The Big OE

Well autumn is all but nearly over, trees have just about shed all their leaves and winter is at our heels, and I am still as happy as ever. I’ve heard on the radio it might snow any day. I think it’s been good weaning my self into the cold, than say if I had landed in the middle of it. I remember back to when I visited friends in their flats in Dunedin (South Island of New Zealand), and I thought I was going to die of the cold, but at least here I’m not the one paying for heating, I have a car to get around in and I actually have some warm clothes so I think I should be alright. I’m told November is the biggest month for suicides in Germany, but I’m in surprisingly high sprits. I’m due for a winter anyway as I haven’t had one in well over a year and a half.

The Halloween festivities have finished, and the family I live with had a giant party, they even brought in professional decorators to style the house for two parties (one for the kiddies and their friends families, the second for Franks work colleagues). They took everything down, and are coming back to put up all the Christmas decorations, I even heard murmurings of a 4 metre high Christmas tree - absolute madness. The house gets lit up as well, just like in the American movies. I can’t wait, as Christmas is huge here! Massive Christmas markets and its most likely going to snow! My sister is moving to Belgium in a couple of weeks, so I’m actually going to have family at Christmas dinner!

I’ve been quite a social wee bunny lately. I’ve been going out to dinners, the Irish pub, cocktail bars, the International Youth Circus, and even went to a very weird German version of the Rocky horror picture show. We arrived just as the ‘Sweet transvestite’ song started, it was more than a little disturbing - think Meatloaf changed into German then sang in drag!

I met up with a girl my age, last week who’s mother goes to the English speaking group I’ve been to a couple of times. Nadia’s just got back from a few months working in Nambia. She lives about an hour away from me, and is going to Uni. So I might go for a drive one day and check out what a German university is like. She showed me around her city for a bit and we had lunch in a Castle. It was so good to have someone my own age to talk to and be silly with. She’s coming to stay with me this weekend, so I’ll show her around Wiesbaden.

My very first attempt ever, at carving a Pumpkin

I was just thinking it was about time for a little recap, to fill you in a little on the daily goings on of my life as an Au Pair in Germany. Well where to start, I guess at the very beginning: I get up every morning around 6.30 am and head down stairs to make the boys a snack for school and get breakfast ready. Usually a soft-boiled egg, or either jam, cream cheese, ham, salami, wurst or cheese on bread, then at 7.30 it’s a mad dash out the door, through the busy city traffic to the boy’s private bi-lingual school across the other side of town. The school is several large old buildings, divided by a busy road and has absolutely no grass – anywhere! To be able to drop the boys off, I have to go down a very narrow one way street, which is often blocked by people parking on the sides and not leaving enough space to pass, or people block the exit to the schools tiny car park, utter chaos at 7.45am every day. The boys get a cooked lunch everyday at school, as ‘lunch’ is the main meal in Germany. Surprisingly most schools in Germany are finished by lunchtime, and the kids come home for lunch, and don’t need to go back in the afternoons. That doesn’t really leave a lot of time for learning. The boys however usually stay at their school until 4 pm, as they have an after school program. All the teachers at the school speak reasonably good English, and thankfully so do a lot of the other children’s parents. All the mummies and daddies are all immaculately dressed, and have flash cars and I always get funny looks when I walk around in my t-shirt and boardies but I think they know I’m an Au Pair so I don’t really get too many ‘snotty’ looks. Another thing I hadn’t counted on, was the fact that there aren’t actually that many Au Pairs here, in fact I’ve only met one and I was in such a hurry when she introduced herself I never got her name. I’ve asked around, but they’re really not as common here as I thought.

Frank as a Pirate

While the boys are at school, I am a lady of leisure. I watch a little German TV, as I eat my breakfast – all in the name of research of course! So far I have endured Dr. Quinn Medicine woman, the Simpsons, the Cosby show, Step by Step, Seventh Heaven, the Nanny and Monster Garage in bad German voiceovers. I have managed to find three channels with some English. The first of course is MTV, but for the last few weeks it has mysteriously disappeared. There is an engineering type channel which has been voiced over but they still have the original English underneath, so if I’m lucky and listen really hard I can pick up random words about how to build bridges, and apartment buildings! The third is a journal type program with news bulletins and is half in German, half English. So every two hours I can understand something, but I’m not complaining, I didn’t expect there to be anything in English anyway. Besides I have found that as I know quite a few random German words, and with the help of the images, I can kind of piece together what people are talking about. The Germans love their reality TV and have adapted a lot of American shows, i.e. they have the German equivalent of ‘Judge Judy’, ‘Popstars’, ‘Super nanny’ ‘DIY rescue’ and ‘Wife swap’. They have a lot of talk shows, and game shows.

I still only know pathetically little of the language, which is not all that surprising considering I haven’t taken any classes, and I have to speak English all day. I still know enough to get by, and haven’t gotten into any major problems, its mostly just an issue when the Albanian house cleaner wants to talk to me and she knows little German herself as it is - gets very frustrating, and often hilarious, ahh well. I have looked in to classes, and unfortunately the classes offered are either not for absolute beginners or at tricky times. I have been told by so many not to even bother trying to learn the language as it’s a complex and tricky language that it will take years to get familiar with it, and I leave in six months.

Nicole and Sandra in the kitchen

Anyway, I usually go to the gym which is going well, but I need to figure out a better eating plan. Since the boys are at school I tend not to make a big meal at lunch, and then since I have to make them a small dinner, I’m not getting enough meat, veggies and fruit. I’ll talk to the nutritionist at the gym this week. I also have to run several errands usually, like the dry-cleaning and getting fresh things from the supermarket. Germans tend to go shopping more regularly, and buy in smaller loads to assure everything is as fresh as possible, so daily trips to the bakery are common for many. But for the most part I can do what ever I like. As I save most of my money for travel I don’t really go shopping, (besides Wiesbaden is pretty ‘high end’ anyway) I tend to look around town, people watch and window shop instead.

There are lots of differences everywhere you look, I find myself saying “well back in New Zealand we…..” a lot. But there’s nothing that I find really really strange or infuriating. I will try and write things down when they happen to explain to you better. I am thinking already about where to head after my time in Germany is over. I definitely know I will not be returning to New Zealand in the near future. I am tossing around the idea of working at a Summer camp in the US, before heading to the UK but I am open to suggestions and advice if anyone has any ideas out there. In the next wee while I will be doing a couple of weekend trips, mostly to places with famous Christmas markets, and hopefully will get to Belgium in January while my sister is there. Also got to work out when I can go to Norway to visit my friend there. Well keep in touch, and don’t forget that I still want to hear about what you’re up to as well!