The Liebster award

I had not heard of "The Liebster award" so had to google it. It seems that blog authors can nominate as many as five other blogs they like, as long as these blogs have less than 200 followers. A nice way of helping the smaller lesser known blogs. I was nominated by the 'The Highly unlikely housewife'. Thank you, I love your blog too!

The award comes with some conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting:

1. Choose five up-and-coming blogs (with fewer than 200 followers) to award the Liebster to.
2. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
3. Post the award on your blog. List the bloggers you are giving the award to with links to their sites. Leave comments on their blogs so they know about the award.


Ok, so here are my nominations:

1) somewhere between facebook and flickr sits fiona
A Scottish expat living in Berlin with partner and two kids.

2)Heather goes to Deutschland An American girl living in Bavaria

3) A not so desperate hausfrau An American expat living in Karlsruhe with her husband.

4)Nine and ninety nine An American expat living with German husband and little dog in Germany.

5) The Highly Unlikely Housewife Mother of two living in the UK with her other half.

Colourful eggs hanging from the trees, it must be Easter!

Germans get really into celebrating Easter. They buy all these colourful painted eggs and hang them up in their garden. They also buy bunny pictures and statues and put them up around the house. And everywhere you go, people are wishing you a "Frohes Ostern" -happy Easter. It is normally a time for families to get together and enjoy a big meal, typically lamb. And they even buy each other presents. It is a little like a lower key Christmas!

Disappointingly though in my eyes anyway, they don't have Easter eggs! I'm talking about the big Cadbury's chocolate ones. What they have instead are chocolate covered rabbits. They also have some little chocolate eggs with cream inside, a little bit like Cadbury's cream eggs, though not as tasty!



I am delighted that Spring is here. It's a time for new beginnings and without going into too much detail, my job situation has recently improved a lot. I am still working in IT but I have had a career change in the industry into web development, which I am loving. Career wise, I also realise that I am enjoying more opportunities than I would be if I was still living in Dublin, where unfortunately the job situation is still pretty bad, from what I hear. It is times like this that I am glad to have emigrated to Germany.

Wisdom teeth removal, part two

My final two wisdom teeth were removed last week. It actually turned out to be THREE teeth! I'll start at the beginning...

Warning: detailed and slightly gory account ahead.

If you read about my experience the last time you will remember that it all went well expect that a nerve ending was damaged/broken during the surgery. It ended up taking nearly two months for new nerve endings to grow and for me to regain full feeling on the left side of my chin and mouth.

When I phoned up the dental surgery this time around, I said in German that I would like to make an appointment. The receptionist replied "ah hallo Frau X!" (where "X" is my actual surname). I must be the only native English speaker with a bad German accent going to my dentist! I went ahead and made the appointment to have my last two wisdom teeth removed. As the date approached I was a little apprehensive but far less nervous than the first time around as I knew what to expect and also I knew that it wouldn't be that bad. Uncomfortable and unpleasant but over in under ten minutes. Unfortunately I was wrong!

I arrived at the dentist and as usual there was a lot of waiting around- he is a busy man! A half hour wait before I got the injections. This time he gave me about five injections- I don't think he wanted to leave anything to chance (last time the injections were not fully effective). But I was left to wait over an hour as he told me he wanted to get through the other patients first and not just do my surgery "zwischendurch" (in between). That was fine with me, I didn't want my surgery to be rushed while his mind was elsewhere, though it was also no fun waiting. Even though I had gotten wisdom teeth removed before, and logically I knew it should not be that bad I was starting to get more and more nervous.

Finally at about 12.45 he was ready (my actual appointment was for 11am.) First a trainee younger dentist comes in and introduces himself and I started worrying that maybe he would be doing the surgery despite being unexperienced. But no, he ended up just observing. There was also a dental nurse with one of those sucky gadgets to suck up the blood and saliva. This time round, the wisdom teeth removal was A LOT worse! My bottom tooth must have been in very deep because the dentist was roughly pulling it for ages and ages before he could get it out. Very unpleasant! This time I also felt pain occasionally.

One of the teeth, the top one, was under the skin and had to be cut out, and then I could hear the dentist, and the trainee and the nurse saying something about "ein dritter Zahn" (a third tooth!). I was wondering if they meant one of my existing teeth was too close or what. I also understood them saying that this third tooth would also have to go. The dentist then said "blasen" to me and squeezed my nose shut with his fingers. I was not sure what that word meant and I thought at first he was telling me to stop breathing through my nose during the surgery. Oh man, it was already unpleasant enough as it was! But then I realised he meant to blow out my nose. So I did and then the three of them- the dentist, trainee and nurse starting talking about this so called "Blasen test". The nurse said she had learned about it in university. This had not happened during the removal of my first two teeth and I had no idea what was going on.

I also felt something fall on my lap at one stage and the three of them laughed and said they would get it after. After all the teeth were eventually removed the final stage was the stitches. This also seemed to take much longer than the first time around. By that stage I think I was chanting in my head "please God, can it be over soon!".

Anyway, finally it was all over and the dentist said well done. He then told me that I had had a third tooth which was also taken out. "Es kommt ganz selten vor. Wahnsinn!" It is very unusual. Crazy! he said.

He also told me that I was not allowed blow my nose for a week. I think my facial reaction was like "huh?". He then told me that during the "Blasen Test" when I had blown through my nose, air had come out of the tooth (the third tooth I think). So presumably a vigorous nose blow could dislodge the stitches. When I stood up I noticed that one of my teeth had fallen on my lap. The dentist asked if he could keep my three teeth. He probably wants to take photos for the dentist journal about the woman with the extra tooth. When I looked at my watch after it was all over it was 1.20pm. So the surgery had taken about half an hour. I was very glad it was behind me!

My face has been extremely swollen, and I look like a chipmunk, but otherwise I am recovering well! I went back for a check-up at the dentist on Friday and he told everyone that I am "eine tolle Frau" (a terrific woman).

Two days in Berlin

So I have been MIA from my blog lately, sorry about that! I have been meaning to write about my Berlin trip for ages now but never seem to get around to it. There was a long weekend here in February and the GerMann and I decided to go on a city break to Berlin. Neither of us had ever been there but had heard amazing things about it.

Firstly, we were expecting it to be cold that time of year. I had come across this article when I was researching the trip beforehand. From first hand experience I can confirm that Berlin is VERY COLD in February! It also snowed one of the days we were there.

What were my impressions of Berlin before visiting? Well the Brandenburg Gates came to mind of course and the Berlin wall, but also images of a built-up city with lots of concrete and graffiti but also a sort of cool trendy artistic vibe.

We arrived late on the Saturday and were flying back on the Tuesday, so we only really had two full days. Of course we didn't get to see everything Berlin has to offer. We saw the Brandenburg Gates, including the Holocaust memorial nearby, we visited the DDR museum, we spent a morning exploring Museum Island, we did the Berlin Unterwelt tour, we went to the Reichstag and we did our own little pub crawl.

The TV tower:

The Berlin Unterwelt tour was recommended to me by a friend. We arrived about fifteen minutes before the start only to find the English speaking tour booked out. So we booked ourselves on the German speaking one starting an hour later and went off to a cafe for a snack in the meantime. Now I didn't understand everything in the tour but it was still very interesting. You aren't allowed take any photos though unfortunately so I can't put any up on the blog.

Basically during World War two whenever there were bomb scares, as many people as could fit would hide out in this underground bunker built beside the underground train station. It gave the impression of safely though it actually was not built well enough that it could have withstood a bomb. You could walk through all the various rooms for instance a medical area, the Nazi quarters and so on. It reminded me a bit of a prison and I also felt a bit claustrophobic! Some of the air-strikes would go on for hours and the people would be underground in these airtight rooms that were gradually running out of oxygen.

In order to visit the Reichstag, you need to first register online at least three days in advance. You also have to decide then whether you are going to do the tour and what time slot you will aim for. There is some security once you arrive at the Reichstag at your allocated time, just like in an airport, but it went quickly for us, and the Reichstag is definitely worth seeing. It's free to visit and that includes an audio guide.

View from the top:

We spent an enjoyable few hours one morning exploring museum island.

The DDR museum is very small- I think it only took us about 45 minutes to look at everything, but it was interesting. I would have hated to live in the DDR I can tell you!

We were staying in a hotel in East Berlin a few underground stops away from the centre. We got a good deal through Animod.

This is how the traffic light green men look in Berlin, I love it:

Even though the weather was very cold in Berlin, it was dry and sunny and we really enjoyed our trip and would recommend Berlin to anyone. I imagine it would be even nicer there when the weather is a bit warmer as I did see lots of outdoor tables and beer gardens that were closed while we were visiting. Even though it is a big city, it never felt that overcrowded unlike Munich, though granted I have only visited Munich in the Summertime.

Spring has certainly arrived in Germany and the weather has been fantastic lately which has been putting me in a great mood. I was also very happy to make the Top 100 International Exchange & Experience Blogs of 2012 list- my blog is at number 65! So thanks again to everyone who voted for me!

Koko-what?

The weather has continued to get colder in Germany this past week, I believe it is only -10° degrees today, so it it is perfect weather for staying in and watching a dvd.

There aren't very many really well known German films. The only ones that come to my mind right at this minute are Run, Lola, run and The Lives of Others. Both well worth watching by the way! Most of the time I either watch American films dubbed into German in the cinema here (just not the same!) or wait until they come out on DVD to watch them in English. Occasionally films will be shown here in their original language.

I decided to try watching a German film for a change and picked Kokowääh which has gotten decent reviews.

The film revolves around Henry, (played by well known German actor Til Schweiger), a single scriptwriter living in Berlin. He has several women on the go and lots of unhappy exes. One of these exes, Katharina has since become a famous and successful author and she asks him to help her work on a script for a movie which is to be made based on her book. There is still clearly chemistry between the two of them but we learn that they broke up because he did not want children and was too stubborn(dickköpfig in German, literally 'fat headed') and immature.

Soon Henry finds out that eight years ago he fathered a child when the girl herself, Magdalena(played by Til's real life daughter Emma), turns up on his doorstep out of the blue with only a letter explaining the situation. Henry is none too impressed needless to say and he phones the mother up on Skype, who has flown off in New York in the meantime. He tells her that he can't stand children and he can't even cook. Instead of regretting her decision to leave her child in his care, she simply reminds him that he makes a delicious "Kokowääh", which is a French meal involving chicken in a white wine sauce, Coq au vin.

The story is somewhat predictable in that you kind of know from the start that Henry is probably going to end up having a good relationship with his daughter and learning more responsibility in the process but the film still has lots of really funny and touching moments and is enjoyable to watch. I would definitely recommend it.

The GerMann's verdict: "really good. Great for a German film".

Have you seen Kokowääh? What did you make of it?

Images taken from official website: http://wwws.warnerbros.de/kokowaa/

Winter wonderland

You know you are addicted to blogging when you go out for a walk in the cold with the sole purpose of taking photos for your blog! I awoke today to find a beautiful winter wonderland. On opening the blinds I must admit my first reaction was actually "Oh no, it's snowing!" Last year we had snow in Germany for months and I was completely fed up with it by the end! It also caused me to miss my flight home for Christmas, so I now have cooler feelings towards the fluffy white stuff.

Up till now the winter here has been lovely and mild.Similar to an Irish winter but without all the rain. That is the kind of winter I prefer- cold but dry with fantastic blue skies. Here's some photos I took last week.

However there are Artic winds coming to Germany this week and the weather is about to get A LOT colder. As low as -15 degrees even! Elderly people are being advised to stay inside. I was actually surprised at the number of them I saw out and about just now, many even cycling, ignoring the advice and not looking too bothered. Lots of very active pensioners over here!

Despite my initial negative reaction on seeing the snow outside, there is something really beautiful and majestic about a blanket of pure white snow everywhere. It is so lovely at this stage before it gets all mucky and icy!

Cast your vote

I am really excited that my blog has been entered into a competition:
“Top 100 International Exchange and Experience Blogs” of 2012 (also known as IX12).
So thank you very much to whoever nominated me for this! And thank you to everyone who votes for my blog.

To vote, go here
Scroll down till you see "Dubliner in Deutschland".
Select it and then scroll down to the "Vote" button at the bottom of the page.

You have until February 12th to vote. But why not do it now, before you forget! I would be delighted to just make the top 100 list at all! In the meantime, I shall go and work on my award acceptance speech...

German cakes

German cakes and pastries.... they are the reason why I have gained about a stone since moving to Germany. Oh, and the fact I cannot stop myself from eating them!

But I am determined that this year I shall make more of an effort to exercise and stop eating so many cakes. Easier said than done of course. I need more willpower!

As long as I can remember I have had a sweet tooth. In restaurants I tend to read the dessert menu even before picking my main course. And I am lucky that I was naturally slim and able to eat what whatever I wanted and have never needed to diet. Since moving to Germany however, I am noticing that I cannot just eat absolutely anything without weight gradually creeping on.

It's actually also well known that moving in with your partner causes you to pile on the pounds. Women tend to match their dinner portions to their partner's, forgetting that men can get away with more calories and then there are the countless nights in on the sofa together or big fancy meals out. Add that to living in Germany with a bakery supplying delicious cakes and pastries on every corner and it's a recipe for... lots of fun times eating cake!