I wonder what I will win today?

The trouble with being one of those people that everyone hates cause they saunter into exams having done the absolute minimum of study and then coast through, not a re-sit in sight, is that eventually 20 years down the line, they fail a crappy, non-important German test and have so much anger with themselves that they would scream really, really loudly, if only they didn't think the neighbours would complain that it was outside the hours allotted to expressing inner pain.

My sister LOVED me as a child. I nearly said 'hated' but of course that's not true as I was/am quite a monumentally loveable person. But it can be quite hard to love someone who consistently says on the morning of the Easter egg decoration/ Christmas card design competition/ blah, blah, blah, competition at school, year in, year out "I wonder what my prize will be?". You kind of want them to fail. Miserably.

May todays dark, dark, event never recur.

(Of course I did fail my driving test first time, but I blame the bus that emergency stopped in front of me and took me by surprise)

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.

Fiona Reunited

I noticed an email from Friends Reunited today. Apparently my friends had been updating their information. I can't remember the last time I used Friends Reunited, it must be maybe 7 or 8 years ago, or maybe more. I never really got that into it to be honest. I liked the sudden rediscovery of people I had known at school and university, but I don't think I ever got in contact with anyone really. Didn't they used to charge you if you wanted to actually send an email to someone? For a while I think there was a membership fee, and for me, well, it wasn't worth the hassle or cost.

Anyway, I'm surprised it's still going. I always thought that it never really took off, certainly not like Facebook, but it was really the first sort-of social networking site that everybody kind of joined in the UK. Joined, and then didn't put any information or photos up about themselves. So the appeal of looking through lists of names wears off after a couple of minutes.

So I logged on to have a look at it. It's changed quite a bit in terms of the interface and there seems to be a lot more to it now - you can make friends, buzz people (I guess that's like poking them), and upload photos and the like. It's a lot more like Facebook now but still without any information.

But I enjoyed the list of people they had compiled that I 'might know'. That was fun. I scooted back and forward between Friends Reunited and Facebook typing in names and checking folk out. I might even have found a couple of people who I'd really like to be back in touch with. I tried my very best not to friend request everybody I recognised just so I could nosey at their photos; some people were kind enough to be a bit lax on their privacy, so that saved some bother! Anyway, I'm really glad I found it again. It'll probably be another 10 years before I look at it again. Or maybe Facebook will be the new Friends Reunited and we'll all be doing something else.

Suddenly I'm not feeling quite so 'chatty'

"We'd just like a word with you..."
A word? A word? I wonder if that means I only need to get down to my underwear???

Remember this? My last visit to the doctor, where I had been told I could go for a prescription, and then once I got there was told I couldn't and had to find another doctor and blah, blah, blah... rain... late for German,...etc, etc, and eventually came away with an appointment on (not the) 19th for a "chat with the doctor"?

So it was today. Not the 19th, and so I didn't miss anymore German I made the appointment for the afternoon, balancing up the missing of more German with the having to take the kids with me. I figured that with the kids with me, the appointment would be kept quite short as they make it plain that long appointments do not fit in with their lifestyle. And anyway, the appointment was for 4:45 so it would be post-nap (for Hamish) and hopefully they would not be tired and utterly horrible.

But then Stevie offered to come home early so I could go on my own. So I did, and just as well, as I didn't get home until 7pm so the kids would have lost the plot.

So anyway, the appointment was with the Frauenarzt - that's a gynaecologist/obstetrician and you have to go to one of them if you want contraception or a smear test, or well, a baby. So, I had been wondering what we might possibly have to talk about. Given that I thought I was going to have to take the kids with me I reckoned we could bypass the "Do you want any more kids?" question pretty swiftly, and probably without me having to speak too much German. But what else was there to 'chat' about. I assumed it was going to be something similar to what you get in the UK when you join a new doctors practice and you have to have that appointment where it's a bit like a meet & greet and basically they take a medical history, ask you if you need to see them about anything, and then thank you for coming.

Well, it was like that if you've ever been to one of those 'meet the doctor' appointments and had your chat with absolutely no clothes on. Now that was quite a surprise! The chat started pretty much as soon as I walked into her office and she said "Hello, pleased to meet you, would you like to go behind that screen and take off your clothes?". I thought I'd prepared myself by phoning my GP's office in England earlier today and asking when I'd last had a smear test. I even looked it up in my German dictionary in case I needed to mention that I didn't need one yet in German. That's how prepared I was. But I wasn't prepared to have to say this while actually getting a smear test. Apparently the Germans like to have them once a year even if you have never had any problems.

Then we continued our chat over on the examination bed where I was surprised to get both a breast examination and then an ultrasound to check my uterus, fallopian tubes, and to see if there were any tumours lurking. To add to my delight, unlike in the UK where if you have an ultrasound while pregnant, and you have the awkwardness of craning your neck round while trying to see the screen when really they don't want you to yet, here you get your own screen which hangs at the perfect angle from the ceiling for you to see the fibroids hanging off your uterus should you have any to see. Wouldn't that be nice?

I was then allowed to get my clothes back on, while she introduced the idea of getting Stevie a vasectomy for Christmas. I said it sounded like the perfect stocking filler, but I wasn't sure if Stevie would be too keen. He's never really fancied any of those Boots Gift Experiences, and this would probably have even less appeal for him than a hot air balloon ride.

Then she offered me an IUD for 400 Euros. In a toss-up between that and the lens for my camera that I've got sitting in my Amazon shopping basket, I think I'd prefer the lens to win. So that was that. A surprising evening that'll make me somewhat wary about chatting with Germans in the future.

Deutsch Heute fur die Leute

I have lost my German-learning mojo. It was there one minute and then all of a sudden it was gone. I blame Friday. We had a hellish night on Thursday with the kids - so bad in fact that I was too tired to remember what happened. It's still all a blur. Anyway, I dropped the kids off at Kita in a daze and decided to give German class a miss thinking I would go home and go straight back to bed. Of course I didn't actually do that. My immediate thought was that I had some child-free time so I'd be better off spending it wisely at the shops and getting new boots.

I wasn't too concerned about missing one session, especially at the end of the week. The teacher had been telling us that we would always start the new stuff at the beginning of the week.So it was an easy decision to make. So on Monday I went in, and I swear it was like a complete mystery. They'd done a whole new tense, and suddenly all my verbs were different too. I hated it. The pace is such that there's not really a lot of time to go over things. By the end of yesterday's 3 hour session I can honestly say I could no longer be bothered trying. I just couldn't get the hang of it at all. I intended doing a lot of catch-up study last night, but as per usual procrastinated on the internet until finally it was time for bed.

Today was marginally better, though I was still in a 'can't be bothered' mood. If I never saw another German book again or had to write my sentences in two different tenses again, I honestly think I'd be a little relieved. I hope this passes, and soon, cause I am booked on till April.

(Deutsch Heute was the name of the German book we used at school. I was crap at it then, and I'm getting worse now)....(or so it feels)

Conversations with a 2yr old heartbreaker

Hamish: I love ju, Mummy! Ju make me happy!
Happy Mummy: Oh really darling? I love you too: you make me very happy!
Hamish: No, not you, JU! Juice! Juice makes me happy.
Unhappy Mummy: Great...really pleased an' all that... I'll just wait another year or so to hear you say 'I love you'.

On your marks for the Christmas sales!

I am feeling ever-so festive! It's not just the rumours that this winter is going to be the coldest for 50 years, with temperatures of -30 being cited, it's the window displays (I so want this Christmas wreath, but it's bigger than our door, and the neighbours might think we were being a little flashy!), and all the little log cabins going up along Tauentzienstrasse that will host one of Berlin's many Christmas markets. There looks to be about 100 of them (log cabins that is), and I've been walking past them for a few days now wondering what irresistible things (hopefully wooden) I am going to buy. I went past again a day or two ago and got a sneaky glimpse of wooden toy soldiers and angels peeking out from under one marginally opened shutter, and that was enough to set my heart racing at what other possibilities might be on offer. I'm hoping there's lots of lovely traditional things, and not just sausage.

I've been trying to stave off buying all my Christmas presents in preparation for these Christmas markets, but I've found it quite hard. One year we hardly bought a thing until Christmas Eve and when we went into town we discovered that quite a few of the sales had started and we managed to get great savings on quite a lot of things. I remember it as being a very successful shopping trip, and not so busy as to make one want to throw oneself under a passing bus, but I might be kidding myself and there is a real possibility that I just bought everyones presents from the Disney Store where they had the most tremendous sale.

I am not really a big 'sales' shopper. I really hate the general crush after Christmas and I have no patience for having to wade through racks of disorganised, ransacked clothes looking for a bargain with a million other people elbowing me and being all shov-ey and pushy. Having said that though, I do like to go to the Next and Monsoon sales in Christmas and summer to stock up on clothes for the kids for the following year.

Last year I surpassed myself by getting up on Boxing Day and going to Next for 5am or whatever hellish hour it was and had convinced myself that I would be the only madman doing this. Patently the other 600 people already in the queue had thought the same thing. I was prepared though (and really quite sad come to think of it). I had gone in to the store late on Christmas Eve - though I would like to point out that really I was going to the M&S Food Store next door and thought I might as well just take a look and see what was what. Anyway, they had begun the task of re-racking the clothes up into their sale sections, so I had a good look to see what things I really wanted to buy for the kids and memorised their locations. So then on Boxing Day I managed to swoop in, albeit behind 600 others, and went straight to the sections where I knew there was things I wanted. This year I want to be the guy selling coffee to the cold, tired people waiting in the queue. Now that was strategic thinking!

This leads me up to the other source of my festive excitement. Tomorrow is the start of Amazon's Black Friday sale where they will have numerous items, though potentially limited quantities of stock that they will drop to loss-making prices. I've been compiling a shopping basket of things that maybe, hopefully, will be slashed in price tomorrow. At the moment, while I should be doing some German homework, I've been trying to decide on a new lens for my camera, and am hoping that I might get an amazing deal. I'll see you there at the crack of dawn tomorrow with all the other slightly mental shoppers. Sharpen your elbows!