Christmas 2001
Another year goes by, and being a particularly eventful one for us, we thought you’d like to hear our annual review of news.
We backtrack a little to October 2000 when Katie discovered one Saturday morning that she was pregnant. We were delighted of course and more of that later, but the timing could have been better.
For a while, Phil had been unhappy at work, the hours long and the demands ever increasing. The upstairs office had become a 24 hour network operations room on more than one ocasion. An ambition was to work abroad for a while and various factors conspired to make it finally happen this year (such as Katie saying it’s now or never!).
It wasn’t that easy to get a job, first applying independently to two companies in Frankfurt (November 2000) with no luck, then trying three companies in Munich via an agency and, after interviews in February, waiting, thinking and waiting, a contract finally dropped through the post. After due consideration (actually the hardest bit: security versus a jump into the unknown), Phil handed in his notice on 1st March and left at the end of April.
The challenge of Germany was looming and with it the hope of re-discovering weekends and family. Phil flew out at the end of May to start work with HighwayOne, an Internet Service Provider, led by a Brit but predominantly German. Most days, the job meets everything on Phil’s wish list, it develops new technical skills, is desk-based and a step away from demanding customers. It’s no complaint to say that they just put him in a corner and let him get on with things, since this has real benefits: he can duck the politics, avoid too many meetings (so far) and play with the latest technologies all day.
The downside to the job is that he is not picking up as much of the language as he would like, since many people over here have almost perfect English. It seems the younger the person is, the better their English. This is worrying for UK German language training since unless it gets someone to a very advanced level, it’s nigh on useless; also, are many of the quaint, cultural and language differences here going to be watered down over the years? Vive la difference. Anyway Phil gets off his soap box at this point. The irony is that at the moment, he has the better grasp of the language but seems to use it less than Katie, who meets more people who speak only German.
Independence Day arrives with long distance laundry
Phil began work over here in June with Katie staying in Clitheroe, being 8 months pregnant and unable to fly (too heavy!). Phil returned in July for two weeks when the baby was due, Eve Nuala making a not too unpleasant arrival at 12.32pm on Wednesday 4th July to the strains of Nanci Griffiths singing “It’s a hard life wherever you go” / “Nobody’s Angel” (we can’t remember which, delete as fits).
We had a pleasant 10 days together before Phil’s inevitable departure back (are you getting the drift of this year?). Phil’s visits home were a weekend every two weeks, all too short and a bit stressful. We found that the best way of dealing with the stress and emotion was for a pick up on Friday night at Manchester Airport by the whole family, the joyful reunion, then a hot dash in a cheap taxi as late as possible on the Sunday for the tearful separation. There was light at the end of the tunnel when finally on September 1st, Katie, Sabrina and Eve flew over and we moved into our present house in Kieferngarten, just a few miles north of Munich’s centre, Marienplatz.
It’s all Double Deutsch to us
So, here we are in Deutschland, and it has to be said that it has been pretty tough. With a 3 year old and a new baby in tow, new job, new house, different language and culture, no friends or family to offer help and support; the move has been stressful and far from glamourous as it might seem!
The house was a disappointment, quite large but old and needing refurbishment really (Phil spends half an hour a week mending the downstairs loo). Many weekends have seen us wielding paint brushes and scrubbing cupboards and floors etc. Light fittings were largely absent so a quick visit to IKEA and some of Phil’s DIY skills put that to rights (non-sequitur / bodgit-scarpur surely?). Lowest point was sleeping on the mattress waiting for the furniture to arrive and being woken up by a humming noise. Two hours and several swats later, Katie discovered the reason: more than 20 mosquitoes had formed an airfield on the bedroom wall and were taking it in turns to dive bomb! The windows stayed shut at night after this, although the odd one still got in. Thankfully the cold temperatures have seen them off for now.
It’s strange that the few occasions we have felt at home were going through a shopping mall reminiscent of Trafford Centre and the visits to the forementioned Swedish furniture store, parading through the walkways laid out just like back home, the formula seems to transcend borders and it comes as a surprise to be using German at the checkouts.
In contrast to us, we have met friends who have very little to grumble about in their “cushioned”, all-expenses-paid relocations over here. An agent is appointed and all the hassles taken away, like the viewing of properties in groups of 10 and queuing up all day at Poccistrasse (the name is well chosen) to register and get residence permits. Still, we must get out of the “if its difficult - it must be best” mentality. Roll on some luxury.
Shopping can be quite stressful, having to accomplish the trip at breakneck speed, not knowing what things look like and with different product ranges available, it has been a bit of a nightmare, but things are becoming clearer now. The breads and pastas are delicious.
The Germans are mad on recycling and we were reprimanded within a few days of arriving by a neighbour who had noticed that we weren’t separating our rubbish. As a result, you wouldn’t believe our competence now, challenging each other for ever smaller pieces to send for recycling, the current winner being the bit of plastic you cut off a superglue bottle.
They do tend to stick their noses into your business. If Eve is crying loudly in public or things are not quite in order with the children, you get a wagging finger and a not too polite remonstration from someone who more than likely hasn’t seen the wrong side of a nappy all their life. A neighbour had complained about us leaving the bathroom light on overnight, but that’s another story.
Certain things remind us of childhood: taking bottles back to the shops for the deposit, snow in November, stodgy food (dumplings!) and newspaper vendors coming round pubs and restaurants with the latest editions.
We’ve had two sets of visitors. Pete, Rosalind, Suzanne, Steve and Jessica came for Oktoberfest; Katie’s Mum and Auntie came to help with decorating. It was great to see familiar faces and it made the house seem more like home.
Sabrina - Drama Diva - why make a drama out of a crisis when you can turn a crisis into an opera ?
Sabrina has been the most affected by all these changes and is taking a long time to settle. She doesn’t really enjoy Kindergarten very much. She lacks a few good friends, so we are doing our best and have invited people to the house to help her develop some relationships on her own ground, where hopefully she feels a bit more secure. Kindergarten is an unusual setup here where they only play - no books or paints and no actual education is embarked upon, which is fine for the German system where they start school at 6 or even 7 years old, but not so good if Sabrina has to start English school in year 2 when we possibly reurn in 2003.
She is a real drama queen at times, lamenting operatically “Mama, Mama” in the supermarket as she discovers she’s lost her hair band or worse, Barbie’s lost hers. She is making good progress with the language, thanks in part to her tenacity in watching videos such as Pocahontas or The Flintstones in German, time after time. Sabrina is at a stage where she could watch the Lion King in Vietnamese and it wouldn’t bother her a jot.
Adora Bubble - truly scrumptious, I can’t believe it’s not butter !
Eve is growing up fine, she’s an adorable tinker. She cries frequently but laughs a lot, seeming a happy child generally and stubborn like her parents. Health Visitors don’t seem to exist here, so doctors take that role and it’s very much your own responsibility to ensure that vaccination dates and developmental checks are kept. Sometimes she cries so relentlessly, it’s a discipline not to get violent; her good looks (could we say any different?) have saved her on countless ocasions! The next minute she can be the picture of innocence, lying in her pram like butter wouldn’t melt, with an expression like the devious penguin, Fingers McGraw, in Wallace and Grommet.
Turkey for Christmas
Katie misses her friends and feels the loneliness when tied to the house with small children and no TV or British radio, a lifeline back home, but Phil is working on it. Daftest suggestion from the landlord so far, was that we shared the neighbour’s satellite dish. We wrote a long letter asking for his help in our best German, only to notice that his satellite was pointing in a different direction to the others, so he can pick up Turkish TV. We’ve got all the technology now but none of the know-how, so it will be a major achievement to get anything by Christmas, even if it is from Turkey.
We have made a few friends, including a Welsh couple we met at church, who arrived in Munich the day after we did; but friendships come slowly when time is taken up with jobs, administration and small children. We’ve visited a few churches so far but nowhere we can call “home” yet, current favourite being the Peace Church United Methodist, run jointly by an American and a German who was once a vicar in the Yorkshire Dales.
We’re spending Christmas and New Year here, looking forward very much to spending a week back in Clitheroe in the middle of January.
We wish you a joyful Merry Christmas and a prosperous Happy New Year, in the hope that if it’s prosperous, you might visit us! You are very welcome.
STOP PRESS: COLD TURKEY
The star, sorry satellite, in the East has been spotted and we now have German TV, 43 channels and nothing on.
yearly reviews
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