insulin. Great, but I don't want it telling me that there's 20 units left at 4am. My normal 'pen' manages to keep that to itself until I take the lid off in the morning. Apparently, it also makes audible clicks as it is releasing insulin into you, which can be a bit of a pain if you are in a quiet environment.

From what I have read people seem to love their pumps, but I am not convinced it is the thing for me. You need to be testing your blood glucose 4 times a day and while it provides a constant release of a small amount of insulin into your system, you still need to carb count and pump in the amount of insulin units you need for each meal. I had assumed that they would have the technology to be able to have it take it's own reading of your blood glucose and adjust the insulin accordingly, but apparently not. So for the moment I think that I will pass on the pump and stick with my pens, but don't be over surprised if at some point in the future you see me rooting around in my underwear while we're out for dinner as I administer my insulin. Just don't mirror my action and want to chat about it, that's all.

pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 1

2011-10-06T21:48:00.000+01:00

Did you ever read 'Yes Man' by Danny Wallace (pal of Dave Gorman and author of various other things)? There was also a film I think. Anyway, the premise of 'Yes Man' is that Danny Wallace decided to say yes to every invitation, opportunity, favour, etc, etc, that came his way. I've been thinking about that over the past week - mostly that I should probably read it - as I seem to have the problem of not being able to say 'no' to enough things.

I made an error last week, one that has haunted my dreams on a number of occasions since. I have noticed that I am more open to experiencing different things since moving to Berlin, but I hadn't been as aware of how often I just agree to things particularly when the requests are made to me in German. It's because it's just easier. To say 'no' often involves having to give a valid explanation of why you are saying no, and that can be just too much hard work in a foreign language.

Anyway, last week I got caught out. I had an appointment with my diabetes consultant to discuss my latest blood results, and following a quick blah-be-blah about post-exercise hypos, I stupidly agreed to attend a session which I shall call 'How to be a good diabetic'. These things normally involve sitting around with a Diabetes Specialist Nurse (or Consultant Nurse) and a bunch of diabetics and talking about carb counting, healthy eating, foot care, blood testing, and so on.

I have been invited to attend these sessions for the past 26 years and to date I have managed to avoid them. When I was a child and first became a diabetic I had to attend a children's diabetic clinic probably once every 6 months and the appointment would last almost a full day. It would involve all the standard stuff: getting weighed, height measured, blood taken, blood pressure checked, and a visit with the consultant. But all of that if you are lucky takes maybe an hour to complete, give or take waiting times. The rest of the day was spent sitting miserably in a circle with other diabetics and being encouraged to talk about issues. Aside from that being nurse-led torture, there were three things that I particularly hated about these sessions.

The first was that there was usually a child who had been salvaged from the grips of death. They would have gone undiagnosed by parents who hadn't known what the symptoms of diabetes were, and didn't think about going to the doctor with their child until the weight loss, extreme liquid intake and lethargy, etc, etc were hard to ignore. And even then, most times it wasn't even eventual realisation by the parents that something was wrong that that got them there. Usually, these kids were in-patients who had arrived at the hospital by ambulance. Hearing about the failed kidneys and serious health malfunctions of near-skeletal 10 year olds never really made me feel positive about my diabetes.

There was inevitably another child who I would have classed as a 'good diabetic'. Someone whose life revolved around achieving perfect control, and for whom diabetes was the major focus of their life. They always enjoyed talking about best practice in rotating injection sites or some such stuff, and even in my youth I recognised the fact that I didn't want diabetes to rule my life to such a degree. I have it, but I don't want it invading into every aspect of my life. I certainly don't want to be talking about it all the time. And so, my life-long avoidance of other diabetics began. Because as soon as another diabetic clocks you as a fellow injector, then it's like an invitation to give you their medical history in all it's marvellously uninteresting detail.

But the thing I really hated about these sessions was that without fail the nurse or diabetic sister would lead the discussion on to diabetic expeditions. I'm sure that's not what they were really called, but they were forever trying to get you to agree to go on a 'holiday' (I can barely bring myself to use that word) with other diabetics (hold me back) and they would try and entice you into going by showing you brochures which depicted children testing their blood glucose halfway up a mountain. And they were smiling while they were doing it. So patently they were mental as well as diabetic. Poor souls. NOTHING could have persuaded me to go on one of these trips. NOTHING!

It was at this time that I began honing my talent for creating excuses as to why I wouldn't be able to go. Nowadays (in the UK at least), I believe I am leading the way in the field of 'instantaneous fabricated reasons to get out of diabetes-related situations that I am not much partial to'. But here, I just can't think fast enough, and lack the vocabulary to make lying easy. It's a bit of a bummer.

[Gosh it's a bit long this isn't it? If you're still with me, I'll split it into a second part. That'll be 'pump up the jam(my dodgers) - pt 2'...]

H,h,h,e,e,a,a,l,l,s,s,s....C,c,c,o,o,n,n,r,r,a,a,n,n,n.....

2011-10-04T16:04:00.001+01:00

This month we're reading....literally. At the weekend Orla read her first words. We'd been talking about phonics at school and then she picked up a copy of Living etc and started sounding out some of the words on the cover. And it all started with the 'for' in 'Go for bold'. Talk about thrilled? I was over the moon!

Man, I was sure she was going to be a 'heat' reader as well. But I guess we'll start on the Miss Gray's Interiors Reading Programme for Young Ladies. Once we've mastered 'Living etc/Elle Decoration', we'll take it to the stage two, 'World of Interiors/Wallpaper', and finally ramp it up with intensive study of 'Architectural Digest'.

As for the photo above, this is Orla just home from school, having discarded her uniform and clutching September's Living etc which she took to school with her in her bag to demonstrate to her teacher. I had to put a hand to my eyes when she told me that she'd told her teacher that I was 'so proud of her for reading my magazine'*, but hey, she still deserves the piece of celebratory cake.

*Note to self: must remember to leave some James Joyce/ Goethe/ etc lying around for the kids to pick up.

A day out in Britzer Garten

2011-10-04T11:44:00.000+01:00

Part of the bridge at Britzer Garten where we saw a crab/lobstery -looking thing crawling in the grass at the edge . I couldn't be sure as there were too many people around poking it with their fingers.

One of the many mosaic things for the kids to enjoy hiding in.

Hamish is in the middle of acting out a little pirate story. Aaaaarrr!!

They even had a little mini-Oktoberfest going on. German expats - can you name the song ?

There were even owl and eagle displays!

I was totally impressed by the kazillion seats dotted around.

I lost the kids in the maze. 5000 tiny sharp stones in my sandals and I'm running after nobody.

Some of my babies were really tired. Maclaren do triple buggies, right?

A very happy belated German Reunification Day to you! I hope you had a good one. We considered heading to the Brandenburg Gate on the bikes for a few hours or beer drinking, wandering, and pretzel eating, but as we'd been last year, and with the weather so good we thought we'd either head to the coast or visit Britzer Garten for the day. Much as the kids love the seaside, I couldn't really be bothered with the drive, so we decided to try our luck closer to home. We'd heard of Britzer Garten through some friends, as a great place to take kids as it has a little railway. And we'd all tried to go there, but it was incorrectly Googled and instead we went to Sudgelande (a park where there are old steam trains hidden in amongst the bushes and paths made from disused track. Ah, now, did I not post the photo of me doing my bit to revive silent movies??).

Anyway, this time we got the right place. It's at the Tempelhof side of Neukölln, in Berlin. And it's fantastic. There's just so much to do there. There are flower gardens and nice nature-y walks, and simply tons of things for the kids to play on. So much in fact that the kids could quite easily walk for miles and miles because around each corner there would be something else for them to play with, whether it was a swing hidden in amongst the trees, climbing bars, little houses and huts, mosaic elephants, sand and water play, it was the best park I have been to for having things for the kids to do on a walk.

Aside from that there were also animals that you can pat - goats, donkeys and sheep, and there was a display of birds that you couldn't pat. Owls and eagles and other things (must brush up on my ornathology really) that made squeaky noises. We also passed a boating lake with lots of (mostly grown ups) sailing remote controlled boats, which Hamish rather enjoyed. And as we were walking we heard a band playing and headed towards the noise where we discovered they were holding a little mini-Oktoberfest. It was really good fun.

Stevie was starting to wilt by this point and we decided to take a trip on the little train. You have to pay extra to go on the train (It was 3 Euros for S & I to get in to the park and it cost another 3 Euros for us all to go one stop on the train.) I'm not sure how much it is to go a full round trip, but we wanted to just get closer to the car park. In usual manner we got on the train going the wrong way and ended up at the furthest away point from our car that we could possibly be. So on the way home all my little darlings had a little snooze...

Waking the dead.

2011-10-02T16:51:00.000+01:00

Because even the long dead get wound up by other people's mobile phones ringing.

Schloss Charlottenburg. Lovely, but I won't be back I suppose.

I tend not to publicise my blog through Facebook. Mostly because I really don't want the people I don't really like reading it. And of course I am friends with them on Facebook, because sometimes you just don't have a choice in these things. I am referring of course to 'smeeviee's family'. I'm mumbling just in case they can hear me. That's one thing I hate about Facebook; I have yet to find an acceptable way to say 'I don't want to be your friend' to them. Saying, 'Um, we're not really friends in real life' doesn't really go down well, nor does 'I don't want you noseying through my business, even though I have no issue with strangers and people I haven't actually seen in 30 years doing so'. - perhaps because they're not going to take offence and go on and on about it for years afterwards.

Anyway, at the end of last week and this weekend we've had Stevie's parents staying with us. At this point I should mention that in actual fact I am far more tolerant of his parents than he himself is. I sometimes get the impression that he could quite happily wave them back on the plane an hour and half after their arrival. Much as I'd love to outline where my tolerance breaks down, I will resist, because you just never know who's reading. And it's not that I have written down all the hundreds of little funny anecdotes I have, more because they are super defensive and wouldn't appreciate the little tales I tell about their son.

Long may they never Google my name. That's all I can say.

But, I'm losing my thread. What I was going on to say was that upon arrival this time I was met by a complaint: that I hadn't updated my FB status to say how excited I was at their impending arrival, when I had done on numerous occasions before when my friends had visited. I think it was meant as a joke with a little bit of seriousness wedged in at the back, but they didn't seem too happy when I joked right on back that I forgot, but I'd be sure to put on FB just how excited I'd be when they left. Maybe it was that big chunk of underlying truth that rendered it unfunny to them, I don't know, but hey, I was laughing.

But in actual fact, we've had a pleasant few days. It can be quite difficult to entertain visitors who don't really want to see the place, and would be happy enough to just sit in the apartment for the duration. But I took them to Schloss Charlottenburg on Friday and managed to provide them with some impromptu entertainment by getting myself thrown out (and very likely banned) from a mausoleum. It wasn't fun. After listening to a lengthy list of 'Do's and Don't's' from the attendant outside it was a bit embarrassing to see the same attendant racing into the mausoleum at warp-speed to drag me out no more than a minute later. But on the positive side at least I found out that my phones 'silent' mode doesn't work. Silver lining's and all that I suppose. And it put a smile on my visitors faces for the rest of the afternoon seeing me hauled out and publicly shamed. And that set us up for the rest of the weekend which was pleasant and a lot less eventful.

Is that a Snickers zipping past? No, it's a Marathon.

2011-09-25T21:46:00.000+01:00

Berlin Marathon 2011 - Paula Radcliffe. Seriously, how cool is that?

Berlin Rollerblading Marathon 2011

This weekend was Marathon weekend in Berlin. I never knew I liked marathons so much until I came here. No, scratch that, I never knew I liked spectating so much. Stevie asked whether I thought I could do a half marathon, to which I replied that I had my doubts as to whether I could run or rollerblade my way through a 1/26th marathon.

Anyway, having things like this going on in Berlin of a weekend make me glad to live here. I get that excited feeling of being in a place where there's just oodles of interesting things just around the corner. And in fact that's pretty much where they were. Last year I only discovered the rollerblading marathon because I needed to go to the supermarket and I couldn't get across the road. As it was pouring with rain, I gave up and just went home. But this year we've had fantastic weather for yesterdays' rollerblading and todays' 'proper' marathon.

I took my camera and walked a little bit along the rollerblading route and tried to capture the competitors against a bit of a Berlin backdrop. Unlike the east side of Berlin, it's a lot harder to find graffiti in the west. It also took me a while to jiggle about with my camera to get it to catch the competitors without them fuzzing into a speedy blur. But then later I realised I preferred them that way.

And then today we all went down the road to where the Ku'Damm meets Tauentzienstrasse at the Gedachtniskirche to watch the runners at the 35km mark. Last year we missed the lead runners, but holy smoke, we got to see them this time, and they are just SO fast! Unbelievably so. It's so impressive and certainly I never realised just how impressive they were whenever I had seen bits of the London Marathon on tv in years previous.

So it was great, there was a fantastic atmosphere and there were bands dotted all along the route. Where we were there was an excellent steel drum band, and just a little further down near Nike World there was a brass band squished in on the centre of the road crossing, playing contemporary music in between the pedestrian lights.

So I thoroughly enjoyed this weekend. My love for Berlin has gone up a notch, and look, LOOK! I even got a photo of Paula Radcliffe! Woo hoo!!! I'm dead chuffed.

Under a bush, down memory lane

2011-09-21T11:05:00.000+01:00

When I was in primary school there was a boy in my class who ran away from home and hid and slept in a bush for two days before being discovered. As I recall, nobody seemed particularly concerned (well, we were only about 6 or 7 at the time), and it just seemed the kind of thing that he would do, and I suppose I just thought he'd be back at school within a few days. And he was. The thing about this boy was that he was a little bit of an oddball. A bit of a loner, a bit of a loser, didn't really talk much, oh, and often turned up to school wearing his pyjamas under his uniform. That's the bit that sticks in my head, and that's why I can totally recall this boy and his name and where he lived and what he looked like. Unlike most of the people I went to primary school with, I would probably recognise this guy if I saw him in the street.

Without ever having consciously thought it, I suppose I have always wanted to make sure I never had a kid like this boy. I have no idea what his home life was like, I just assumed it was the same as mine. Normal. But who knows. I wouldn't have known at that age what might have been going on at home, and maybe things can't be ok if you feel the need to go and hide in a bush for a couple of days. I've been thinking about this boy a bit and wondering what he's doing now. (He's not on FB so maybe he's got more of a life than me).

Yesterday Orla came home from school missing her school sweatshirt which I discovered was in with all her soaking wet swimming things. According to her, her teacher told her to put it in there. Not anything at all to do with the fact that she hates wearing it because it's too big. Anyway, peeking out at the top of her polo shirt I caught sight of a pink t-shirt. My automatic reaction was to assume that we must be into 'hinting season': where teachers and Kita careworkers drop subtle hints to me to tell me that my kids aren't wearing anywhere near enough clothes. 'Bugger!' I thought. Is it that time already?

On closer inspection, it became apparent that it wasn't the teacher dropping hints, but in actual fact her father quite possibly being asleep when he started dressing her. For Orla was wearing her Minnie Mouse pyjama top underneath her school uniform. Oh the shame!! It wouldn't have been quite so bad except that she'd had swimming so there was definitely someone who saw it, but most often it's not the actual class teacher that takes them to the swimming pool. So to top it off Orla decided that she would like to show her teacher her Disney Princess knickers (as you do) so I can be pretty certain that she saw her pyjamas too. Oh, the double shame! Eek! Incidentally, her teacher said 'Nice...'. Though I would have thought a 'Wow! Cool! I've got those too! Gleiche!' would have been more appropriate.

And now I am wondering whether the boy in my class who sometimes wore his pyjamas under his uniform maybe just had to dress himself or had a really tired father.

The one where we're not on tv.

2011-09-18T08:37:00.000+01:00

Nice fridge, but you can keep the rest of the crap...now show me something with a pool!

So last week I was approached to be on tv. Sadly not for my wit and depth of knowledge on the subject 'boys in tights', but for my other specialism: checking out houses. Specifically it was for us to appear on an American programme similar to 'Location, location, location', but with an expat twist. Part travel show, part aspirational house hunt. Totally up my street, in more ways than one.

In my quest to try something different this year, I was of the opinion that this would be loads of fun. I really enjoyed being shown round apartments when we first came here, and this struck me as even more fun as we didn't even have the pressure of actually having to find one to live in quite urgently.

The plan was they would film the show in reverse. They'd film us in our current apartment all settled and still no pictures hardly on the walls cause the walls are too big. And we'd be all cheery and happy because we'd be pretending that we'd just moved in and we wouldn't yet have discovered that the shower ran cold all the time and the dishwasher was leaving the dishes dirtier after washing them, and we wouldn't have experienced that awful winter where our 'heritage' windows practically fell apart and were draughty as hell and we wouldn't have known that our landlord was so rubbish with English that he thinks 'heritage' and 'total crap' mean the same thing.

Then the film company would have all our furniture removed and they'd film us viewing the apartment empty, and then they'd put everything back again, and then we'd go on to view another two apartments and all the little aspirational bits and bobs in-between: me aspirationally dumping the kids off in the creche in the KaDeWe and then nipping upstairs, buying a new book, racing up to the top floor bar to drink beer and read half my book before the creche calls me to remind me I have kids. Stevie being filmed in IKEA aspirationally being accused of shop-lifting, and then discovering that his aspirational girlfriend has cancelled his card thinking wrongly that her purse had been stolen. And of course all those little bits showing us enjoying the Berlin landmarks, where the digital editors would have to photoshop out the wet, stream-like marks on the Brandenburg Gate and Fernsehturm, Gedachtniskirche, and Check Point Charlie where Hamish would have taken aspirational pee-pees. Ah...living the dream!

But then 'the killjoy', previously known as Stevie, said that it was too much hassle, and couldn't see what was fun about having the house turned upside down and taking time off work to film for 3 days, and having to fly back to Scotland for a day with the kids, and...etc....etc.....just because I wanted to be on tv.

But I didn't want to be on tv, never have. That was the beauty of this! Nobody I knew would see it, so not only could I make a fool of myself, but I also wouldn't need to go on a sudden, extreme crash diet! It would just be good fun. But Stevie was dead against it, so that was the end of that. And uch well, I suppose there was no Phil and Kirstie...

We came, we saw, we conkered.

2011-09-16T11:36:00.004+01:00

Autumn is definitely on it's way. The streets of Berlin are beginning to tell us. In this city of avid smokers, in amongst the cigarette butts strewn all over the pavements, leaves are starting to appear. Leaves and those little helicopter things, and nuts and stuff for squirrels to scoff (when they're not cycling and smoking at the same time). In a little digression, I saw a woman cycling the other day while smoking with a baby in a papoose on her front and a toddler in the child seat on the back. That's multi-tasking Berliner style.

Everything is starting to change. The light is different, and jackets are starting to be worn (yes, yes, I know the German's were wearing fleeces under their jackets even during summer, but we're talking about Scottish people with good circulation). There are tiny baby pumpkins sneaking on to the outdoor tables of the florists shops, and ginormous stalls appearing in the markets selling socks, piled high in every colour of the desaturated slightly sludgey rainbow.

But more than that, it's conker season. Hamish and I have been on the prowl. He doesn't understand my excitement at discovering them under trees. I gasp "Oh. My. God! That's massive!!" as we race to collect them. In my mind, it is just sheer chance that we have discovered them before anyone else has, and nabbed the lot. Hamish is more discerning. He's looking for ones still in their casing, and the best ones are those which come with two or sometimes three in the one 'shell'. His joy comes from finding 'a mummy, a daddy, and a baby'. But so far we've only come across a couple of other people collecting conkers. There are huge conkers lying around under trees just glistening and calling for people to stuff their pockets with. How can this be? Don't they know there should be battles taking place between children (and adults alike who remember the thrill of finding the best conkers)? I fear I will never understand Berliners.

Motherhood: the Grandma edition

2011-09-12T09:46:00.000+01:00

Orla & Mamie share a joke about smocking. Orla at 10 weeks old.

Orla has been saying for a couple of weeks that she'd like a baby. Not me having a baby, but one of her own. She has plans to have two: one girl (named Lucy of course, the same as her pillow, fluffy dog, ceramic dog, and countless dolls and toys), and one boy (named Ben). I told her that she might have two girls or two boys or the boy might come first before the 'Lucy-Baby'.

Orla: "What do you mean 'just boys'?"

Me: "Well, look at Granny Margaret; she had Daddy, Uncle Craig, and Uncle James. No girls."

Orla: "Does she know that's a pity?"

Me: "I'm sure she thinks that most days (laughing inwardly)"

Orla: "Did you want a baby when you were my age?"

Me: "No. I'm pretty sure I wanted a dog."

Orla: (Incredulous) "Why didn't you want a baby?"
Me: "I just didn't. I think I preferred dogs."

Orla: "Didn't you know then that it would be nicer living with me than living with Mamie?"

Me: "....I guess not."

And now I'm left wondering if she would prefer living with a baby than living with me.....sniff. 4 years old and ready to move out.

Mummy & the Bus Driver up a tree...

2011-09-10T18:44:00.001+01:00

I am pretty sure the school bus driver fancies me.

Though he is a lot more (and I mean A LOT) than 10 years old, he is displaying all the classic signs of a youth in love.

The evidence:
Day 1. He made sure I noticed him by tapping his watch to show me it was 7:31am and not 7:30am. Petty, but hey-ho, I noticed him.

Day 2. He made rude faces at me as I discovered at the last second that Orla needed a wee-wee and had to race her off to the back garden before her hour long journey just as the bus was pulling up to collect her.

Day 3. He very nearly smacked me in the face with the door as I attempted to just say 'bye' to Orla. 4

Day 4. He arrived before 7:30am, didn't even slow down to stop, and drove off without picking up Orla. When Orla and Stevie went downstairs for 7:30am and waited 5 minutes, the lady who runs the cafe next door told him the bus had been and hadn't stopped. Well, that's one way to get me to call. I called and was told to wait on a call back to tell me what was happening. He didn't call. I called back 3 times and there was no answer. I left messages. I pleaded with him to call me back. He didn't call. Stevie called from a different number. He answered. How pathetic is that? Later he told the school that there were no lights on in our apartment, so he just went. He doesn't know which apartment is ours. ...unless he's been watching from his tree house.

Day 5. He played it cool.

Next week I bet he gives me a dead arm.

Wake Mummy up before you go go.

2011-09-05T11:13:00.000+01:00

The day before school. Opening the Schultüte.

Modelling the Schultüte. Maybe I should have stuck the little boats on the other way up to make it more 'wearable'.

This was meant to be her 'first day of school' photo, but there was too much dancing for joy for me to get a good one.

Arriving at school, deliriously happy at the prospect of driving lessons.

The big day is here at last. Orla's first day at school. Can you see how happy she is to be in the midst of English speakers? Thrilled! That's putting it mildly. I hope that it's everything that she imagines it will be. And if it is, then by the time she gets home not only will they have thrown her a special party to celebrate the fact that she is a "real princess" (Dora the Explorer's words, not mine), but they will have taught her how to drive. Which will be really handy, as it's an extraordinary long journey to get to school on the school bus and back.

The bus picked her up at 7:30 this morning. Or rather 7:31 as he pointed out to me on his watch. I had thought of going on the bus with her on the first few days to make sure she wasn't overwhelmed by the whole experience, but I'd been told that there would be a teacher on the bus and she would be fine. So, instead we all got into the car a little bit later and went to the school to meet her at the other end. They didn't arrive until nearly 9am, which seems like a long time to be on a bus getting to school. Especially when you have the same thing at the end of the day and won't get home until 4:50pm.

I'm expecting her to be utterly exhausted when she gets home. She's never been to nursery or Kita for this many hours, so she won't be used to it. Nor is she used to getting up at 6:30am. She generally likes to rise some time after 8 and have a leisurely breakfast. It was a bit shattering for all of us quite honestly. Especially as Hamish hasn't slept properly in the past 2 days and has been crying every hour of the night. Quite why, I haven't worked out yet, but there's something brewing.

Hamish of course is devastated that he's not getting to go to 'big boy's school'. I would happily send him to be honest. For all my previous uniform moans, it is a great school. So, unlike the traditional mother crying at the school gates, I was really pleased to see her so happy and excited, and anyway, Hamish was crying enough for all of us. He does understand that he's not old enough yet to go, but says it's not fair, and I said what's not fair is that they chose yellow as a major colour component in their uniform when very few people can wear it. He just nodded and cried a bit more, recognising that this was indeed the case for him.

Yesterday, we did the Schultüte presentation thing yesterday morning. I had been told that she would have to take hers to school with her on the first day and then found out last week that she wasn't. So it was nice to be able to see her opening it at home. Hamish got a little one too. His was filled with Haribo, choclate buttons, stickers, a little car, a zebra, and any other bits and bobs I could find. I rushed to make his as I suddenly realised he would go bananas seeing Orla with one, especially if it contained anything edible. As it was he was desperately jealous of her school supplies. The Schultüte is meant to contain stationary items such as pencils and pens and rulers and all that malarky along with sweets and little toys. In Orla's I put some pencils and so on, along with hair clips and bobbles that she'll need to keep her hair tidy for school, and a purse (though I doubt if she'll need that yet), a Disney Princess toy, and the same sweeties and chocolate that Hamish had in his. Both were very happy indeed - especially as the cones doubled as hats. Bonus.

So now I just need to get used to my new wake up time and avoid being a minute late for the bus and we're sorted. I have the feeling it might take me some time to get used to it. I could barely think straight this morning when I was making her packed lunch, so I hope I've not accidently packed my toast in with it. So here's to the start of school and all that it brings. And I just hope that she loves it for a long time to come.

Boys In Tights - the Spiderman sequel

2011-09-01T15:21:00.000+01:00

I wouldn't put my face so close to that, Spiderman.

Hamish meditating on his spidey-senses - Ka-chow!

Spidey-senses at the ready! September is apon us. And you know what that signals in the minds of all my German friends? Yup, it's the beginning of the 2011 Boys In Tights season. I've written about this curious German phenomenon before and how as soon as there's a teeny change in the weather all the mothers put their little boys in tights. September is the month that this starts, and this year I am going to embrace this funny trend and join them (though maybe I'll wait until it is a little colder).

I've also written about the way shopping works over here. Once things are gone, they're gone, and god help you if you miss your chance to buy something vital and seasonal. I was in H&M (looking for PE shorts) and noticed that there were practically no boys tights left. I had previously noted that they had some nice teal and grey stripey ones, but on the website all you can see are the Cars ones. My sister thinks you can't get these in the UK, but they have them on the UK version of the site too.

Anyway, what I did find were practically the best boys tights money can buy. I got them! I got them! These are the very same tights for boys that I saw last year on a boy in Kita. The Spiderman tights with the face on the bum! Hamish was completely and utterly OVER THE MOON! Seriously. Aside from the face on the bum, they have Spiderman shooting his web on each leg and little Spiderman faces on the top of the foot. I nearly cried when I noticed that all they had left were 2 pairs both age 1-2, but I opened one out and even without stretching they were long enough to fit Hamish this year.

I figure they will do him under trousers when it's cold out, but not so cold that he needs his snowsuit on. Though Hamish really wants to show them off (and who can blame him) so may insist on wearing either just the tights or tights under shorts (I may have to draw the line there).

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As a side note, a lot of people find my blog through Googling 'boys in tights'. I'm not sure if it's little boys in wooly tights that they're looking for or something a bit odder, perhaps in American Tan, but they sure do boost my daily stats up. Now be off with you, pervs! And don't darken this doorway again!! (.....Unless you're going to become a Follower.... in which case, come on in! Welcome!)

Slightly annoyed from Berlin

2011-08-31T20:09:00.003+01:00

I've just written an email of ~~complaint~~ suggestions for ...um.... service improvement to Orla's new school. As in the one she's not even started yet. Yes, I believe in starting off on a good foot! Don't think I haven't been stressing over whether she'll be in negative house points on day 1 though.

We had our appointment at the school uniform shop today. Us and everyone else. You have to collect a number when you arrive and then wait until it's your turn. When it got to us, it turned out that they only have about half of the school uniform in a size that would fit Orla. Now Orla, although small, is not unusually so. I have her GP and Kinderarzt growth charts to prove it. But nonetheless, the school shop doesn't stock her size.

I half-joked "Where are M&S when you need them!" to which I was told by a member of staff that they had previously bought school uniform from there (whether for the shop or for personal use wasn't made clear) and should order some. Now that really annoyed me. Both the school handbook and the uniform order sheet state that the uniform must be ordered through the shop. And given that it's just 4 days before Orla starts, I don't have time to get her uniform from there. If we'd had this appointment even a month ago then we could even have bought it in the UK, tried it, taken it back and exchanged it. And for a lot less money too.

Instead I felt compelled to spend 44 Euros on two skirts that are too big and which I either have to spend more money on to have them professionally adjusted or have to re-sew myself. And for that price she could have had 14 M&S skirts that do fit.

On top of that they seemed to have no navy shorts for sport left for her to even try. I was told just to go and buy some plain navy ones from somewhere else. Unless you live in Germany, you probably don't realise that this is mission impossible. Germany doesn't believe in stock replenishment (I may have mentioned my horror at this in earlier posts) and now the shops are empty of anything summery and are currently in the midst of selling fleeces, rainwear, and tights (for boys). They don't even have schoolwear as the German schools are already all back from the summer break. Handy, huh? So far I have checked 3 stores, and frankly, I had better plans for how to spend my last few days with Orla before she starts school than scouring Berlin for shorts.

There were a few other things that annoyed me like the fact that they couldn't have decided what house Orla will be in before school starts, which means I need to beg Stevie for a loan of the car just to get out there to buy a coloured t-shirt, but hey, I hate to moan....:-)

How to prepare a hearty meal...

2011-08-29T14:27:00.005+01:00

Mostly I go food shopping on a Friday evening to one of the big supermarkets where I can get pretty much everything I need. If I want fish I usually go to the market, and if I run out of something and need it desperately for the dinner I am making I tend to dash round the corner to Nah und gut.

I've never been able to work out what Nah and gut's criteria is for product selection is. It's always struck me as a wee bit odd. But I suppose I've never really thought about it that hard. I go in, spot Hob Nobs and just think 'oh, that's a funny one-off product to have in. I wonder if that got sent to them in error'. Because Nah und gut's food section often seems like a whole bunch of incongruous stuff that have accidentally been sent to Berlin instead of Burnley and these strange one-off boxes have ended up in Edeka, where the products haven't been able to sell, and have been sent on to Nah und gut as a last resort before it goes into a skip out the back. Because the other thing about it is that products come and go. One week they will have 30 great big bars of Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and then you won't see that again for a month or two; another time it might be really odd looking Russian biscuits; and the next time maybe it will be Rocky Mountain marshmallows (both regular & mini) or Strawberry Fluff.

One time I had been out all day with the kids and got home at 6pm to discover that I didn't have anything in for dinner. So I nipped round to Nah und gut quickly to get something. As I recall, it was a night when Stevie was playing football so generally he likes to have something hearty and full of carbs and protein. Our local Nah und gut stores all their meat and chicken in an ice-cream style freezer (you know the ones with the slidey-tops that you have to lean into?) , and there's never exactly tons to choose from as there is only one shelf. Anyway on this occasion I got there and all they had were 5 little boxes of quails eggs.

Today I went in to pick up something I'd forgotten at the weekend, and as I walked past the meat fridge I peered in. This time they had packs and packs of chicken hearts - CHICKEN HEARTS! What do you even do with chicken hearts?

So I finally did a search on Nah und gut and discovered (I think - from translating the garbled translation that Google kindly provided me with) that Nah und gut try to provide specialist food catering for the tastes of their local community. So the bigger question is, what kind of people am I living amongst??????

(Incidentally, I went on to the BBC Food website where you can enter an ingredient and find recipes. Should you be salivating at the thought of chicken hearts you might fancy one of their suggestions which actually calls for 12 duck hearts: Salad of duck livers and hearts, snails and bacon with a dandelion and apple salad. ) I know I should be more adventurous, but if it's alright with you I'll pass on the duck livers, duck hearts, snails and bacon, and dandelions and just have the apple thanks.

German fashion for October

2011-08-26T11:02:00.003+01:00

I was planning on writing a post about my love of the dirndl. And I have done, but it's on my arty blog, 'fiona gray . paints'. So, if you fancy a quick rummage around what the web has to offer dirndl-wise (everything from everyday to wedding day, and C&A to couture) then come on over!

(And then I want you to visualise yourself in the one where she's holding a coffee at the school PTA coffee morning...)

Should I stay or should I go?

2011-08-25T13:46:00.005+01:00

I'm feeling a bit uneasy. I'm having to think about the future and important things like what I really want to do, and even more importantly, where I want to be. And I haven't really got a clue.

The trouble you see is that Stevie got offered another job at Rolls-Royce. Which is all well and good, and clever old him, but it was a permanent job. And I have a feeling I might be a bit of a commitment-phobe when it comes to location. Because going permanent would mean staying, and I can't get it out of my head that that means forever, and then I feel a bit funny inside and start thinking about eating that Russian chocolate that I am meant to be sending to my niece.

Of course it doesn't necessarily mean forever, there is always the option of Stevie chucking his job and us moving back to the UK, but at the moment I have a rather lovely option where we have been told we'll be here until June next year and if I wanted to come back sooner all we'd need to do is say, and then me, the kids, Stevie, our belongings would all be back in our old house, living our old life as quick as a flash (well, as long as it's a flash that lasts 12 weeks). And that is an awful comfort to me.

It's not just Berlin that has me location-commitment-phobic: I was also this way in Derby. I always thought it would be temporary and it never really felt like 'home', and then one year would merge into the next and all of a sudden I've lived in 4 houses there, and accumulated 2 children, and a bunch of root-making friends. But when I think of Derby, I still don't see myself as living there for any length of time. And do I really want to go back to my old life?

So what to do? Well, this time I've been let off the hook. Stevie turned it down (because of me being happier on secondment), but sooner or later I will need to decide whether I want to keep living in Berlin for a while longer, or whether I want to return to Derby. I need to write a list of pro's and con's.

Postcards from Germany: Stuttgart & Frankfurt

2011-08-22T16:23:00.006+01:00

Andy Warhol artwork in the Mercedes-Benz Museum. They commissioned a series to celebrate 100 years of the automobile but the series never got completed due to Warhol's death.

A personalised bus from somewhere or other. I got whisked out of my audio zone before I could find out. Nice though, huh?

A selection of racing cars all going 'vrrrm' and stuff.

Top: The real Frankfurt. Bottom: Legoland Frankfurt.

Love locks on the Eiserner Steg bridge in Frankfurt.

I know, I know, you would have thought I would have been done with this summer holiday by now. But alas, no. Stick with it dear readers, this episode contains some pertinent information for all new travelers in Germany.

I was left to decide the route of our journey on our way back to Berlin. I'm not much cop at route planning really, and my criteria for where to stop off for the night was based on what places looked nice in miniature at Legoland Deutschland, where do I know people off of the internet, and is there somewhere in Germany that all Stevie's German work colleagues will think is very odd when he tells them it's a holiday destination. And with that as the criteria, you will of course then know instantly that we went to Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, & Stuttgart - though in the opposite order.

"Stuttgart? Why on earth would you want to go to Stuttgart?" - said Stevie's work colleagues and um...most of the people we know. Stuttgart, it turns out, had the living daylights bombed out of it, and thus doesn't have the same sort of appeal in terms of architectural beauty as many of the other places we visited. Unless you are into that whole 'post-war everything looks like it's made of concrete and the whole city centre could well be any town centre in the UK' look. Which really, is utterly perfect for British expats feeling a bit homesick. If that's you, then I would highly recommend a short visit to Stuttgart. A friend who lived in Karlsruhe for many years described it as "the Leicester of Germany", and Stuttgart is quite possibly the "Derby of Germany".

Nonetheless, I chose to go to Stuttgart and for very good reason. For it hosts the extraordinarily fine Mercedes-Benz Museum. And if you turn up at the wrong gate, like we did, you'll get an even stronger feeling that you're in Derby, because it's sprawling Mercedes works take up an awful lot of land and give you the impression that you've slipped back to the Rolls-Royce works, except that in Derby Rolls-Royce haven't built a quite stunning football stadium next to the factory and don't have a rather gorgeous museum building with a completely excellent museum inside.

If there's one reason to go to Stuttgart, it's to visit this museum. It's great. I personally loved the building and could really have enjoyed the audio guide had I not had little hands dragging me out of the audio zones all the time. For me, it was also a special treat to see lots of Andy Warhol paintings and screen prints that Mercedes-Benz had commissioned that I hadn't seen before.

If there are two reasons to visit Stuttgart well there's also the Porsche Museum, but we didn't have time to go there.

And if there are three reasons to visit Stuttgart (and you have kids), well, they have the best outdoor kids swimming pool that I have ever seen or been to. It was completely excellent, and we've been to quite a few and this topped the lot! Lots of pools for kids of different ages, slides and flumes for the bigger teenagers, great playarea for the little ones, little slides and lots of space for the babies and toddlers.

So there you go, Stuttgart's not that bad after all. Really. No honestly, we had a good time. And so we left Stuttgart rather cheerfully really because we were on our way to Wiesbaden. To our untimely deaths (if you listen to my mother, which you don't, which is lucky, because you'd find your phone bills would go up quite significantly). Because, of course, we were on our way to meet Frau Dietz. And I can categorically say that she is not a 50 year old man pretending to be a rather good cook and expat interviewer. She's very lovely and has one of those proper German toilets where you can look at your jobby sitting there looking back at you, and you can analyse it in a very German way and say 'hello there!' to it before you flush it (in a more Scottish way). We were barely through the door before my two lovely children spotted this and made full use of the facilities with a little bit of German analysis and Scottish friendliness thrown in. AND even after that, she took us for ice-cream which pretty much makes her a friend for life. Sadly our visit was all too brief as we had to race to Frankfurt for 5pm to meet the man with the keys to an apartment we were staying in overnight.

So Frankfurt... Frankfurt's another place that German work colleagues think is an odd destination for a holiday. But, honestly, both times I went to Legoland Deutschland I looked at it and thought it was really lovely and mentally marked it as a place I would really like to see while living in Germany. The Altstadt (old town) in Legoland looks so pretty, and though I could have picked somewhere that was a more even distance between Wiesbaden and our final stop, Berlin, well, I didn't, cause it was my route plan and I wanted to see a handful of old buildings even if it did mean the kids had to sit in the car for five torturous hours the following day.

And that's the rub. For Frankfurt's Aldstadt is not that much bigger than the one in Legoland. And let that be a lesson to you: Don't use Legoland as a substitute for a travel agency or a guide book, because it's not that reliable. The Altstadt does in fact appear to be just a few old buildings clustered together - there's not much to it. You won't get tired walking round it. In fact, you probably wouldn't get too tired hopping around it.

But still, I won't hear a bad word against Frankfurt. It has a lovely cluster of skyscrapers, which individually aren't that attractive, and it was very nice down by the river where we stayed, and I really loved the 'love locks' on the bridge. That's the first time I've ever seen those, but I think it's a lovely idea. Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

Love padlocks (also known as Love Locks) are a custom by which sweethearts affix padlocks to a fence or similar public fixture to symbolize their everlasting love. They are most commonly placed on the railings of bridges.[citation needed] It is suggested that the custom of "locking a padlock and throwing away the key" probably originated in China. The custom of love padlocks has become internationally popular.

And that was our holiday. I know I said at the beginning that there was going to be some important information for those of you new to travelling around Germany, but it's going to have to wait until the next post because my 2 typing fingers are very tired.

The rain in Berlin falls mainly 3 months after the rain-gear has sold out.

2011-08-20T13:41:00.006+01:00

This year I am trying to beat the system. I will not be out-witted by the German way of bringing out vital clothing and accessories at an unseasonable time of year, sell them all within a day and not replenish the stock. I will not end up with either nothing at the right time of year, or having to ship stuff across from the UK wildly guessing at the correct sizes on the internet. Nope, not this time. I've got my eye on the ball. Finger on the pulse. Ready to pounce.

While out and about with Orla I noticed that their was a sort of buzz around the fleeces in H&M. Like flies. Swarming. And the temperature must have been in the mid-20's. When the sun was on you it was scorching, but there were little crowds gathering around the rain gear in Karstadt, Tchibo, and H&M. With a little gasp I realised that this was the 'moment' I should be buying rain gear for the kids. I scuttled the pair of them off to Tchibo and got them both kitted out at a reasonable price, and just as well, as when I stopped off at C&A (looking for nice clasps) the rainwear section lay decimated. I felt like I'd won a competition!

Next up I will be keeping my eye out near the end of September for the hour when they sell the winter snow suits and sledges. And while I am feeling ever so smug and pleased with myself for having the kids prepared for the weather ahead of time, I also have the funny feeling there won't be a single drop of rain or flake of snow until my pair have had sudden growth spurts and outgrow the whole lot.

In the meantime I am waiting, poised like a panther for those snowsuits. (Incidentally, just so you know, we are also just about to enter into 'boys in tights' season. I have seen a 3 pack of nice starry & stripy tights for boys in Tchibo to match Hamish's raingear, and also noticed some nice stripy ones in H&M, but last year I saw a boy wearing rather smashing spiderman ones with a great big spiderman face on the bum, which I thought were superb, so I am holding out.)

Girls Week

2011-08-18T15:27:00.006+01:00

We're having 'Girls Week' this week. Hamish is back at Kita, and Orla and I are spending some quality time together. Mother and daughter time. We've never really been able to do too much of that, she was only 15 months when Hamish came along, and normally I have them both together and don't have much opportunity to spend one-on-one time with them.

So before she starts school I thought it would be nice if we spent some time doing some of the things that she would like to do. Admittedly, we've also had to do some things that she hasn't wanted to do, like picking up documents from the doctors and taking Hamish for his U7 tests (that's the standard age 3 tests here), but we've also gone to the cinema and saw Cars 2 in German ( and because the German schools have gone back it was easy to explain the bits that she didn't understand as we were the only ones in the cinema. And we went to an ice-cream shop, and we went shopping for art supplies and things for her schuletute, and we've done some craft projects.

And because I knew it would make her really happy, I finally got my act together and finished sewing the dress I've been making for her. It's been hanging on the outside of her wardrobe for hmm... months, so it was about time. I also managed to make a drawstring bag to hold her school tights in which was easy-peasy and I'm rather chuffed with. We've also done some baking and some craft projects, and while my house is now awash with sequins and Hama beads which keep appearing in the oddest of places (like Stevie's dinner), we've had some really good fun. If you want to see more of the bouncy bed pink dress photos then head over to fiona gray . paints.

Postcards from Germany: The Bodensee & Zurich

2011-08-14T20:12:00.005+01:00

Allensbach on the Bodensee.

Zurich - pretty buildings, pretty toy shops, pretty flag. What more could you want? I hear the Swiss also make great chocolate. I'm sold.

Meersburg - quite possibly my favourite place on the Bodensee.

After all our Legoland, Playmobil fun we headed down to the Bodensee for our 'proper' holiday. The Bodensee is right at the bottom of Germany, and everyone raves about it as a great holiday destination. I was in charge of all the holiday arrangements, though frankly, if I didn't think Stevie would be worse at it, and we'd end up staying in a brothel, then I would gladly hand over this responsibility to someone else. But Stevie's view seems to be "You spend all day on the internet, you must be an expert."..."Yes, yes, I am, but mostly at sourcing pointless fripperey at fantastic prices". Hotels, sadly, no. So while we were in Nurnburg, I may have managed to avoid booking us into a brothel, we may well have been booked into a hotel next to a brothel as we were surrounded on 3 sides by lap dancing clubs and sex shops , though there was a really nice looking gallery and design shop too so you know, it was worth it, and even though Stevie couldn't sleep from the music banging through the walls from the nightclub, I had no problem at all.

But I digress, the place I booked on the Bodensee was an apartment within a hotel which I thought would work really well for us as it came with a 'fully equipped kitchenette'. For some reason I packed as though we were flying with Ryanair (i.e. as little as possible) and not taking the car, and assumed that a 'fully equipped kitchenette' would include a washing machine. Alas, apparently it means one of those compact kitchen unit things from IKEA. You get a sink, 2 rings, and a fridge. No washing machine. Now if I was feeling really sorry for myself, I'd tell you I can barely type my hands are so cracked from all the hand-washing I did every evening. (But I'd be lying, really, because I'm quite lazy and just waited until we were desperate and then washed and washed and washed away in my little IKEA sink). Aside from that it was lovely, and the kids discovered they did actually like Nutella, and it was close to the beach.

We stayed in a place called Allensbach and visited a few places around the Bodensee. We went to Konstanz which is lovely though chock-full of tourists (and wasps - though they may have followed us from Legoland) and my lasting memory of it will be Orla going absolutely berserk over a pretzel that I wouldn't buy her and screaming wildly so that everyone in Edeka stared at me with funny looks on their faces.

We also visited Friedrichshafen because I really wanted to visit the Zepplin Museum. Friedrichshafen is not the sort of place you visit for the architecture - it's a bit horrid really. Well, not horrid, but not exactly lovely. We got near the Zepplin Museum, but wouldn't you know it, I didn't get to go in it. Both kids were too hot and fed up and moany, which in turn made Stevie rather moany too. There are times when I just give up for the sake of my own sanity. So I abandoned my secret plan and drove them back to the hotel where they all had a wee sleep and then tottered down to the beach. Pah.

We also took a feery ride from Konstanz to Meersburg. Now if you get the chance, go to Meersburg. It's lovely. Really pretty. Lovely painted buildings along the shorefront, a great big castle on the hill, vineyards rolling down the hill towards the harbour, beautiful quaint streets, vines growing up buildings laden with grapes, shop windows full of cuckoo clocks, and just a general loveliness about the whole place. And if you get bored of all that you can play crazy golf. I think Meersburg was my favourite place around the Bodensee. The kids enjoyed the ferry ride there and back and quite liked the hilliness of the place (makes a change from flat as a pancake Berlin) and so we were all happy.

Oh, and we went to Switzerland. Stevie has raved about Zurich ever since he got stuck there between flights for a day by accident with work. He spent a day in the city with a work colleague and was totally wowed by it's beauty. He says it's the most attractive city he's ever been to, and frankly he's gone on about how I would love it so much that I had to go while I had the opportunity. And it is lovely. It has a gorgeous altstadt and really was worth the trip. I took probably a million photos and decided that the Swiss flag is possibly my favourite. The kids are sticking with the German flag as their favourite. The Swiss is now their second favourite. That's as far as the list extends. I'm a lazy mummy and haven't even bothered mentioning the Union Jack to them. As far as they're concerned when we arrived in Germany it was right in the middle of the World Cup and we were surrounded by German flags and they took it into their hearts as their flag. My little patriots.

Anyway, I also discovered about 3 really lovely little toy shops in Zurich. It was very lucky for me that it was Sunday when we went or I could have easily spent an awful lot of money, and not just on the kids. The windows were full of things that I know could have made my sister very happy this Christmas: lovely little notebooks decorated with anteaters following a little trail of ants in lovely Scandinavian colours, giant wall hanging owls made of paper in beautiful colours, wooden St Bernhards holding little Swiss barrels, beautifully drawn dressing up dolls just asking to be framed and hung on a bedroom wall, boxes containing stacking cardboard cats wearing little jumpers and carrying presents tied with ribbons. Oh, just thinking about it makes me want to go back. (But being the resourceful creature I am I took photos instead so I could Google the brands when I got back)

Postcards from Germany: Legoland & Günzburg

2011-08-13T10:56:00.006+01:00

Paddling as fast as they can to get away from the wasps.

Squeal with delight if you want to go faster!

The pretty wasp-free streets of Günzburg

Ah...I've just realised that this photo doesn't really show the curvy roofs. Oh well, you'll just have to go yourself and have a look, as I'm too lazy to change the photo.

So after the Playmobil Funpark we moved on to Günzburg for the night before hitting Legoland Deutschland. This was our second visit. We went in April on our trip to Munich and Regensburg, Augsburg, Bamburg and the CzechRepublic. Ideally I would have liked to have had a little more space between the Playmobil trip and the Legoland trip just to eek things out a bit, but god forbid, we might have missed out on the wasps had we done it that way.

My enduring memory of Legoland is of the wasps. They are everywhere. Gazillions of them. You can't stand still for more than a second or you'll have 3 of them at you with back-ups on the way. So it's best to keep on moving. Which was fine when we came in April because the queues were almost non-existent, but some queuing was required this time round and the wasps were driving us all nuts. Eating was not a pleasure.

But Legoland was still great. The kids loved it. Same as last time. We didn't spend as much time this time round walking round mini-Germany, but I did go back and check out Frankfurt, just to make sure that was the place I fancied visiting. It was - but you know what, I think I prefer the Legoland version to the real version.

Anyway, the other thing about the last time we visited is that we didn't actually go into Günzburg the last time we went to Legoland. We stayed in a farmhouse outside of the town. But we went out for dinner there and if you are planning on visiting Legoland Deutschland, I would highly recommend a visit to the town. It's full of lovely architecture, with buildings with curvy roofs, and all painted pretty colours and little tree-lined streets. And less wasps.

Postcards from Germany: Playmobil Funpark

2011-08-08T09:14:00.005+01:00

One thing we realised shortly after our first travels around Germany with pesky kids was that we needed to include quite a few stops, and ideally, if we wanted to see anything of interest to us we had to broker a deal with Orla & Hamish whereby their displeasure at being dragged round lovely architecture was offset by visits to places that they would like.

And so on our way down to the Bodensee, we made our first stop at Nürnberg, which is nice and handy for the Playmobil Funpark. I'd seen this advertised inside the Playmobil catalogue, but had made the assumption that it was for slightly older kids than mine, possibly around 6 or 8 years old. But we decided to try it anyway, and I am so glad we did.

Talk about FANTASTIC!? I loved it. The kids loved it. And I loved it even more. Admittedly, it should be noted that I do have a bit of a Playmobil addiction, and played with Playmobil myself when I was a child, so other visitors may experience different levels of exuberant enthusiasm. But by the same token, please also note, that this is not a sponsored..um...(slightly lengthy, rambling) postcard (I must be turning into my mother), I just thought it was brilliant.

Where to start. Well, the price for starters: It's only 10 Euros per person with under 3's going free, which is quite a bargain compared with other marvellous places like Legoland, Disneyland, etc, etc. And if you don't go in the peak season it's only 8 Euros. So even better.

But of course the best bit about the Playmobil Funpark is all the toys. That's what it's all about. And there are tons of them. Outdoor toys and indoor toys, so it doesn't really matter if it rains. Hamish particularly like the construction vehicles and diggers that they have in an area filled with gravel and sand. There were also swings and climbing frames and spades and all sorts of other things for the kids to do at this bit. But the best bit was that there were enough toys for everybody, so no squabbling, and the ability in Hamish's case to wander around with a digger in each hand.

Orla loved the water play areas. There were a few 'watery bits' and I would probably recommend taking either some swimwear for the kids (if it's nice and hot) or a change of clothes. I forgot and Hamish got soaked and had to wander around in his pants while his shorts dried off. Nonetheless, he didn't care one bit as they had a canal system set up at perfect Hamish height with all the Playmobil 1.2.3. water toys such as little boats, loads of arks, and dolphins and so on.

There was also a bigger canal type thing set up near by with lots of pirate ships, car ferries, various sail boats and dolphins, whales, and loads of other sea creatures and other things that float. But the best watery bit as far as my kids were concerned were the big clams. These were fenced off and children were let in in groups of around 12 at a time. The aim of the big clams is that water flows through them and tiny little Playmobil toys, such as starfish, shells, seahorses, seals and so on appear inside the clam and the children have to reach in and try to collect them. They pretty much have to lie on the ground to get their arms in to reach, and the assistants will 'help' the younger ones find little toys which is great. You can buy a little clam shell for 1 Euro to collect all the little toys you find which you get to keep for free. Yay!

Oh and how could I forget the rafts?! Beside a giant pirate ship you can sail (or rather, punt) a raft around the water with your children. I have never seen so many terrified parents aboard rafts. It was quite funny. Especially as I didn't go on one. But Stevie took the kids on one and seeing Orla stepping rather perilously close to the edge of the raft with her paddle about 5 times before Stevie made her sit down was enough to give me the same frightened look as those parents aboard.

I could go on and on about how great the Playmobil Funpark is. But I'll try to keep it (slightly) brief. The indoor play areas were also fantastic. There's a massive one in the food area which has all the big Playmobil houses, schools, castles, hospitals, safari, etc, etc, and a smaller one near the entrance that has more of the Playmobil 1.2.3. indoor toys and pirate ships, farms, and equestrian centres for the older ones. Frankly we could have stayed for days.

I had never heard of the Playmobil Funpark before I moved to Germany. It's not advertised in the same way as Legoland or Disneyland, but it should be, and I would highly recommend it to British parents as an excellent place to take Playmobil-loving kids. There are also Playmobil Funparks in Paris, Malta, Athens and the USA. Who knew??

I return: unusually slightly brown.

2011-08-05T21:25:00.004+01:00

I'm back! I'm back! I made sure to phone my mum just in case she hadn't slept the whole time I was away worrying about internet interviewing murderers and the like, but it seemed that she had forgotten that we might all be lying in shallow Wiesbaden graves as she'd had a marvellous day at Zumba and tap. I was a bit miffed to be honest. Not even a restless night tossing and turning. Rubbish.

As usual in our quest to 'fit in as many places in Germany in the short time we may have left in this country without driving the kids mental in the process' we managed to see a fair amount of German hotspots. We started off in Nürnberg, then jumped right in to the Playmobil Funpark, then off to Günzburg, (which we've visited before) to go to Legoland Deutschland. From there we went to our holiday apartment in Allensbach on the Bodensee, and then visited Konstanz, Meersburg, Friedrichshafen, and Zurich. Then we headed back up through the west stopping at Stuttgart for the night, Wiesbaden (to see the lovely Frau Dietz), and Frankfurt. And then we faced a mammoth journey back to Berlin.

I'd like to say it was non-stop, but there was a lorry fire on the motorway so there was a great big stop for an hour and a half which only made Stevie drive even faster on the Autobahn. I had to close my eyes at 190 kph. I can only do 150kph before I start to feel a little scared. I am not even going to convert 190kph into mph as I'll probably be sick. And as I've just eaten a 95 cent (!) Creme Egg bought today at the British shop and then hidden (and thought about longingly) until the kids were asleep, it's just not worth it.

And now, it's very late, so I'll have to leave all my holiday tales for another time. But I hope you're all relieved that we're still alive, or were you too busy doing the time step too? Man, I knew it!

The very last day of Kita...

2011-07-22T18:46:00.002+01:00

...is here at last.

Orla was over the moon. She's been waiting for this day to come for so long and now she's ready to start school. I SO hope 'big girl's school' is not a massive disappointment. But before she starts we've got our holiday to get through - it's looking a bit rainy down at the Bodensee; I've got to try my hardest not to get murdered by someone I've met on the internet (should you not hear from me for months, please send the police here and tell my mum she was right about the sorts of folk you meet on the internet).

We're taking the laptop with us, but I am going to try and not use the internet (oh, who am I kidding? Rainy evenings?).

In other news, I joined Google+ today. But so far I only have 1 friend. I like the idea of being able to divide people up into groups and only show certain groups certain things. I know you technically can do things like that on FB, but it's a bit of a faff. That's one reason why I don't post my blog through FB. Mostly I find strangers less critical about all the things I say about Stevie compared to his family :)

Thou shalt not hack into the Pentagon

2011-07-21T18:02:00.003+01:00

You know how I thought the whole thing with the German school bags was a little weird? Well, I spoke to the school administrator who told me that I didn't have to worry about having to find a list of 33 items for Orla starting school. - This only really became a concern after I found out that I can only buy her uniform about 2 days before she starts. The thought of frantically searching Berlin for specific brands of stationary the day before fills me with the same sort of joy as shopping for all my Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.

Anyway, she said that I'd start getting more info through by post with details of what I needed to get, and other vital bits of info. Today I got the first. It's a form. With a link to the school's IT policy. Which I should read and understand. Both of these things not a problem to me. I used to work in IT after all so I've read more than a few IT policies in my time.

But I've also to read the IT policy to Orla and get her to sign the form stating that she has read it and understood it's terms of use. I think that might have been the best laugh I had all day. I hope they are ok with her only signing

OrLa - as they haven't left enough room for her to sign the surname which she hasn't yet mastered.

I understand the need to have 4 year olds signing an IT policy and observing guidelines of use. I really do. We have one at home. It's quite simple: "Don't touch any of the buttons while mummy is doing online shopping".

Sunday Karaoke in Mauerpark

2011-07-17T19:24:00.005+01:00

The view of the Fernsehturm from Mauerpark.

Part of the Berlin Wall. And hipsters casually lazing around on the former deathstrip.

Karaoke in Mauerpark.

I'm starting to realise that there's still so much that we haven't seen or done in Berlin, and it's almost sending me into panic mode. This morning we mulled over whether to go to Leipzig, Lübbenau, or stay closer to home. In the end we decided to take a little trip just across the city to Prenzlauerberg to Mauerpark. We'd heard good things about it, but just had never gotten round to going. Mauerpark takes up an area of land that was once part of the death strip between the two walls. One part of the wall still remains separating the park from the Max Schmeling Halle (where previously we went to see the Harlem Globetrotters). There's a large market there with people selling food and jewelry and lots of lovely crafted goods.

But the thing I enjoyed most of all was the karaoke. It was very popular as you can see. Most of the singers were terrific and you could easily spend a nice afternoon sitting back and enjoying it with the kids and a few beers... and maybe a barbeque.

I am so glad we went. We'll definitely go back again. It was like open air Britain's Got Talent (or rather 'Das Supertalent' as we have here). Anyway, if you want to see more you can look at the 'Friends of Mauerpark' website, and the Facebook page. And now I am off to write a list of other places in Berlin I need to go to, starting with Schloss Charlottenburg, and possibly ending with that climbing centre I saw on the way back (seriously, check out those photos - does that not look amazing? There are cars hanging 40 ft up!)

Potsdam & the Sansoucci Palace (fleetingly)

2011-07-16T21:15:00.005+01:00

Orla is laughing because Hamish has a little ice cream on his face. He's so daft!

We went a little trip to Potsdam today. The last time we went it was minus something degrees and our visit to the Sansoucci Palace was fleeting to say the least. Today though was as hot as a little pancake. Hot enough to burn your bum on the saddle of your bike, if you were as unfortunate as me to be on your bike with a persistent moaning child on the back.

Still it was lovely, all green and floral and colourful and tomato-ey. They appear to be growing tomatoes in the borders along with all the flowers. That was a nice touch, and it kept the kids amused for minutes. There were lovely large fountains, one with a kazillion coy carp (really!) swimming in it. And there were some of the rudest statues you have ever seen. Let's put it this way, never before could I have imagined seeing Stevie standing gazing at a marble statue for anything longer than a millisecond.

Nothing at all like the last time we went. It was minus 5 I think. The trees were bare, the statues had all been encased in protective wooden boxes to save them from the bum-clenching cold, and the fountains, turned off, were frozen over, with only a couple of forlorn swans kicking about on the ice. The buildings of course were still lovely. The only other thing that remained constant from that visit to this was the quiet whinging that seems to appear every time we are in the vicinity of something cultural.

So, while not quite as brief a visit as last time, it was still quite brief. If only they had taken the trouble to preserve a historic spielplatz within the manicured grounds. The only thing that kept Hamish going was that I told him that the main walkway did indeed lead directly to an ice cream shop. And with all fingers crossed, thankfully it led at least to a gift shop selling Cornettos and Magnums in amongst the 'I should have been King' bibs and tea towels.

I would love to actually go inside one of the buildings and have a look round and a little ooh and ah over things, but I doubt that that is going to happen while the kids are still young. Especially while Hamish is still getting to grips with the whole potty training thing. I wonder how many people can lay claim to having a sneaky pee against a palace? It's worth going just for that alone I'd say.

Of flowers & fireworks...

2011-07-15T09:50:00.003+01:00

10 whole years together. I didn't even know. That's how good I am. But Stevie remembered. I know I give him a hard time on this blog, especially for his funny little Stevie-isms, but he intersperses them with moments of great romance which take me all the more by surprise. He bought me a huge bouquet of roses, which I loved all the more because I could see that they hadn't come from a petrol station or a supermarket. He bought a card and wrote me a lovely letter in it. Admittedly, it was a birthday card, but it had a number 10 on it, so I get where he was coming from. He says he didn't know what he should be looking for in German.

We had a lovely romantic evening. I provided a lovely dinner that no one would eat (let's pretend that that's because it was so beautiful it would have been a shame to eat a work of art), and then we strolled down memory lane to the swing park, and swung by the video shop for a movie, 2 Chupa Chups and a bottle of Prosecco. It was like a scene out of a Barbara Cartland novel. I've never read any Barbara Cartland, but I'll bet there are plenty of beautiful romantic scenes where the female protagonist ends up with a cherry Chuppa Chup stuck to her best trousers cause it's "diz-guss-TING!"

But as Stevie said "You can't expect it to be all fireworks after 10 years together". As if to illustrate this point our evening was rounded off in the most wonderful, heart-stopping manner, as two of the neighbour's cars went up in flames right outside our building.

Nothing says "I love you" like 8 exploding tyres at 2am. I thought Orla's balcony had fallen off.

What you can't see in this photo is all our neighbours in various states of undress huddled round watching the smouldering cars and merrily toasting our momentous anniversary with champagne* while we all choked on the noxious fumes.

Was ist das? "You....fan........the flames.......of...my...heart". Ein Hinweis vielleicht!

It was a wonderful night. Here's to the next 10 years!

*This is possibly not true.

According to one of our neighbours this was another incident of luxury car arson, which has happened quite a lot in Berlin. It seems that people set fire to cars such as Mercedes and Porsches in "concerted attacks on conspicuous wealth" (The Local). Police found another car in flames a couple of streets away from our street. The arsonists choose slow-burning substances such as barbeque lighters to start the fires under the cars allowing them to be some distance away when the fire takes hold. Here's a link to the car arson map of Berlin.

Rügen is lovely!

2011-07-14T10:05:00.006+01:00

All the buildings were this pretty. It was lovely seeing a whole town like this. All white with lovely carved wooden fretwork. Very sea-sidey!

I loved this. It's like little beetroot, isn't it? After having to wait while I photographed every house, shop, casino, I think Stevie had had his fill of the fretwork.

But there was plenty more to see. Here's the Berlin Junior Ornathology Club checking out the sea birds and seeing what's what around the beach...

Ah....that's enough of the binoculars now. Take them off kids.NOW!

Hello, hello!

We went to Rügen at the weekend. We've been waiting to visit it after a few of our neighbours and Stevie's work colleagues recommended it. But we've either been too busy or the weather hasn't been great. Mostly too busy. Rügen is Germany's largest island. It's way up there on the top right hand side, near the Czech Republic and on the Baltic coast. It's a popular German tourist resort,and everyone from Einstein to Hitler has holidayed there. So you know, if it's good enough for ~~Hitler~~ Einstein, then it's good enough for us. You can reach it by road by going over the mile long (I think) bridge from Stralsund (which sticks in my mind, because I can't help thinking I might have bought it in IKEA).

Anyway, it's lovely. We only went for the day, which given the quite long drive, wasn't nearly long enough. We decided to go to Binz, which is probably the main tourist destination. I loved the architecture. I swear, you just can't sicken me with too much wooden fretwork. I came back wanting to paint our house in Derby white.

We had a lovely afternoon on the beach, and then a lovely little wander round the streets, then a beautiful little meltdown over ice-cream. It never feels like a proper family holiday unless at least one person is standing on their own in a mighty huff in a corner. Ah...bliss. And really, it was.

So lovely in fact that we plan on going back for a long weekend towards the end of August. I really want to see Prora, Hitler's holiday camp - built to house 20,000 holiday makers at a time, under the premise that every worker deserved a seaside holiday; and a few of the smaller places like Putbus and Kap Arkona. Next time I am going to try and fit one of those little beach cabins into the boot of the car.

The unresolved mystery of the German school bag

2011-07-07T14:31:00.005+01:00

(images from http://www.schulranzen-markenshop.de/)

These are German school bags. I think on the whole they are pretty ugly. In fact I've not seen one that I would have wanted if I was of school age. I don't think I was that fussy, but honestly, no amount of peer pressure would have made me carry one of these boulders on my back.

But everyone has them here. As in, EVERYONE. They are an absolute must-have for school children here. I've half-convinced myself that there is a law that states no child will be allowed into the German school system unless they can carry their own body weight on their back for at least a few blocks.

These bags are huge and you quite often see German children walking bent over as though they are walking into the wind in Stornoway. But, that must be the look. Apparently there are brands that are more desirable than others. I was trying to unfurl the mystery as to why these bags are so popular when I came across a topic in Toytown (an expat message board) that says that in 2008 you can't go wrong with McNeill, Scout or 4YOU. I don't know whether in the ever-changing world of rucksack fashion these brands are still the ones to go for, because I just can't draw out anything cool from such a broad range of ugliness.

On this message board someone has asked whether there are special criteria for buying the 'right' bag, whether there are 'class distinctions' but the only thing they offer apart from choosing the 'right' brand, is that you get a big one. Size apparently does matter. With these rucksacks you usually get a pencil case, a P.E. bag, sometimes a little purse, or a water bottle. All well and good, but I'm still not convinced that these extras justify the price. Yes, yes, you could have a point that they have reflective parts, and plastic bottoms, and are ergonomically designed for your child, and have oodles of compartments. But honestly, how much would you pay for an ugly bag?

Because all of the bags I have shown you above cost over 150.00 Euros! At least one of these costs over 200.00 Euros! And I just don't get it?

Oh Fiona, is there nothing you can't do?

2011-07-04T14:58:00.004+01:00

I blame Germany. Or Stevie. Or them both really. See normally I could do this. I am sure I could. But the evidence just isn't there, is it? You're not going to be putting in any orders for birthday cakes from me anytime soon. Frau Dietz sent me that link after my rainbow post which included the rather fabulous rainbow jelly on my other blog. But at least you can compare the two and have a good laugh. I certainly did. But it may have been slightly hysterical seeing as it was nearing midnight and I could see no end in sight that didn't include us all getting poisoned somehow by the amount of food colouring I was going to force us all to eat.

It was Hamish's birthday on Saturday and I really, really, wanted to make him that rainbow cake. Even though he wanted me to make him a Bob the Builder cake. I thought I knew better and he would be wowed by it's sheer utter amazing-ness. I also couldn't be bothered ordering coloured icing off the internet.I was just being lazy. So lazy in fact that I didn't actually read the recipe until the day I planned on making it, and then realised I needed gel food dyes. It's hard enough to get the ones I got, so I knew I had no chance of finding gel ones at my local supermarket. And that is why I blame Germany. I just can't get the things I need at short notice. (Ok, so I am also aware that my local Tesco doesn't carry gel food dyes, but they would at least get me out of this mess by selling me a Bob the Builder cake at 1am).

I had been so tired. Hamish was ill and just wanted to cling to me all the time, and Stevie wasn't being much help by being typically Stevie-ish and leaving everything to me, while he sauntered out to watch the tennis. And that is why I blame him. And Andy Murray. Because at least if all I had was a really dire looking blue shaded sponge that looked like the mildew had got to it, then I do know I wouldn't have made icing that sloppy, had it not been nearing 1am. God, I miss Tesco at 1am. It looks like I've thrown a bucket of chip fat at it. And seriously, I think I used about 4 blocks of butter and half a bag of sugar along with the 9 egg whites it required. (Though I used 10 because I reckoned I wasn't being very careful with them and had probably thrown at least one away when I was scooping out the stray yolks that escaped).

I could tell you that in the end it tasted delicious. That the appearance made no difference to my lovely big 3 year old boy (who says that he's actually just turned 7 if you care to ask). But by god. One bite could kill a diabetic it's so sweet and if it wasn't so funny, I could have been terribly hurt by the chanting of "But I don't want that cake! I want a Bob cake!!. That looks yucky!". So, while our insides rot from all the E numbers, and our tongues remain blue for at least another month, I will not be beaten! Just wait! One day I will master this. Or maybe I'll just move back to the UK and get him a Bob cake and enjoy my sleep.

Sommerfest in the Kita

2011-06-18T13:01:00.004+01:00

I am feeling monumentally tired today. I know in about half an hour I am going to have to drag myself round the supermarket with the kids in tow which is never a pleasant experience, and I think that might be making me feel all the tireder. Dread.

Yesterday, was also a big day. I cycled all morning looking for a Brio Wooden Thomas the Tank Engine for Hamish's birthday (no luck) and then we spent the afternoon at the park and then went to Kita for their annual Sommerfest. I haven't been to one of these before, but they seem to be very important in the young children's calendar. I am starting to see the phrase 'Sommerfest' appearing everywhere, and indeed we're going to another one next weekend at Orla's new school.

I'll be honest though: I wasn't really looking forward to going to it. In fact, I'd already lied when they put me on the spot and asked if I was coming. I couldn't find it in me to commit to an afternoon of tangled German conversations and politeness. I have my moments of being totally anti-social, but then I found out that Stevie would be home from work early and having someone else with me to help me through the boring awkward moments makes it manageable.

So I lied again and said the fictitious birthday party we were attending finished early and thus, hallelujah! here we were! And actually we had a good time. There were games for the kids: welly throwing, egg & spoon race, some other games that took place in locked rooms that neither me or the kids could work out what was really going on, and there were even some things for us adults too. My particular favourite was the Race with your child in a wheelbarrow. It seemed to bring out my competitive streak to the point where I even employed dirty tactics in order to secure a win - such as blocking my opponents path in order to gain a lead. I may not be proud of that but hey, I won some coloured pencils!

The kids mostly enjoyed being in the pen that was filled with hay and flinging it around. The theme incidentally was 'the farm' or 'farmyard'. Stevie didn't manage to work this out and wondered why they had washing lines (obviously belonging to the farmer's wife') with knickers hanging. He assumed it was just the teachers washing that they'd hung earlier in the day. (And after that housewarming party we went to, well, who can blame him for wondering about German knicker habits).

Stevie's favourite bit was checking out the staff photos. As you can see from the photo above he was particularly taken by Steffi who he said seemed to have "had her work Kita photo taken while out on the piss". "Still", he said, "at least she's bringing a little glamour to the place". So there was something(/one) for everyone to enjoy, and today we are all still enjoying the 6cm diameter green stamps of goats that we all have on our arms to prove we paid to get in. Oh I do hope mine stays on for a week! Its very sophisticated!

Blogger goes all fancy-nancy!

2011-06-16T10:58:00.005+01:00

There are a million and one things I *should* be doing right now (including collecting the kids), but I just found out about this: After all that hoo-ha with Blogger not working, and not letting us sign in and comment even on our own blogs, they've decided to make it up to all of us by letting us do some fancy things with our blogs. I for one forgive them. Because I do love a bit of almost pointless gimmickry. Especially if it makes me go "Ooh! That's cool!"

Did you know that there are new ways that you can view a Blogger blog? I bet you didn't. Neither did I until a couple of minutes ago. Up above you can see new ways to navigate my blog. It makes me want to go back and add more photos to the posts that don't have them. If you want to see what it looks like (for real) and fritter away some more of your precious time on the internet (just like me), then click this link right here to see somewhere between facebook and flickr in all manner of fancy ways.

You can also use the drop down menu on the top right to try other options, like 'snapshot' which I am quite taken with, though it took me a minute to work out what the numbers were all about. So now you'll never be bored again reading my blog...hmm....I'm not sure that came out right.

You say "turbine", I say "turban".

2011-06-15T19:40:00.004+01:00

After work, Stevie was telling me a little story about what they had been talking about in his German class last night.

"You know... that pain in the ass woman I was talking about, the one who has already completed A2 level but is re-doing it because she thinks she missed the grammar, but really all she's doing is taking up the teacher's time speaking German that we can't understand? Well, she was talking about the high school system and the teacher said that her mother says that it's crazy that UK kids go to high school at age 12. She says it's too late."

"Uh-huh...." (I am busy trying not to chop my fingers off while attempting to finely slice onions, so please excuse my lack of intellectual contribution)

"But surely to have your school path mapped out at 10 years old is far too soon?"

(In Germany, you are put into one of three 'streams' - based on your academic ability and I think your parents get a bit of say-so too. Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium. The Hauptschule follow the same subjects as the other 2 types of school but at a slower pace and they also teach some vocational courses too. Realschule strikes me as the middle ground, where some people go on towards vocational training afterwards and some people go on to further academic study. If you want to go to University after attending Realschule, I think you have to go to Gymnasium and study for the Abitur which is a diploma which can allow you to follow a path into university. Don't quote me though, this is just my very basic understanding that I picked up in German class.) Anyway, where was he...?

"I mean, what would have been the outcome for me in a system like that?"

"Well, I reckon they can probably tell how brainy you are by 10 years old. You'd probably have been fine."

"But when I was young I had a really crap English teacher. I was stuck with her, and maybe she would have held me back and that would determine what school I went to and my whole future at age 10!"

"Well, you went to a crap school anyway, and did really well, so...."

"Yes, but the people in the 'credit' stream got the best English teachers, and the people like me in 'foundation/general' level got the crap teachers...." (lost in thought)

"Yes, maybe, but that's not universal. In my school I know that there were equally good teachers teaching foundation level English as were teaching credit level English."

".... I'm sure I should have been in a higher English class. Man, she really was just crap. She was this old Indian woman and she wore a wig and stuff, and it kept falling off her head, and she never noticed..."

"What? The wig?"

"No! Her turbine!!"

"Case closed. I think you can stop worrying about being put in the wrong stream."

"Why?...."

[Incidentally, Google searchers, turbine is pronounced with the same 'i' sound as in 'twine' or 'lime' or 'time'. You're welcome!]

Love me, love my dog

2011-06-13T21:25:00.003+01:00

I went to my first Berlin flea market on Sunday. My friend had wanted to go, and it's been on my list of things to do, but Stevie has never been keen on going, and if I went on my own Im sure he wouldn't be that keen on having to be the one getting up early with the kids on a Sunday morning while I am out buying up presumably things with fleas. I really enjoyed it. It had a different feel from the car boot sales I've been to in England. We took the car (in case of any large purchases) and I felt terribly chuffed with myself at finding a parking space right at the side of the flea market.

It was when I returned to the car to drop off Hamish's new (old) balance bike (for only 10 euros!) that I realised just how I'd managed to get such a great spot. I had parked in the turning lane, just before the traffic lights. I ran into the policeman writing tickets and tried to explain that I hadn't realised and was awfully sorry and maybe he could drop by later when my boyfriend throttled me. He had no sympathy. He tried to frighten me with his gruff German and to be honest he succeeded. The chapter in my German book all about 'darf man' this, and 'darf man nicht' that seemed to be getting read out to me. He told me that I had to show him my drivers license (which of course I didn't have on me) and then he told me I wasn't allowed (that's the darf man nicht bit) to drive the car until I showed him my driving licence. I had to phone the angry boyfriend and get him to cycle down with it.

But strangely enough he was less angry about my poor parking & brand new fine, than he was about my brand new dog. That's horrible. That's so horrible I am not letting you bring that in to the house. It cost 3 euros? Well I guess that's 3 euros we just have to write off. I am never letting you go to one of these things on your own again. I knew you'd come back with a bunch of crap. But that? That's one of the most horrible things I have ever seen.

And so on. But I like it. In fact, I rather love it. I love its face, it's size, its character, its scruffiness, I just like it. I can see him in my living room peeking round from behind a corner of a sofa, just adding a bit of interest to a dark, dull corner near the fireplace. Stevie sees it adding character to the inside of the wheelie bin. Orla loves it. He is as she says her dog. I tried hiding him in her wardrobe to save him from a wheelie bin death...

But Orla asked if he could sit on top of the bookcase and watch over her while she slept in her bed. Of course I obliged. Then the evil daddy went in and took him away and stuck him in a corner. He couldn't understand why Orla was crying hysterically and asked me to go in and see to her. I managed to decipher that Daddy had moved her dog and so I moved it back and told her to keep quiet or daddy would be back in. My plan worked except Stevie wanted to know how I managed to get her settled so quickly. So I told him and now my dog has found his home.

The Hippie Carnival of Cultures & the Jewish Museum.

2011-06-13T19:34:00.005+01:00

The Carnival of Cultures - Cocktail, sausage, earrings, baggy trousers, vile eco baby clothes, I'm starting to need a cocktail... Oh, that's handy! Cocktail stand!!

The Carnival of Cultures - Some non-hippie culture

The Carnival of Cultures - Would you buy one of these pretzels off that bench, even if they're sitting on a sanitized newspaper?

The Jewish Museum - A bit more culture. Designed by Daniel Libeskind.

The Jewish Museum - The Garden of Exile.

We've had friends staying for the past 5 days. We dazzled them with my mediocre cooking skills, and showed them the innumerable play parks of Berlin. They'd intended going on the hop on, hop off bus tour but my friend felt a bit sick - too sick to get on a bus, so some of the sights were never seen. I think seeing your child fly off a zip wire at great velocity is more exciting than the Victory Column and Gendarmenmarkt put together anyway.

We decided to take them to the Carnival of Cultures (Karneval der Kulturen) in Kreuzberg, except we went at different times. We'd planned on going together but as my friend was feeling a little sick the men went off and enjoyed an evening there drinking effeminate-sounding cocktails, and came home with tales of how amazing it was. When asked for specifics, they were a bit hazy, and we suspect that they may not have gone much further than the first cocktail stand they hit coming out of the U-Bahn.

We went the following day for a look around. Maybe the lack of cocktails in our system was to our detriment, because we weren't that impressed. Who knew there were so many hippies in Kreuzberg? It was busy enough, but it seemed a little short on the culture front. I have the feeling we might have seen a bit more culture if we'd made it to the parade the day before, but by the time we got there there was just an awful lot of hippie culture to see. The streets were lined with lots of stalls, but it seemed as though every sixth stall was the same. Cocktail stand, food stand, hippie earrings stand, MC Hammer trouser stand, oddly stitched leather bag stand, and oh, cocktail stand, food stand, hippie jewelry stand... and so on.

Once the rain started we decided to give it a miss and followed the signs for the Jewish Museum, which I've been wanting to visit for more than a year now. I love the building. It's in every Berlin guide book. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind and is quite an odd building to be in. The angles are all over the place, at times you are walking at such an odd angle your feet don't feel quite right. This is especially so in The Garden of Exile, which is meant to represent the feelings of disorientation that exiled Jews felt as newcomers in other countries. It certainly is disorientating. The ground is angled and there are large stone blocks rising up fro the ground at an odd angle and you feel walking through it that your feet are at odds with where your brain is. The whole place both building and exhibits are very thought-provoking. My favourite bits were definetly the void areas - the one with the art installation by Menashe Kadishman with the 10,000 metal faces lying on the floor; the one where you go into a dark room where there is just one slice of daylight coming in at the corner in the roof and you can hear the sounds of outside coming in while you stand quietly in the dark; and the Garden of Exile.

I'd heard mixed reviews of the Jewish Museum from various people I've met in Berlin, but I would highly recommend it. All exhibits are in both German and English and you can also hire an audio guide. Even if you weren't interested in Jewish history it is worth visiting for a look at the architecture alone.

Part 2- Paradise: not to be confused with utopia or Tropical Islands

2011-06-08T20:47:00.006+01:00

Tropical Islands: well one thing you can't complain about is lack of parking.

The Truman Show' style backdrop for one of the pools. Great, isn't it?

Inside the dome (or giant caterpillar, as Orla thought) with all the rainforest-y goodness, and tents which may or may not be crawling with cockroaches and quail.

Tent city

Gorgeous white sand, fabulous blue sky, water a sultry 28 - 31 degrees... I have managed to avoid going to Tropical Islands for the best part of a year. On paper it's everything I hate. Swimming, sand, camping with sand, and then a bit more swimming thrown in just to make sure I have a crap time.

I really utterly dislike swimming. It's the pools, the plasters, the dirt, the wet dirt, and bathing in countless peoples' urine. Stevie on the other hand loves it. Revels I think in my discomfort. Has craved this summer and the endless weekends of swimming opportunities in the outdoor pools. I don't mind the outdoor pools anywhere near as much as indoor pools. Less mould I suppose, fresher air (if you don't count the Berliners all around you that by god, really do like to smoke), and even the possibility of "going a little wander round the nudist section with the kids for a look" (honest to God, he was serious).

Tropical Islands though has been high on Stevie's agenda since we've been here. Especially over the winter. But luckily I managed to avoid it's 66, 000 square metres of tropical delights up until now because the kids thankfully managed to be ill every time it re-surfaced in his mind. But I messed up last week. I took my eye off the ball and left it too late to book us into a cottage in Ruegen (sorry, I don't have an umlaut). Ruegen is an island off the Baltic coast. Meant to be lovely, great for the kids, lots of interesting things to see, but I was too busy frittering time away on Facebook and the like to get it sorted out. And of course it was the German bank holiday, so by the time I did get on to it, what was available was rather expensive.

"Not to worry." says Stevie, "We'll just have to go to Tropical Islands". And I felt kind of trapped. I was left to do the booking. I assumed that he'd want us to stay for a couple of days, and more than likely he'd wanted us to stay over as cheaply as possible. Stevie strongly believes that when you go on holiday there is no point in spending much on your accommodation as you are only going to be there to sleep, and if you're not conscious then what's the point in having a fancy room. Stevie and I, in case you haven't realised this before now, are polar opposites. But seeing as he's the one earning the money now, well, I try to humour him a little.

Thus, sleeping on the beach for 15 Euros each was swiftly ruled out. In fact, I'd ruled that one out before I'd even looked at the website as a friend who'd been who decided they'd had enough at 5am walked to the exit via the beach and described it as looking like everyone had been washed up, and you had to pick your way gingerly through sleeping families crammed into every available space. Option two is to stay in a tent. Fine. (Though I don't much care for camping if the truth be known, but fine). The tents even come with mattresses, pillows, blankets. Great!

It was when I scrolled down and read the notes that I kind of went off the idea. For starters there's the possibility that you'll have to share your tent with other people, unless you are willing to pay for all the beds. But more off-putting than that is the second note which tells you that given the campsites close proximity to the worlds largest indoor rain forest, and the fact that they like to keep things natural, you may also be sharing your tent with cockroaches amongst other things. No thanks. I like to sleep.

There are other much more lovely options when it comes to places to stay but I knew Stevie wouldn't be interested beyond the tent option. So you can imagine I was dreading it. But as luck would have it, he decided that seeing as it was handy enough (it's on the road between Berlin & Dresden) we would just come home.

So we went. And can I just say, really, I had a great time. I may have done a bit of moaning about having to go to the children's play area wearing only a bathing costume but really it was fine. The place was massive, I think it was used to build airships or something in the past, and really it is great inside. The air was warm, the water was as warm as the pee I thought I was swimming in, the kids were happy, and we all had good fun. We spent a good long day there, and all my usual thoughts of germs, fungus, plasters, filth and what have you, disappeared (for the most part) from my mind.

Well, at least until the next day when Hamish threw up on the sofa and wouldn't eat all day, and I lay gr(m)oaning and feeling ghastly & nauseous in bed from all the pee-pee water we had drunk. But would I go back? Actually, I think I might. Though I might have a good moan about it first.

Kanninchen paella won't make me a better person (pt1)

2011-06-06T15:20:00.005+01:00

I was reading Mwa's post earlier about her buying Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Committed' - the sequel to Eat, Pray, Love'. It's about a couple who decide to list their respective flaws to each other prior to their wedding. Is this ever a good idea? There's always the risk that while you list 6 A4 sides of terrible flaws, your boyfriend can only think of maybe 1 or 2 things about himself that he considers negatives. Depending on how long you'd been 'dating', and for me & Stevie that's 10 whole, long, flawless years, I reckon I know most of his flaws and would find it hard not to help him out with a few suggestions. Still, I reckon I'd still have a longer list than him, and that would be enough to make me hate him.

Over the years vague, fuzzy notions I've had about myself have begun to cement themselves in my head as flaws. Maybe it's just as you get older you become more self-aware, and start to realise there are things that you wish were different, but either can't, or can't be bothered to. And then there are the things that you don't consider flaws, but other people do. I'd count my refusal to eat kanninchen paella as one of those. When we were out for our 'one year in Berlin' anniversary, we stopped to get something to eat and Stevie bemoaned my lack-of-adventure-in-food flaw. Stupid paella. Why do they have to be for a minimum of two people anyway? Find me two people who want to eat rabbit paella, and I'll... well, I don't know, probably have a much lower opinion of them. That's bunnies! You can't go eating bunnies! It's just not right. I would have been far more comfortable eating pigs eyelids and god knows what all ground down lovingly into a nice big sausage. And anyway, cast your mind back to Fatal Attraction. Exactly! Bunnies in a pot - never a good thing.

In actual fact the kanninchen paella was just a little follow up to the main event of our anniversary weekend. I'll write about that in part 2. My trip to paradise. Or where more of my flaws (moaning, and my utter hatred of swimming and it's related activities - which absolutely is a flaw (according to Stevie)) are explored.

Who am I? Where am I going? What am I doing here?

2011-06-04T19:54:00.004+01:00

We went right up there! A whole year to the day that we arrived here in Berlin.

The Fernsehturm casting a shadow onto the clock in Alexanderplatz

Heading out to the east. Looking up Karl Marx Allee. A bit of Russian architecture for you right there.

Berlin, Berlin, as far as the eye can see. Tally-ho, year two!!

Today is the day! A year to the day that we moved to Berlin. Twelve whole months of me butchering the language, honing my mime skills to a fine art (hell, I even have hand actions to depict feelings), 365 days of saying "Good Lord, its a bit hot!", then "Hmm...it's ok now I guess", then "Good Lord, its a bit parky!", then "Hmm...ok, I suppose, could be a bit warmer" and now we're right back into "Pff...its all a bit hot again, isn't it?". But what a year!

We've had a great time. Taking out the crappy bits with the bullying and settling in the kids, and all that sort of stuff, we've had a smashing time. It feels like we've done loads, seen loads, and eaten a lot of Bratwurst. My favourite bits have been taking visitors round the sights, and just the fact that there is so much for the kids to do here. It has felt that there is something to go and see each weekend, and its just never got boring.

Today we celebrated by going up the Fernsehturm, Berlins tv tower in Alexanderplatz. We've only been talking about doing this for a year. We moved into the temporary apartment on Heinrich Heine Strasse and we could see it from the bedroom window and Orla asked if we could go up it. And I said yes, but it's been on the back burner because theres been so much else to do. But it was worth the wait.

It was even better I think because we're so much more familiar with the city so we knew what we were looking at. Afterwards we went to Hackescher Markt and bought the kids currywurst and chips while we enjoyed quite a horrid vegetarian paella. The waitress left it on the next table so the little sparrows could help themselves. I let Stevie have the rest. I kind of lost my appetite.

So what's next? What do we do with our last year? Is it just more of the same? I don't think so. There are still areas we've not visited in Berlin, and now we have a good babysitter the opportunities open to us for going to things in the evening are boundless - well as long as it fits in with the babysitters schedule.

I do wonder if this year here has changed us. I worry that Orla has had the hardest experience of all of us. Its been more difficult than we could have imagined settling her in here and for her learning the language. If I could have seen into the future before we came, that is probably the one thing that would have changed my mind about coming. Hamish really doesn't seem affected by the change. As long as he has a good park to hand he's happy. Stevie, of course, loves it. All he needs is good weather, football, and beer. He's a simple creature. But me, I constantly seem to swither between the STRUGGLE of it all and the ENJOYMENT of it all. But has it changed me? I don't know how to tell. I have the feeling I'll find out on my return to Derby.

I am looking forward to our next year here. I know we'll all be more comfortable with the language, which will make things easier, and more enjoyable. And of course, I've got another year of taking endless photos and blogging. Bring it on! We're ready!

Peeing against the tourist attractions

2011-05-31T15:20:00.004+01:00

There have been many, many occasions in the past where I have written about potty training Hamish. Over the past year I have started and then given up again because something's gotten in the way, or he's been happy to pee in the potty when he's either naked from the waist down or wearing little pants, but then totally forgets when he's wearing trousers. And more recently still I thought it was getting to the point of ridiculousness and just took him into Kita one day and told them he was potty training (I'd started him off again fully over the weekend before) and that he had a big bag of clothes with him. I saw the woman's face drop and when I went to pick him up he was back wearing nappies, so I realised I wasn't going to get an awful lot of support from them.

The trouble with Hamish is that he just loves to drink loads. Orla is the complete opposite and was an absolute breeze to potty train. But Hamish is a little bit like a garden sprinkler timed to release every 10 minutes. (And no, he's not diabetic, he just really likes drinking, peeing, and us having to spend a fortune on nappies).

So with Stevie having a little intermittent whinge about how many nappies our boy goes through, I've been waiting for a good time to bite the bullet, and just get it done. This seemed like the perfect week. The kids are on holiday from Kita and with a weekend either side I figured I could get it done.

Of course there have been a few accidents. Mostly when he is either really busy (playing with water in the bathroom sink - I think it was the running tap that set him off), or when we are seconds away from stepping out of the house and he knows that a full change of clothing from the waist down including socks and sandals will delay me just enough to make me not just my normal really late but unbelievably late.

But mostly it's gone well so far. The bit I am not so keen on though is that when they say they need to do it, they really need to do it there and then. Yesterday for example we had been at the park and managed to get to the front door of our building when he told me he needed the toilet. As we live on the 4th floor I knew he'd never make it up to the apartment on time, so I whipped down his trousers and as he was nearly shouting 'It's coming!' we kind of had no choice but to pee against one of the giant potted trees outside the building. I was just waiting for one of the neighbours to come out and catch us. It would reaffirm ALL their suspicions about our unsuitability to reside amongst them. Especially as my hands and bag were a little damp from the finest mist of piddle that sprayed back at us from the stupid pot plant.

I had been trying to do that thing where you limit your trips out of the house to minimise hassle, but big mouth Stevie went and mentioned to Orla that if she fancied going to see dinosaurs this week then she just needed to mention it to mummy. So this morning I was getting the full on barrage of dinosaur requests from the two of them. But I managed to talk them out of it (I just couldn't have faced taking Hamish on a train into Mitte and feeling a little trapped if he was desperate.)

So I managed to talk them into a trip to the aquarium. It's only a walk away so easy enough to handle if we needed a pee stop. And oh, how he enjoys peeing outdoors (apparently just like daddy, though I can't confirm that. I believe it's the fact that he gets to stand to pee). He pee'd against the demolisher's fences surrounding the Zoo Palast cinema that they're currently taking down; he pee'd IN A TOILET! at the aquarium (without complaining or refusing to do it because they had neither a special mini toilet or little toilet seat); he pee'd into the foliage in a shady part of the zoo while looking at the elephants; and against the wall of the otter enclosure; and finally between 2 cars outside a Chinese restaurant.

Despite all the al fresco peeing, which I would prefer happened indoors in an actual toilet, I think he's getting the hang of it. Tomorrow we may venture on a journey into Mitte and see the dinosaurs and then I might let him pee on the Brandenburg Gate, the Fernsehturm, the Reichstag, and maybe even the Frederick the Great statue in the middle of Unter den Linden. And now I'm off to wash my hands again...

I know you've seen them before, but...

2011-05-30T07:57:00.005+01:00

I don't think you've seen them on a billboard!

As sad as it may seem I think seeing Orla and Hamish not only (a) on a giant billboard, but (b) not arguing, pushing, or crying and (c) without a dummy in either mouth, is one of the happiest moments of my whole May!

We knew some of the events for the 125th Anniversary of the Ku'Damm had already started and we'd missed them, but we decided to make our way down there yesterday afternoon and see if anything was happening. So we went to a vintage car display - is that what you'd call it? All the cars were parked at jaunty angles on the road, interspersed with Berliner Kindl stands and food stalls. It seems to really amuse Stevie that as soon as a bit of road or whatever is closed off for some reason, within 10 minutes there'll be a beer stand with 8 tables and 16 benches there ready for business.

The kids really enjoyed it. Hamish was in his element as there were lots of things with trailers, including a bus with a trailing bus behind it, and a fire engine with a big trailing fire engine thing. If I didn't have kids I would have had the time to patiently read the little German signs in the windscreens and tell you what these things were, but instead I drank the expensive beer all the time hoping it would help me drown out the incessant calls for ice cream, pretzels, sausages, sweeties, etc, etc. We even saw Herbie from the films. Hamish even climbed the front grill before I realised and plucked him off.

We had quite a nice afternoon just wandering around with me clicking away like a paparazzi as usual mumbling (to myself probably, cause Stevie wouldn't be interested) 'what a lovely curve that has', and 'ooh I love that font', and 'isn't that the most gorgeous grey you've seen (apart from me and my sister)?' I think it's a bit of a shame that the anniversary of the Ku'Damm isn't getting such a great write up. It seems to be that the English language news here think that it's desperately uncool and well the attitude is that the Ku'Damm may as well just be forgotten for what was once the Champs Elysees of Berlin is now just a sad, jaded run of the mill street with a plethora of international chain stores and a bunch of high-end designer boutiques.

I tend to think these things are written by people living in the east. Young, hip people who think the city barely functions beyond the east where life is cool, grafitti-covered, trendy, cutting edge, blah, blah, blah. And it is great on the east, but the west also has it's charms. Or maybe I just feel a lot of affection for the place now. But there always seems to be something happening here and I like that.

I spoke to my friend Claire who moved back to Derby at Christmas last night. They're glad to be back, but they do miss Berlin and the amount going on. She said that their friends are amazed by how much they did and saw while they were here, and that's the thing, it's not hard. I guess it's like this in most capital cities, and I do wonder if we as a family are even becoming complacent about it. The kids are now so used to seeing wild animals in the zoo I think it would be a shock if we didn't have lions and giraffes at the end of our road in Derby.

So anyway, yesterday we also went into the Mini photo booth and got the kids photo taken for the competition to win a Mini. There photo also appeared on the giant electronic billboard above C&A, and luckily I had enough time to get over there and take photos of it. Now I just need to win the off-road Clubman to expand my German adventures with the kids (and copious amounts of luggage).