Der Erste Schultag

We've just returned from the festivities associated with the first school day of the year. The entire school welcomed the first years in a beautiful ceremony lasting from 8 to 11:30 am (school will finish at 11:30 everyday this week!). It started with a lovely service in the local church (which is enormous). The new children sat on the stage and sang songs about growing up whilst the parents juggled the schuletuete (decorative cardboard cones filled with stationary and lollies) on their laps. There were many parents and grandparents dabbing their eyes with tissues as they watched the service.

After marching back along the cobblestone lanes, the headmaster hosted an outdoor ceremony (which was a little risky as we've had nothing but rain for the last 5 days - fortunately the clouds blew away), in which the older children sang welcoming songs and acted out a sweet little play for the new kids. The play was about new children starting school but encountering a few obstacles on the first day ie mixing up all their clothes; losing books and even finding sheep under the desks! It then seemed to us (with our limited German) one of the children, who had read 2000 books, had the idea to look up a solution in the dictionary.. and found one? Everyone of course lived happily ever after ....

Although Stephanie and Mia are new to the Badelebenschule, they were considered experienced school-goers so were part of the crowd singing German songs to welcome the new German children to their new German school ....

Stephanie has a young pretty teacher called Frau Ritter. She is very musical and sang songs to the class with her guitar. Ritter in German means knight - perhaps she has some aristocratic blood? Mia has a more experienced teacher called Frau Geiersmeyer who is obviously adored by all her old students as many rushed up to her on the first day and embraced her warmly.

So our first experiences at school have been very positive. Obviously when the festivities of Day 1 fade away there will be many challenges ahead .. Steph has already been asked to write a letter to one of the new students about their first day at school and Mia diligently added up all her subtraction exercises....

Flohmarkt

Summer time is the time for Fairs. Each city or region has one. We spent half a day at the Bad Viebel fair, riding horse, screaming on ghost trains, flying through the air on scary rides, eating lebkuchen and of course drinking bier!

Essen's local fair runs for a week and is combined with a very sweet Kinder Flohmarkt (flea market) which is a series of makeshift stalls run by children for children. We certainly picked up a few bargains... a gorgeous ski jacket (10Euro); a pair of pink unicorns (50cent) and some inline skates (3Euro).

Food / Essen

Food is the theme of this blog entry, so to start with here's a regional joke to wet your appetite...

Q: When God finished making the Ruhrgebiet what did he say?

A: Essen ist fertig!

The relevance of this little linguistic joke is that the word Essen is the name of the city in the Ruhrgebiet in which we live BUT it also means 'to eat'. So when God said "Essen ist fertig" he meant either, Essen is complete or dinner is ready ;)

Generally we're of the belief that if the Germans ate like the Italians it would be an even nicer place to live... German food is very very heavy. Cream and pork are their favourite ingredients. They put cream in soups, salads, cakes, coffees, meat dishes, fish dishes and even Flammkuchen (which is a local pizza)!! Cream is very difficult to avoid. Anything green is usually considered decoration or is completely cooked to death.

So our favourite food in Germany comes from the local bakery. They have a selection of at least 20 different breadrolls, often packed with seeds, nuts, onion, grated carrot and they are all moist and chewy. The Germans consume them with a cream spread, sliced meat and maybe a slice of tomato (for decoration). Stephanie is addicted to the Bretzels, Mia to the Laugenstangers, Hubi to the Kraftballigbroetchen, and I like the simple rye breads or Seelen (green olive bread). Of course, the bakeries also offer an impressive range of sweet temptations like Pflaumkuchen (plum cake - usually covered in wasps); Quarkbaellen (deep fried sugary balls made from cottage cheese); Schokolademauschen (choc chip buns); Mohnkuchen (poppyseed cake) etc etc

Nordrhein-Westfalen (our state) also has a few regional specialities - most of which we've not been game to order, like Gruenkolessen und Pinkelwurst (green cabbage and herbs served with fried pork sausages, fatty pork ribs and pureed potato); Lungenwurst (made from pork and lamb lungs!); Eintopf (lentil and lamb stew) and a traditional regional dessert is Rote Gruetze (stewed berries with vanilla cream sauce).

On our recent trip to Frankfurt we sampled some of their regional cuisine:

Handkaes mit Musik (low fat fists of sour cheese swimming in diced pickled onion, caraway seeds and vinegar); Apfelwein (a slightly sour, beer-like apple wine); Frankfurter Gruener Sosse (Goethe's mother apparently invented a green herb sauce ... made with cream, which was poured over potatoes); Frankfurter Rindswurst (long skinny sausages served with potato salad or bread and mustard).

I think the most famous dish in Germany just celebrated it's 100th birthday. It's called Currywurst and is a sliced sausage served in a spicy, rather gluggy, tomato sauce, served with potato chips often drowned in 'beides' (ketchup and mayonnaise)!!

All we can say - is we're looking for to Barcelona and some Tapas!!

Fabulous Frankfurt

Last Friday we zoomed down the A3 in order to vote at the Australian Consulate in Frankfurt. On the 28th floor of one of the many skyscrapers in Frankfurt (the financial capital of Germany), we voted for the Australian federal election. Of the 9000 Aussies currently living in Germany, 248 had already voted in Frankfurt on that day (we were there at 10am). Hubertus had a leisurely chat to the heavily accented Aussie on duty that day... and discovered that the Climate Skeptics gave the majority of their preferences to Family First...huh!

After our important duties were completed we spent a leisurely day discovering the fabulous city of Frankfurt. At a small-ish church called Paulskirche in 1848, the first freely elected Parliament gathered - but rather disappointingly they voted for a constitutional monarchy with a hereditary monarch. However, the Prussian king at the time wisely declined the offer - knowing serious revolt might follow, as had happened across the border in France. An eye-catching circular piece of art now summarises the controversy at the time with men in suits trampling over naked breast-feeding working class women or farmers ploughing their fields ie they were not really representative.

With such historical roots, it's a wonder that Bonn was ever the Capital whilst Berlin was split post WWII... I found out later it had something to do with being in the British zone of occupation.

Frankfurt is the birthplace of arguably one of the most famous German poets, Goethe. At the time Frankfurt was a free city within the Holy Roman Empire (1749)! Goethe wrote about almost everything; love stories, crime, plant morphology and the theory of colours. He was also an inspiration to another famous German author called Schiller. By some bizarre stoke of luck we stumbled across his birthplace two days later, as we pulled off the autobahn for a cup of coffee and ended up at a cafe directly opposite his parent's house in Marbach.

Frankfurt is of course famous for its bankers which is perhaps why there are so many extravagant shopping precincts. Several jewellers we passed had items in their shop windows worth more than most German apartments, which is why they also had armed guards in black-tie on the pavement next to us!

Window shopping is fun and affordable - the girl's favourite item was a toilet seat with a picture on the lid depicting a young child being flushed down the bowl! Hubertus explored yet another Apple Store and I was quite taken with the design shops and art galleries.

We definitely need to head back to Frankfurt for its Weihnachtmarkts!!

The Moselle Valley & Paris

Paris has been beckoning us for years. How did we ever manage 2.5 years in Edinburgh without visiting 'her' (Paris is definitely a 'she' - so ornate are the buildings, crowned in gold figurines and trimmed with lacy balconies)?

So finally we all took off on a Thursday for a long weekend to explore the magnificent city. En-route we made a last minute decision to drop in on some Aussie friends in Bonn, however, our brief morning tea visit turned into a 4 hour adventure, including 1.5 hours at the local hospital! Stephanie and Mia had a minor collision on the trampoline, in which Mia embedded her teeth into Steph's scalp. So some love, disinfectant, glue, pain killers and a lot of patience were required before we could head onwards again.

We wound our way down the picturesque Moselle Valley, flanked by almost vertical vineyards growing only white wine grapes (... Napoleon ripped out all the red grapes, so France wouldn't have to compete!). Essential historical excursions included the Cochem Reichburg (a beautifully restored medieval castle perched on a hill overlooking the river)and the Porta Nigra (2000yo Roman gate to the city of Trier). A local wine called Federweisser (an actively fermenting slightly sweet bubbly wine) was fondly remembered on a previous visit to the region, alas it's only available in September...

Eventually we made it to Paris - a colossal city of over 3 million residents, all packed into a 5 storey sandwich of buildings, sprawling out from the Seine. Napoleon III can apparently be thanked for most of the overall appearance of Paris. He demolished the medieval, random meandering of streets and tiny lanes, and replaced it with the elegant boulevards lined with neat houses. The new wider streets could not be blockaded like the narrow lanes and therefore rebellions were more easily suppressed and Paris became significantly more peaceful.

Steph and Mia loved the Eiffel Tower. They somehow managed to climb the equivalent of 46 floors without stopping - in fact they powered past the average European with a penchant for cigarettes!! Afterwards a street artist captured the girl's zeal with a few strokes of his charcoal stick.

Half a day of waiting in queues was enough to drive us to the local parks - in the hope of escaping the damn tourists! One day we explored the beautifully manicured Jardin du Luxembourg, watched the local enfants push wooden sailing boats around a small lake, had pony rides and indulged in some artisan ice-creams. A minor distraction to the pleasures of a park stroll were the outrageous costs associated with a bit of frivolous fun... the kids playground in Jardin du Luxembourg cost $4.50/child and if you wanted to assist your enfant each adult had to pay $3.00. We chose to stay outside and watch as other fee-paying adults assisted our children hop onto and off play equipment. Mon dieu! Another day we explored Jardin d'Acclimitation - beautiful and filled with irresistible children's activities (also at some cost!).

After feeling moderately recovered from the trampling tourists, we ventured into the Louvre on our last morning...we have never seen so many people swallowed up by one large palace. Of course when we did stumble over the Mona Lisa, we had to battle for 20min just for a front row viewing. Hubertus hired an audio guide for our visit, but was so disheveled by the crowd he couldn't extract his glasses to read the microscopic number by the painting, for a bit of background info ... c'est la vie! The girls were quite awed by the power of such a famous painting... the smallest painting surrounded by the largest crowd...

Food - we're totally ashamed to admit that we dined in 3 different Italian restaurants each evening. Somehow, on the point of exhaustion with children screaming out for food, we always fell into the safe hands of an Italian ristorante.. Perhaps I overdid my vivid stories about snails and frogs legs to Mia before we left for France (she initially refused to eat even chocolate croissants, worried that they may contain a snail or two), but we never ventured into anything truly French apart from the irresistible Boulangerie (mmm the snail-free croissant, fig pastries, pain au cocolat etc etc).

Hi there Cowboy!

Germans do love America! Every radio station plays only hits from The US all day long, our neighbours send their children to summer holiday camps in the States and every region has its own US-based theme park. Just up the road is apparently "the King of Pop's favourite, Phantasia Land". Last weekend our cousins took us to the Wild West Safari Park, complete with cowboys, red indians, rollercoaster rides, Hollywood singing shows etc etc. The only non-American fast food we could find were the curry-wursts (which is a new-ish German national dish - sausages in a sticky spicy curry sauce). The girls loved it all!

Malen ist schoen!

Steph and Mia have been immersing themselves, not so much into the language but with paint. Every Wednesday they attend a painting and drawing school conducted in an old coal mine.... with heavy black machinery hanging from the ceiling in their studio. It's parent-free, so serves as gentle practice for the inevitable full-immersion at school, which is creeping up gradually on the 31st August! Interestingly the teacher feeds the students a bowl of carrots during break-time ...

Our Deutsch also progresses. Stephanie converses with all children in every playground - most are disappointed they don't get to learn more English. Mia is choosing to immerse herself in her 'land of unicorns'... pure escapism! I've sampled InLingua which was AWFUL (1st lesson: read an article about the Love Parade in Duisburg - understood 20%; 2nd lesson: watched the DVD Christine F (R rated and minimal conversation) - understood 80%. Quit. Now attending 2 private lessons/week. Fingers crossed.