The perfect time to shoot one's troublesome neighbours.

Man that car looks like it could do with a good going over with Cif and some baby wipes. While we continue our gargantuan task of clearing the inside of this house in time for the move, outside we have gun-toting criminals threatening baldy men for their briefcases.

They are filming an episode of 'Ein Starkes Team', a ZDF programme that nobody I know watches. My neighbours think it's Tatort, which would be a much more exciting event, but it's not. They just haven't bothered reading the notice posted downstairs in our lobby too carefully. The letter has had us warned for over a week to prepare our nerves for a morning of police action and not to worry too much if when leaving the building we are confronted by flashing police lights and there are guns going off left right and centre. My neighbours would probably be more alarmed by the sight of such an old Saab...

Before every party, I Google my guests

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.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

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!

2011: The year I wanted to lick my son.

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)

The one where I deprive the neighbours of heat on the coldest day of the year

I believe we are known as 'the English' by some people in our building. In the same way our previous downstairs neighbours were called 'the Canadians'. It's not so much the name, and who cares about that anyway, cause as Scot's it's not our country that's getting derided. No, it's the tone it's said in. We might as well be 'the Gypsies' or 'the people who don't recycle correctly' - yes, it's that bad.

Our crime in earning this name, was that we complained about the appliances in the apartment to our landlord. I won't go into it. I probably already have many months ago. Anyway, our landlord went straight from our apartment to his best friend's upstairs, and presumably bad-mouthed us for his own failings. I'm not sure what the Canadians did to deserve, in actual fact, worse disdain from the neighbours. I think it might have something to do with wanting a satellite dish. Or maybe simply just having an apartment twice the size of everyone elses, when really as an old snob, you want to be the top dog in the 'Haus'. Certainly, they've never missed an opportunity to tell us that their apartment is bigger than ours because they gain about a square metre due to the position of the stairs.

Anyway, I shall get to my point on this in due course. What happened was that there was a letter posted on the inner door downstairs telling us that there was a leak in the cellar and on such and such a date we would all have to turn our heating off by 8am at the latest while it was repaired. As luck would have it, it was the day we were to experience some of the lowest temperatures this winter: -11 between 6am and 11am and then a slightly warmer -9 to -6 around lunchtime I think. I was dreading it and decided that if the apartment was freezing when I got back from German class and picking up the kids, then we would just go to the KaDeWe and take full advantage of their 3 hours of free, roasty-toasty childcare and expensive coffee.

But when we got back the flat seemed warm enough. Certainly warm enough for my two lovely children to strip off and run around naked as is their want most days. At the time we returned there was no notice up to say that we could put our heating back on, and as I didn't feel we needed it, I didn't even try.

Fast forward 8 hours. There's a banging on the door. The following conversation is very jaggily translated)

Neighbour who organised the repairs: "Are you ok? Are you ok?",

Me: "Sure, we're fine! Why, what's up?".

Neighbour: "None of the other neighbours have any heat. We can't work out the problem. Both the side houses have got heat back on, and have had heat all afternoon, but there is still a problem with our house, and many of the neighbours are worried because they are so cold. Do you have heat coming out of your radiators?"

Me: "...well, I haven't turned them back on yet."

Neighbour: "There was a notice downstairs to say that you must put your heating back on and turn all the radiators to 4".

It's not like I can say, "Ah, but I have 2 kids who won't wear clothes in the afternoon, and I'm not taking them up and down in the lift naked to check for notices".
So I said: "Oh". That seemed to cover it. There was no point in adding that Stevie can't read (and understand) German, so just doesn't even bother trying, so he wouldn't even have seen it when he got home from work.

So the neighbour demanded that we turn our radiators on to 4, and guess what, all of a sudden everyone elses heating came on too. I like to think that it was a coincidence (ha, ha, ha!), but I have the feeling that more of our neighbours will be referring to us as 'the English'. But at least we've proven what a hardy bunch we Scot's really are!!

Germans shoot from the hip

My mind is still pounding away thinking about Hamish and his unhappiness at Kita. This morning was hellish again, with him screaming "I don't want to go to school" all the way from the front door to the U-Bahn, with a brief respite for train happiness, then back to the screaming at the other end.

I spoke to one of his 'teachers' today and they said that things are a little better, and he is a little happier. I don't know about you though, but I NEVER trust the things that nursery workers say. I base this on my first experiences with Orla's nursery in Derby, when I would ask, "How was she today?" and they'd always say "Yeah, she was great. She ate all her lunch, blah, blah, blah". I could always stop listening after that point because I knew that it was all made up. The only way Orla would eat all her lunch is if they were only feeding her cake soup, followed by cake, with a little cake for afters. I've always found that I just get an "everything was fine" response.

Why do we do that? Why when asked how things are, or how we are, do we always say "fine"? Ok, so maybe we don't want to always be moaning "Ah, well actually, my piles are giving me gip. Do you want a look?".

In Germany though I find things a bit different. This afternoon we got back into our building and met one of neighbours who lives a couple of floors down from us. She asked how things were going, and I told her things weren't going that brilliantly for Hamish at the moment. She asked what was going on and I told her and said "You've probably heard him screaming from the lift in the morning!". And she said "Yes, I've heard him in the mornings.". In Britain I reckon most times your neighbours would say "Oh no, no, no, I haven't heard him" even when they have because it's unavoidable, but here they just tell you in a nice straightforward manner. The same if you are making too much noise, playing your music too loud, or not doing your recycling right, they just tell you. There's none of this keeping quiet and having a good moan behind closed doors and then if the subject comes up pretending they know nothing.

So maybe things are going a little better for Hamish. They think he's having problems with the language, and that he doesn't like it when he doesn't understand when they are giving instructions to the whole group and he doesn't know what to do. I understand that, but I'm not sure what I can do about it. They think it'll improve in a few months when his language skills get better, but a few months is a very long time in an unhappy toddlers world. I am going to find me some books...or maybe an English speaking Kita.

It's all about 2011

New Years Eve or Hogmanay as it's called in Scotland. It's Silvester over here and I've just checked Wikipedia to see if there are any odd traditions I need to be prepared for:

Since 1972, each New Year's Eve, several German television stations broadcast a short comedy play in English (recorded by West German television in 1963) entitled Dinner for One.[20] A line from the comedy sketch, "the same procedure as every year", has become a catch phrase in Germany.[21] Every year Berlin hosts one of the largest New Year's Eve celebrations in all of Europe which is attended by over a million people. The focal point is the Brandenburg Gate and the fireworks at midnight are centered on that location. Germans have a reputation for spending large amounts of money on firecrackers and fireworks, and so fireworks are to be seen all over the country on this night. When the clock strikes midnight on Silvester, Germans toast the New Year with a glass of Sekt (German sparkling wine) or champagne. 'Bleigießen' is another German New Year's Eve custom, which involves telling fortunes by the shapes made by molten lead dropped into cold water. Other luck bringing things are touching a chimney sweeper or have him rub some ash onto your forehead for good luck and health. Traditionally jelly filled doughnuts with and with out liquor fillings are eaten. An finally a tiny marzipan pig is consumed for more good luck.

Probably no odder than anything that's done in Scotland. Today we have fought the crowds in Edeka (where I met my fish counter friend who I haven't seen in ages) and Orla & I have been into town to look for boots. I think we left it a little too late as all the shops were closing when we got there. So we gave up and came home and made some cakes.

The fireworks have started already. There were some last night, but now they're starting off in earnest. We have heard that in some parts of the city you have people just letting off fireworks in the streets and they're flying all over the place. The Canadians downstairs are going to the Brandenburg Gate tonight with a million other people and were it not for the kids, we'd probably join them. Instead, Stevie is nursing a temperature and I'm considering nursing a packet of shortbread over a big cup of tea. I could watch that English language programme mentioned above, but if "the same procedure every year" is the funniest part, I think I'd be better off with the White Heather Club...

Incidentally, I have made a nice big list of new years resolutions/plans which you can have a nosey at here. There's also a link on the side bar entitled somewhere...somehow...

Happy New Year everyone xx

Saturday-Shoplifter Stevie

So at the end of my last post I mentioned that I had thought I'd had my purse stolen and then I tried as I thought, unsuccessfully, to cancel my Commerzbank card, and got the neighbours upstairs involved in the cancelling before Stevie came up holding the purse that had been sitting on the sofa.

As things turned out I had quite a lot on my mind the next day what with people poking about with my eyes and then an afternoon split between entertaining the kids and mulling over the prospect of needles in my eye every 8 weeks. Apparently what I should have been doing is going down to the Commerzbank and checking whether I had actually managed to cancel my card. But I didn't. I reasoned that I either had done it, or I hadn't. If I hadn't then, great, next time I used my card all would be fine. If I had cancelleed it then my card wouldn't work and no doubt a new one and a new PIN would be making their way to me some time around Christmas. Or New Year, knowing the Commerzbank.

Am I too casual about things like this? We had cash and I wasn't in any immediate need to take money out. I didn't really give it much thought, and to be honest by Friday I'd forgotten about it. So by today, it was a near distant memory.

Until we went to IKEA. (Why is it that when you combine IKEA, me, and the Commerzbank things go hideously wrong?? Should I change my bank to get out of this horrid cycle?) We had gone sledging nearby and the kids were starving afterwards so as IKEA was handy we stopped off there for some meatballs and I managed to pick up a few storage boxes for the growing Playmobil collection which (note: I handily stacked so they were easier to carry). Oh and they had the kids basket of fabric vegetables back in so I got one of those, and then as we were passing I also thought I should get a new storage jar for my risotto rice. And then because Stevie was getting impatient to the point of not coping with IKEA on a Saturday and because the vegetables were for Orla, he went to the express checkout to pay with his card and I wandered over to the meatball freezer with the kids.

The first thing that really pissed off Stevie was getting accused of shoplifting. It's easy done when you only listen to the first half of your dear girlfriend's conversation regarding toy storage. "Should I get 2 of these? Would you be opposed to me buying another of these storage units in the New Year? Do you even care? Ok, I'm getting 3! Because I am definetly buying that when the car isn't full of sledges and crates of empty bottles.". So he scanned 1 crate twice, and then he got collared and the first I knew about it was him screaming across at me "What? 3??? You never told me you were getting 3? Moan, moan, moan". At this point I could tell that Stevie was getting to the point where he can easily be tipped over the edge of reasonableness into a foul mood not because he was now being classed as a shoplifter, but because the transaction was taking too long.

So I shouted back, "Just forget it then, just get 2. It really doesn't matter", you know as you do, because even though you really want something you'd rather just have an easy life. And then we got to payment. If I had known better I would have walked out of the shop with my children and run for the hills and never returned. But you see, I'd forgotten all about Wednesday night. But I remembered as quick as a flash when his card got rejected and he got directed over to a 'colleague'. Shoplifter and card stealer!

Well, what can I say? I forgot it was a joint account and that he might be affected. Curse the Commerzbank! Curse my successful telephone cancelling!

I am going to end up with a terrible guilt complex. Not only do I feel bad about cancelling Stevie's card, but when we got home I put on the washing machine (with a final big bag of Playmobil in it) and now the washing machine is broken. It isn't able to drain, and we can't find the blockage, and even though there is no substantiating evidence, I think we all know that there is a high probability that a pride of lions are more than likely the cause of our soaking wet floor. Has anyone got a dark hole I can crawl into before the downstairs neighbours come round to complain about the massive costly damp patch on their ceiling?

My green fingered son

My neighbours will be the people with green and blue stains around their mouths until the days they die.

I thought it would be a nice thing to do to make Christmas biscuits with the kids and give them as a little thankyou gift to our upstairs neighbour in thanks for the Dec. 6th gifts she gave the kids. Especially as I wanted to experiment with these pre-made biscuit mix things that I've seen loads of in the fridges of the supermarkets.

We had great fun this afternoon with cutters and the kids could quite happily have made biscuits all afternoon. Hamish's were a little more rustic in style compared to Orla's. Then we baked them, let them cool, and I unleashed the coloured writing icing.

By the time we got to the icing stage the kids had started stripping off. Orla managed to keep her t-shirt on, but Hamish prefers to decorate in the nude. It wasn't until right at the end i.e. the icing was all finished, that Hamish moved from decorating biscuits to colouring in his tummy. Then when I went to get him cleaned up it was nice to discover that in fact it was more like food colouring than just icing. If Kita ask I'm going to tell them it's vegetables that have stained his fingers and stomach. Excessive broccoli ingestion.

The Advent-ure Twins

-6 outside today. I have no idea how we will go out when it's -20 or worse. The kids are moaning how cold their faces are at this temperature. I can see us all wearing those terrible balaclavas that only have eyeholes and a mouthhole. Never thought I'd be working the ye olde terrorist/SAS look this year.

As you can see we got the Playmobil advent calendars out. I started off with just the Santa one, but Stevie pointed out there would be an awful lot of arguments about who opened the door.So we also have a nice horsey one too. If there's one thing I utterly love about this country it's Playmobil.

I am looking forward to seeing how these scenes pan out. Already we have a horse visiting Santa's office keeping the post box company.

I met my upstairs neighbour this morning on my way out. She was telling me she wanted to leave some old boots outside our door for the kids, and then started talking about books. I left feeling a bit confused, and later I asked my German teacher for more information. She told me that this is a celebration on the 6th December. The boots are left outside the door on the evening of the 5th and if you've been good then you get presents. According to Wikipedia if you've been naughty you get left a tree branch. My neighbour is coming down tomorrow afternoon to discuss this with me, presumably to remind me why it's sticks all round for us lot.

My two would be overjoyed to find they'd been left sticks. All the better to poke each others eyes out.

The snobbery of the Vorderhaus

Can you see my neighbour who is out on his balcony, wind, rain, snow, or shine making phone calls in his dressing gown?

What an icy blast of air I felt when I opened the door on to the balcony to take this photo this morning. Finally it feels like winter is here. We got a little snow yesterday and the day before, but it didn't really feel that cold. So today is the day I will finally go and get a winter coat and I guess Kita will probably already be composing a letter to me saying that the kids need those thick snowsuits, 2 sets, one for outdoors, one for in.

The purpose of my chilly (rare) visit on to the balcony was that I finally discovered the secret of the 'Vorderhaus (front house) snobbery'. Eons ago when we first moved into this apartment our old upstairs neighbour indicated that being in the Vorderhaus was far better than being in the side or rear houses - these are the ones you can see in the photo. I wasn't really sure why, and assumed that it was because she lived in the Vorderhaus and maybe didn't like some of the people in the other houses.

A little while ago I went a wander round the back of the other side of the building to see where the rear (hinterhaus) came out on to the street. It doesn't. It's literally a concrete wall. Obviously there would have been other buildings attached before they got destroyed in the war, but the process of redeveloping the building from the ruined shell has left it as a big blank wall. I'm not sure whether the bank would have gone up before this building was properly re-built, but nonetheless it has sandwiched -in the rest of the building.

I started reading Ian McEwan's 'The Innocent' a couple of days ago. It's about a British guy who goes to Berlin as part of a British-American surveillance team. In it he meets a woman who he visits in the Hinterhaus. Suddenly, it all became clear! He says...

'The apartments at the rear of the old Berlin blocks were traditionally the cheapest and most cramped. They had once housed the servants whose masters lived in the grander quarters at the front facing the road. Those at the rear had windows facing on to the courtyard, or across a narrow space to the next building.'

Now I wonder whether the apartments in the Vorderhaus were much bigger than what we're in now. The Canadians below us have around 380 square metres, which seems big enough to warrant servants. There's is over two floors but if you were to have one complete floor of the Vorderhaus then that would probably amount to the same. I can't really imagine that there would be servants in anything smaller, but I could be wrong. A cleaner would certainly be nice for this place, and maybe a cook, and well, life would be a little easier with a nanny I guess, and maybe even a butler or maid.