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By cosmoravian, 08/01/2011 11:50 am

After lunching in town on Monday, Mam spent the rest of the day packing because she was off to a two-week visit in Germany on Tuesday! Without her here, I seem to have a lot more time [... and I can hear myself think again, ahem] which I spent mostly reading, reading, reading. I’m re-reading _The Crimson Petal and the White_ at the moment, a book I adore and love! It’s such a joy to read it again, to discover it all over again after it was locked away in storage for years … I’m finding so many favourite books while unpacking these days! This year is going to be fun

I’ve also been knitting a lot, finishing a pair of socks which I can’t show because they’re a late Christmas present, and I’m now starting a raglan baby cardigan – at the moment there are so many babies born left, right and centre to friends both local and far away, online friends and those “IRL”!

It’s this pattern (Ravelry-only link), and here’s my Ravelry project page (accessible for everyone).

Yesterday I met up with the initiator of the Brno group on Ravelry for our very first local knitting meeting. Well, knitting and crocheting. Neither of which took place because we had far too much to talk about, lol! I’m now armed with tips for local yarn-shopping as well as recommendations for a cat sitter, car dealer and ENT Thanks again, it was lovely to get together at last, and I can’t wait to hang out again!

When I came home I had this in the mail – proof that I am health insured here, my insurance card arrived! Only, oh, 2.5 months after signing up?

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By cosmoravian, 18/12/2010 12:14 pm

At least I got a small batch of holiday cards written! This new-life all-settled business is a work in progress …

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By cosmoravian, 09/12/2010 9:04 am

This morning I was in the kitchen with the window wide open while I was making my breakfast. I looked out the window and saw somebody walking around the rubbish bins in front of the house. Our landlord is often seen (un)fastening the chains that keep the bins in place, so I didn’t think too much about it at first. But something about the person, whose face I couldn’t see, made me look for longer. And then I saw that they were opening bin after bin, opening rubbish bags inside and rummaging through it. I’m sheltered enough from living in rich welfare societies that I didn’t realise for a while that they were …. looking for food! But then I saw them taking packs and tins out of the bags, looking them over and then stuffing them into a plastic bag hanging from their arm.

Oh gosh somebody was looking for food in our rubbish bins in this freezing cold! I thought about the tins of fish fillets in tomato sauce which we had arrived with, to have easy hotel food, back when we came here on our last penny and couldn’t afford to eat in restaurants every night. We were out of hotels before we had used up all the tins, and nobody here was very keen on tinned fish fillets any more.

I grabbed the tins and ran down the stairs out, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and torn-up homewear trousers. They were still going through the bins. I approached with a “dobrý den” and explained that I had “jidlo” (food), “rýba a rajčatová omáčka”. Because the tins carried German text.
They turned around, and I saw that it was an older man, with thick glasses and rheumy eyes. I kept repeating that I spoke very little Czech but wanted to give him “jidlo”. His face lit up, and he thanked me for a long time.

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By cosmoravian, 08/12/2010 12:12 pm

This collage of FB statuses is actually a very cool mix of what happened this year

Amsterdam, World Cup, B’s first day at work in Brno …

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By cosmoravian, 29/11/2010 9:25 am

When we woke up this morning it had snowed more overnight and was still snowing:

B took a snow day and is working from home. It seems to have stopped snowing now, I hope it’ll stay like that for when I need to go out later! 3pm my third-last Czech class starts, and we’ll be revising for next week’s exams all of this week. I can’t believe I’m almost done with the first course!

This is my desk. If you know me you’ll recognise the chaos … My Czech textbook and notepad, iPhone plus charging cable, random paper, some balls of yarn I nicked from Mam yesterday to knit a cowl (maybe this one or that one, though probably this one here), M&S’s Christmas Tea (milk, no sugar) in a nostalgic I-miss-Holland mug bought at Albert Heijn. That’s me!

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By cosmoravian, 17/11/2010 7:41 pm

Thursday was St Martin’s Day (11 November), a day that is celebrated with lantern processions and a traditional hearty autumn fare of geese and dumplings back home in Mainz. And here! Well, not sure about the lanterns actually, but a lot of the traditions are the same.

Mam and I went to the official festivities around the uncorking of the new 2010 wine, and I felt like I was right back home in Mainz

Another glorious autumn day

Waiting for the trolley bus (look, lines overhead!)

Mam and her Nordic Walking sticks

I’ve not seen nam. Svobody so crowded! It seemed like all of Brno had come to celebrate local wine!

While we queued for Bramborák (latke, Kartoffelpuffer) Mam hummed along to operetta melodies

The next day, Friday, was B’s birthday, and we went out for a traditional St Martin’s Feast at U Seminaru, a traditional First Republic-styled restaurant. I had goose liver confit, then roast goose on pumpkin puree (a surprise and very yum!) with dumplings and potato flour pancakes. No, there was no space for dessert …

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By cosmoravian, 03/11/2010 12:53 pm

We needed a document relating to the sale of our German flat (yes! finally!) to be apostilled in Prague, so my mum and I went on a wee trip yesterday! I’ve been to Prague before, for all of one day in 1993, but it was an unexpected first for Mam – so much fun to watch her be amazed that she gets to visit Prague Lovely.

Here are some photos from yesterday. I should really get to know my DSLR so I can get better results than with my compact. But then, yesterday was an “errand”! Which went beautifully btw, apostilling a document at the Interior Ministry was a breeze, took all of 20 seconds, and I had a fun chat with their security guard who is learning German to move to a German-speaking country. He wants to move close to the Alps but also to an area where people speak the cleanest standard German possible – my fellow German speakers will understand why that had me literally laughing out loud

Still to come: Photos from our week-end trip to Lednice! Where I took my DSLR but hadn’t charged the battery and ended up snapping away with Mam’s little Canon …

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By cosmoravian, 28/10/2010 1:30 pm

from examiner.com

It’s been an interesting week!
On Tuesday I went to the largest health insurance group together with a Czech friend to get a Czech document explaining my mother’s EHIC insurance card which clinics here have not accepted for urgent care so far. That turned out to be very quick and unbureaucratic, yay!
Using the opportunity, with a native speaker, I also wanted to clarify why B hadn’t received an insurance card yet and when *I* would finally get some proof of insurance. I had been told before I needed to use B’s temporary proof plus our marriage certificate in case I needed to access health care – not the most streamlined process … Well, it turned out *I don’t have insurance*!! I was simply not insured at all right now! B needed to add me to his insurance, and luckily that was quickly done using an E-901 form – but can you imagine how lucky I was that nothing had happened to me the last three months?? Ugh, not the kind of surprise I like getting!
When I signed onto B’s insurance the next day I also found out that I need to pay for my insurance – again, not what we’d been told upfront. And while it’s affordable, about half the price of the basic package in the Netherlands, having to insure family members separately *is* a financial concern for people moving here from abroad on more modest salaries!

Issue #2 right now is a very happy issue but it’s keeping us on our toes nevertheless. We are *at last* selling the apartment we own in Germany!! Doing this while living abroad adds significantly to the Papierkrieg, though!
The sale contract was signed in Germany already, we now need to give permission for the sale to go through. That permission needs to be notarised and/or apostilled – it depends who you ask – and while we’re way closer to the German Embassy in Vienna than the one in Prague they deem themselves nicht zuständig. We may or may not be able to use a local notary and need nothing else but we get contradictory information. At a very low price for local notary services compared to a hefty fee at the Embassy in Prague, and comparing a 5-minute car ride to a local office to a 7-hour round trip by public transport to Prague on a holiday week-end we have now decided to go ahead with the local notary. Wish us luck that we don’t need to go to Prague after all! Not that I wouldn’t love to visit Prague – but I’d prefer to go for pleasure rather than an Embassy visit

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By cosmoravian, 21/10/2010 3:29 pm

A few days ago I ordered some stuff for Kenia online. After trying various pet shops online I found one that had everything I needed and that offered good prices. I did my best to translate the T&Cs before ordering. Once I got to the checkout page, though, it wouldn’t let me choose anything but pay-on-delivery. I’ve never ordered anything that way before, it seems cumbersome, but as I had no choice …

I expected the delivery today or tomorrow and made sure to ask B to take out money from the ATM so I would have cash at home. Unfortunately, he forgot to give me the cash …

This morning I woke up to a text message in Czech that seemed to announce a delivery today. Google Translate had one of its awful moments so I’m not sure I got that right. Except that I thought I heard the door bell ring while I was in the shower and then found two missed calls from that same number. Hm.

Later, I went to class. Coming out of class I saw another missed call from that number and decided to translate a couple of sentences, once home, and call the number to try and arrange a delivery tomorrow. Except that when I arrived a our house so did the delivery guy!

Imagine a hands-and-feet discussion with the help of Google Translate on my iPhone to explain that I had no cash and to ask whether I could pick up the order somewhere tomorrow! The driver was very patient (oh and cute!) but he kept asking me whether I could go to an ATM now to solve the issue. We live in a purely residential area, there are no ATMs anywhere near. Then he asked something about driving to an ATM, and I said I didn’t have a car. “Ale já mám auto!” he said. “But I have a car!”

I had to let him wait a moment while I dashed upstairs to look up the PIN to my new card, and then we drove off! It took us quiiite some time to find an ATM, all the time he kept talking to his back office on his earpiece, they were helping us find the nearest place. And we found an ATM, I took out money, he drove me back home, I paid, gave him a tip and now Kenia has a new scratchpost

What an adventure! And I thought the craziest part of today was when the other Anglo and I made our class collapse in laughter because we both used the phrase “I feel like beef” to translate a Czech sentence! Um yes, I can see where this is funny but it’s just an every-day phrase in my ears

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By cosmoravian, 19/10/2010 10:49 am

I don’t have a lot of heirlooms. My family doesn’t pass on many heirlooms. Nobody seems to feel very emotionally attached to things, to (creating) traditions, often not even to staying in touch with not-so-distant relatives.
Add in that my adult life has been rather chaotic, I have moved around a lot. My life doesn’t seem like the kind of life that lends itself to hankering after heirlooms. And yet, I seem to be the black sheep of the family in this respect – I *love* heirlooms, I’m trying (but mostly failing) to create new traditions, and I didn’t rest until I had solved that riddle about the half-sister that I may or may not have.
[I do have one, she exists. But that's for another blog post ...]

There are a few things that I have inherited or will inherit, but it ain’t much. But this little tea set was a surprise – I didn’t know I had it, or didn’t remember! I found it in one of the boxes that had been in storage in Mam’s cellar since B and I had packed up our German home in 2004.

I haven’t been very successful finding information about the manufacturer, Porzellan-Manufaktur Händel Bavaria. Google tells me some people are selling bits and bobs on eBay. At low prices. Some people speculate Porzellan-Manufaktur Händel Bavaria may have been bought up and integrated into Hutschenreuther but there is very little information to be had.

The set belonged to my paternal grandmother, Margot Ruth Hilliger née Kausch, born 8 July 1911 in Poznań/Posen. At home I referred to her as “Kasseler Oma” because she lived in Kassel, about two hours away. For most of my childhood Mam made me call her every Sunday because she considered it her duty to foster a relationship between her daughter and her ex’s mother. But she and I had an uncomfortable relationship, I didn’t know her well. I had to call her “Großmutter/grandmother” because she thought “Oma/granny” made her feel old, she thought girls should learn French, and I shouldn’t spend so much of my time with my best friend who was working class and didn’t go to grammar school like me.

She died in 1994, I hadn’t seen her for several years by that time. And I didn’t find out about her death for months. But her tea set is here with me in my new life, I just need to find the perfect place for it still.