Let me start by saying that Hausfrau was not a light, happy read. It is also not an easy one to review. I heard about it this week when I was perusing Facebook (I think it was mentioned in the New York Times feed) and I immediately went out and bought it. It isn't...
The GW Expat Blog
Author
Sarah Fürstenberger
Being “Normal”
Tonight I had dinner with a friend who has been living here in Germany for about as long as I have. We first met virtually through a Facebook post of a mutual friend and discovered we were both in Heidelberg. The commonalities continued when we talked on the phone for...
All Day School (Ganztagsschule)
Here in Eppelheim (near Heidelberg), there has been a lot of controversy about the new Ganztagsschule that started this school year. There had been talk of it for ages, but it finally came to fruition for this school year. However, many, many people are unhappy with...
Essential Oils and German Sales
For a while now, I have been using essential oils around the house in place of OTC remedies. I got into them through my sister in the US, who was selling them as a sort of side venture. She teaches yoga as her main job. After talking about the oils to all and sundry,...
A Pseudo-European Teenager Goes to Texas
Our eldest has been in Texas for the past year attending high school, after spending most of her life in Europe - some in Ireland, but mostly in Germany. She is sixteen, and with that comes the sixteen-year-old way of looking at the world. She's been back for a week,...
Kids’ Birthdays in Germany
This has been a month of kids' birthday parties for us, on the organizational side and on the invitational side. My third child turns seven on Friday and her younger brother attended a birthday party for a friend of ours' son the week before. Olivia attended a ninth...
Birthdays at Work (or the Joys of Raw Meat)
My first job here in Germany was in a publishing house (Verlag) in Freiburg, and that job was actually my first real job after college. It was certainly a different way to be indoctrinated into the world of work. It was the early nineties and it was the Schwarzwald....
From freelance to Angestellte to Arbeitslos
Remember my last post where I talked about my wonderful new job? The one I was excited about after the eight months of freelancing and running around in many directions trying to make a living? Well, one of the perils of working for a start up company is the very...
What, you work full time?
Both Jane and I have mentioned the concept of the Rabenmutter, which is defined in the Wikidictionary as "A raven mother, a loveless, heartless, cruel, unnatural, or uncaring mother; a bad mother who does not take good care of her children." Now no one has dared ever...
Teaching ESL in Germany
I recently finished a two-week stint of teaching intensive English for a company that has been contracted to provide training for unemployed people. The unemployment office sends a lucky few - in this case five people - to take a course that is meant to help make them...
Foods that are hard to find in Germany, part 2
Hyde wrote a blog about this topic last year, but here are my thoughts... I have been living in Germany most of my adult life, and for the most part, I have learned to move past the few foods that I really miss from the US and just simply live without them. I moved...
The German health care jungle
Since becoming self-employed, which was not so much of a choice for me, but more a forced path, I have had to become privately insured when it comes to health insurance. I had very much hoped to avoid doing so, but it turns out that public health insurance gets very...
Return to Freelancing
I've been away from the blog for a while because we moved to Ireland in 2010 for a new job for me. For years I have been working as a technical writer and editor at large corporations (SAP and IBM, to be exact), but as of April, I have returned to my roots in more...
Birthdays and Friends
This year is a momentous one in the eyes of some people, because I am turning forty. I'm turning forty in a new country, and all of my oldest and closest friends live in other ones. But I am not despairing, and I am not ignoring this runden Geburtstag. (A runder...
Farewell, for now…
As usual, I am late for my blog post. So much for German punctuality. It has been a busy period around our house since we moved to Ireland. What with working full time and taking care of the four kids together with my husband, I am not finding enough inspiration to...
Punctuality: Am I Obsessed?
When thinking about what to blog about this time round, I came back to one of my seeming favorite topics, punctuality. I had forgotten that I blogged about it in October, but something is calling me back again. I had been speaking to a colleague who had worked for the...
Multi-Kulti Christmas
This past year, our international family became even more international when my husband's sister married a man from Colombia. When we moved to Ireland in September, the family decided that we would all celebrate Christmas together in Galway this year. The flight was...
Losing my German
We have been in Ireland for about three months now, and every time I speak to my closest German friend, I notice words slipping away. I was "home" this weekend, so I am feeling better about that again, but it is amazing how quickly it happens. When we arrived in...
More Things I Miss About Germany: Punctuality and Public Transport
Being in Ireland for the past couple of months has of course given me a new perspective about Germany and its many benefits. Every expat in Germany has some painful dealings with bureaucracy and at least one or two stories to tell that make others cringe and nod in...
Working My Way
I have just completed my first work week in Ireland, after working in Germany for most of my adult life. My most recent stint was at a large German company that was known for being relaxed and friendly, two qualities that are not always associated with other sorts of...
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