Nov 2006

Went out to dinner on Friday night with some friends of the family, then met up with James at the Irish pub, and met some Welsh guys who want to move to NZ and had heard the Waikato was the place to go!! They invited me to come back the next night to watch the Rugby with them, Wales vs. NZ and so I dragged myself along in the vain hope of other NZers magically appearing. I only stayed for the last half, and was the only female and the only one under 30. But the old boys treated me ok, they all stopped and stared when I went in, and one even said "A WOMAN!" but not in a "This is man territory, get out", just shock that I would show up by myself to watch the rugby and have a beer. I was a little surprised at myself as well.

Me and the boys, Max is 7 and Mike 5.

Then headed over to a mates place and mucked around for a few hours just chatting. When I left her place, I noticed a note had been left on my windscreen. It was all in German so it was straight to the dictionary when I got home. The writing was barely legible as it was, and so the only words I could translate were "Unfortunately" and "Pressing Charges". The whole family had gone to Düsseldorf, and so I had to wait till morning to track someone down to explain it to me. Apparently I had blocked someone’s driveway and instead of getting my car towed, they had made a complaint with the police against me. Of course I freaked out, as images came to mind of me standing in a court room having some angry German judge screaming and spit flying! But after calling Sandra and Luis (friends of the family’s who I get on really well with, i.e. the ones I went to dinner with on Friday) they told me that as they hadn’t got my car towed, there’s really not a lot they can do now, the police won’t be bothered with it. But we will wait and see what happens. I didn’t know if I should go apologize, or what. But everyone I've talked to, said not to worry about it, this guy sounds crazy, and they had never heard of someone going to the police over it before. Just my luck huh? Just to clarify, I did not for a second think I had ever parked in someone’s driveway, it was dark and raining heavily, and looked just like a normal parking space. To put it in a better perspective, in most suburban streets, the roads are very narrow and are often one-way, so to combat the parking problems you are allowed to park on the pavement. Of course seeing it in broad daylight the next day, I can’t believe how stupid I was, but at least lesson now learned.

Anyway, on to other things, here is a bit of a list I’ve complied to give you an idea of the differences of living in Germany to life back home in New Zealand:

At restaurants you always just go straight to a table, never wait to be seated.

Mandatory military service for all males over 18, for at least 10 months.

Germany has over 300 universities, of which students don’t have to pay any fees.

There are around 1,500 kinds of sausage.

They drink sparklingly mineral water like nobodies business, and tap water is considered fine for bathing in, but ‘only a barbarian would drink it’. But at around 30c a bottle, it’s not so bad.

Random photo from a Black and White party I went to a few months back, just thought it looked cool

Germans tend to leave work right on finishing time. To stay any later, would show you’re inefficient with your time.

Most German washing machines are front loaders, and can take up to 2 hours to do a load, but surprisingly using less water in the process. I haven’t seen one clothesline the entire time I have been here.

Religious studies are compulsory in all schools.

In-sink garbage disposables are banned, as is importing Garden gnomes from Poland.

There are usually locks on every internal door in the house.

Most of the transport network, works on an honour system – meaning that there are no barriers to go through and conductors are rare.

It costs €2000 to get a drivers license and requires between 25 to 40 hours of professional instruction, plus 12 hours of theory.

Germans aren’t prudes and have a very casual attitude about nudity. They happily walk around the changing room in the gym without a care in the world, completely in the buff.

They have to pay for local calls, and pricing is quite expensive, comparative to NZ.

When Germans rent an apartment, they need to bring everything with them (sometimes including even the kitchen sink). The rooms are completely bare, no light fittings and no curtains! When they leave, they usually have to paint all the walls white. So this means that most get quite creative with decorating their flats, as they have to paint over it at the end regardless. Unlike our stiff rules for renting in NZ, I have seen people put whole new kitchens and bathrooms into their apartments at their own expense, not the landlords. As renting is more common than owning in Germany, I guess the philosophy is that they have to live their and so they want to make it as much their own and as comfortable as possible.

The biggest thing I hate about Germany is that it feels like everyone here smokes! It’s probably just because there are few smoking restrictions in public places, the workplace, and even restaurants. It really is a non-smokers hell. Non-smokers are completely at the mercy of smokers, as the attitude seems to be if you don’t like it – you move! Not the other way round, it’s their god given right to smoke where ever they want. I had forgotten just has awful it is to smell yourself when you come back from a night in a pub. Yuck!

At intersections, the traffic lights are only on the side of the road that you are stopped at, not across the road as well. This means if you are at the front of the queue, you are inline with the traffic lights, meaning it is often very difficult to see when the lights change.

Biking everywhere is quite common, and wearing a helmet is not compulsory. There are bike paths and lanes everywhere.

An urban treehouse in Berlin. Not sure if this is art or children actually made it.

They are fanatics about recycling, and have four different bins. Plus most bottles have a ‘pfand’ meaning you get money back when you take them back to the place you brought them from. To give you an idea, of the extent you have to go to discard ones rubbish, to ‘chuck’ away one teabag, you actually have to use all four bins! Their plastic bottles for sodas etc are much thicker than ours, as they are used repetitively instead of being melted down first.

Companies are very efficient in finding ways to save money, by replacing workers with machines or making the customer do the work. At the supermarket, no one packs your bag, or even puts the food in the trolley for you. They just push it to the end of the checkout and you have to load it in yourself. To get you to return your trolley to the terminal, you have to put a €1 coin into a slot on the handle to begin with, as it releases it from the rest of the line. To get your money back you have to connect it with the remaining trolleys. In a parking garage, you have to take your ticket with you and pay before getting back into your car, so no grumpy attendant in a booth waiting for you like back at home.

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!