Thursday, September 2, 2010

Germans aren't like you & me...or?*

If you're a regular here you will have become accustomed by now to my rants about life in Germany. Now this isn't a rant per se, just a few observations that I thought I should share with you;

- Rebecca's youngest, T, goes to kindergarten which generally runs throughout the school 6 week break, apart from 2 weeks (I think, I'm not completely sure on this as I've never had kids at kindi here but it does definitely run during most of the school break) her elder 2 are now at primary school here and so kindi was informed that T wouldn't be there during the summer hols but would start back on Monday when the schools did.
Fine.
But on Monday (when the schools started back) Rebecca was informed by kindi that they were all going to the circus (which has been in town all summer) that afternoon but they hadn't gotten T a ticket as they didn't know if he'd be back.
OK.
Kindi then told Rebecca that he could stay for his lunch though, as his lunch had been ordered for him...
Huh?
Is it just me, or does that not quite add up?

- Ben (no. 1 son) goes to the bilingual high school here in Kettwig, he's in his 3rd year there now and about to start doing Geography in English (that's geography being taught in the English language and not Ben doing his geography work during an English lesson) Anyway, Ben was flicking through the school website yesterday and found the photos of his class, one girl is obscured by a very badly photoshopped potted palm. It turns out that her parents refuse to let any photos of her appear on the internet, no idea why (like a boy would think to ask) maybe they're on the run, maybe they've been given new id's by the state, maybe they're Russian spies in deep cover...I wanted to post the link to the photo but Si said NO...however there's only one bilingual gymnasium in Kettwig so if you're really curious you can find it!
We're now priming Ben to wind the girl up about the trip to England that happens in year 8 or 9 (could even be 10, I don't know) - all those CCTV cameras, there must be one on every street corner.

And finally;
- P, a friend of Ben's has been desperate for his rabbit to croak (maybe that's a slight exaggeration but he's a 13 year old boy, they're not known for their maturity or empathy) because he wanted to replace it with some kind of lizard. Anyway, they got back from their hols to discover the grandparents had offed the bunny & buried it, it then had to be exhumed and reburied in P's garden (kids eh?!) but this now meant that P could start looking at lizards. Unfortunately he hadn't realised that the kind he wanted (don't ask) would grow to about 30 cms or so and require a terrarium (and yes Ben, I do know what one of those is, cheeky monkey) that would take up a large amount of P's bedroom and would live about 20 years...it was the 20 years that scuppered the deal, there was no way P's mom was going to be left looking after a lizard after P had eventually left home.
We got back from England to find that P now has 2 mice (purchased in a place called Leichlingen**) called Drei and Vier (Three & Four) on account of one of the newly purchased rodents only having 3 legs. Oh, the puns that followed, suggestions for more suitable names - Stumpy, Wonky, Hoppy and comments as to whether or not P got a discount for an incomplete mouse, or maybe he couldn't afford a whole one...

So there you have it, not a rant as such, merely a few things that have made me go 'hmmmm' and think to myself, 'these Germans are crazy' oder?


* Germans have a trick of making a sentence into a question by sticking the word 'oder' (= or) at the end, this is perfectly acceptable in German, but then they ALL try to do the same with English and it just doesn't work, or?

** die Leiche = corpse, I don't think I'd want to live in a place named Corpsey - there's a joke in there somewhere I'm sure of it...

No comments: