Showing posts with label What I Miss the Most.... Show all posts

Turns out Kale in the US is NOT the same as Grüne Kohl here in Germany.  I was pretty disappointed to discover this fact.  We went to the farmer’s market here in Germany and bought some kale plants.  We went to OBI and bought some pots and soil to plant them in.  We spent time picking bugs off the plants.  We waited until they looked nice and ready to eat.  Then we tasted them and threw the whole thing away (we kept the pots of course) :). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I can understand why Germans eat Grüne Kohl chopped into small pieces with potatoes and LOTS of butter.  Grüne Kohl is bitter and chewy.  They say that after the first frost it can develop a more sweet taste, but in my opinion nothing can help it taste like the Kale we were eating back in the US.

In the US we enjoyed raw organic Kale in salads, smoothies, and even made Kale chips (yummy).  But here you probably wouldn’t come out with the same results if you made these things with Grüne Kohl.  You would think I would have learned my lesson with the red onions. 

According to Wikipedia:

Kale (US)= Brassica Oleracea ACEPHALA

Grüne Kohl (Germany) = Brassica Oleracea SABELLICA

They are not the EXACT same plant. 

Some suggestions people gave me were to eat spinach (which is a great alternative although it is not always available in our local Edeka or farmer’s market) or Mangold.   One more suggestion was to soak Grüne Kohl in water for a while and that should help with the bitterness.  But I haven’t tried it yet.

(PS – I love the group Henhaus on Facebook because I can put a question out there and other mom’s living in Germany answer / help me figure things out!  I don’t live in this part of Germany, but I have found this to be a really helpful group.  I have asked questions about taxes, food, and fire detectors.  Here is the link to that facebook group or click on the picture below.)

Here are some more articles that I found about Grüne Kohl in Germany and the health benefits of eating kale (just click on the pictures).  Hopefully this summer we can grow the US Kale variety and enjoy our green smoothies and salads again. :)  Lots of Love – Judi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kale

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%BCnkohl

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the focus on Monday’s Post will be the differences that I see between the US and Germany.  I have been living here for about 8 months (oh my gosh it has been 8 MONTHS) and my current stage of culture shock is where I can observe differences without getting too worked up about them.  At least not ALL the time.  But I still have ups and downs.  I am also slowly {starting} to see myself come up with solutions to differences and creating new pathways forward in life.   

In the US, a lot of parents, grandparents, and care givers take their babies and children to storytime at the library.  I started taking Isaac when he was just a couple months old.  I didn’t realize how much I liked that kind of program until I arrived in Germany.  The first thing I did when we arrived here was go to the library in Rehau.  BUT it turns out that the library here has really limited hours and barely any programs for kids and NO programs for babies. 

The difference is….. the library in Germany isn’t a source of community events like it is in the US.  Instead there are multi-generation houses that serve as a source of community events and programs.  They have things like musik class and they can help network you to mom groups with local churches or the La Leche League.  I can post another time about the mom groups and programs I have discovered in the Hof / Rehau area.

{I have to note that we live in a really small town in a quiet area of Germany so there might be more resources and programs at your library if you live near a bigger city in Germany.} 

But basically, I went to as many mom groups as I could find and did a musik class, but it all still left a huge {storytime sized hole} in my heart.   I missed storytime.

To fill this hole – I decided to start my own storytime group.  So far it has worked out great and might even be better than if I had found a storytime at the library.  I enjoy having mom’s and babies over to our house.  The atmosphere is relaxed and we enjoy books and songs in both English and German.  It will help me learn more German in a fun way and the other kids will be exposed to some English.  It is so great that I have met a really wonderful group of mom’s who want to come over each week. 

Because I think it would be helpful to other mom’s or even folks who are at the early stages of learning German – I will start posting the program that we do each week.  Maybe another mom somewhere in the world wants to do something like this with their kid, but just needs some ideas.  

The BEST part is that this storytime program pushes me to search out children’s songs and books in German, learn more German words as I write down the program each week, and clean my house. 

Lots of Love, Judi

Image credit:

http://www.psbnyc.com/about_us/index?tag_name=childrens_story_time

So my Monday post is a little behind schedule, but I have a good reason {I think}.  Someone posted a comment on my judifox.com Blog (see picture below) and it changed what I was going to blog about on Monday.  I ended up writing about vulnerability instead… click here to read the post.

The great part about this person’s not so nice comment is that it really lifted my spirits…

Because so many people responded on my personal Facebook page. 

Each comment was like a hug from my friends and family. 

Thank you again for your love, encouragement, and kindness. 

PS – I have some more {fun} verb pictures in the works.  Can’t wait to share them soon.

PSS – I decided to change the Monday post from what {I Miss} to the {Differences I See}.  I agree with some of the comments I got and I would rather try to observe the differences, than to keep thinking from a place of {missing}.  In addition, I can then observe the differences without judgment and just enjoy the fact that things are sometimes different.  I think that will lift my spirits and help change my mindset about this Germany Adventure!

 

This is the comment chain that in the end only served to lift my spirits.  It was posted on the “Baby Doing a Random Act of Kindness” and the video of our son waving at people as they walked past our house.  

One driving adjustment that I had to make over here in Germany was learning to play the game of chicken with on coming cars driving down narrow roads.  Of course there are US cities with narrow roads and there are wide roads in Germany, but on average the streets here are pretty narrow.  Some roads are two way roads, but with cars parked on the sides of the streets they turn into roads only wide enough for one car to pass.  This might be expected to happen more on side streets or residential neighborhoods, but there are MANY main roads that are really narrow here in Germany. 

For example, in our small town the main road that goes through the center square has a section that narrows right by the butcher shop, bio market, and bakery.  It is a pretty busy intersection, but the road isn’t wide enough for parked cars and two cars to drive in both directions past.  So you have to stay on your toes driving and constantly judge in advance, who you think will win the game of chicken…  will you get through the narrow space first or will you have to duck over into a small spot between two parked cars (if you are lucky) and let the other car pass? 

(Photo – This is Burgstrasse in Rehau, Germany.  We lived in temporary housing here for 6 months.  It is officially a two way street, but with the cars parked on the side only one car can drive down this street at a time.  This street is right off of the main street going through town.)

* FINAL DISCLAIMER – I want to make one more disclaimer about the “Monday Weekly Post @ What I Miss the Most” – it could more accurately be described as “Monday’s Post Will Be @ the Differences I See”.  It is less a focus on missing things, but more a focus on the differences.  Maybe I will change the label….. but I really like the rhyme and catchiness of the first one :) 

What do you guys think?  Change it or leave it the same?

Hopefully it will be good to document the cultural differences that I see here in Germany.  Someone else moving to Germany from the US might appreciate reading about the differences and maybe they will relate, laugh, or connect with these posts.  I can only hope that my posts help just one other person.  Lots of Love – Judi

This Monday is the start of “What I Miss the Most…”.  But first I need to make some disclaimers / notes about this topic:


1.  I miss Family and Friends – !!{THE MOST"}!!  When we were in the US – I had a whole network of people to call / text / email.  Now I rarely talk on the phone and I feel disconnected from home.  This probably happened for several reasons: 

• We lived in temporary housing without the internet and a landline for 6 months.  This created a gap in our communications - people couldn’t call us and we weren’t able to regularly call them.
• The 6 hour time change.  When Isaac goes down for his morning nap it is 4:30 am in the US.  {if anyone is up – you are welcome to call us}
• We can’t talk with family and friends on our cell phones – unless we want to go into debt.  That means it isn’t always easy to get a hold of us and even when we are home – sometimes our internet phone isn’t working. 

Hopefully over time we can re-establish our connections with loved ones back home now that we have the internet again.     
 
2.  Things that I miss are just that – things that {I} miss.  It might not be something that other people miss and it might not make any sense to someone else, but it is something that I have had to navigate my way to a solution because I miss it.


3.  Over time {lots of time} I will become more comfortable with living here and I will miss less and less things from home.  And I might even discover that there are things in Germany that I will miss when we move back to the US.  Eventually, I might start posting  “Tuesday I’ll Write @ Something I like” :)

4.  I might have discovered some kind of solution for what I miss, but it doesn’t mean it is the best.  Any advice or tips are {Greatly} appreciated!  There are many ways to get to the same result and the best thing about the internet is learning from each other and finding more paths to solve similar problems.
SOOOOO Here is the first thing that I missed….  FLOSS!
I was not expecting this AT ALL!  I had a couple extra packages in my luggage and in our shipping container, but I expected that I would eventually find a woven un-waxed floss here in Germany.

I search high and low – I went in every Rossman, DM, Apotheke – all to no avail.  I bought SIX different kinds, I asked my German friends about their floss, and then I asked to see their floss {not a typical conversation to have with a new friend}.  

The woven floss I tried here lost it’s woven-ness after 2 teeth.  Another floss I tried, had a thin beginning and one thick short blue end, which made it hard to wrap around my fingers and it still lost it’s woven-ness after just a couple teeth.  Other floss’s were thin and silky. 

The thing is…. my dentist {that I miss} recommended that I use the woven unwaxed floss because I have some space between my bottom teeth and regular silky thin floss just doesn’t work for me. 

What did I do to solve this situation?  I asked my Mother In Law to throw some floss in a letter and mail it to me.  Seriously – just the spools of floss and not even the plastic container.  It cost about $4 to ship me some spools of floss, but now I have enough to last me until we go back to the US for a visit this summer. 

Now one of my pieces of advice for anyone moving internationally is to bring enough critical toiletries / personal care items that you feel comfortable with.  Somethings I don’t mind switching like my shampoo and conditioner, but if there is a personal care item that you really don’t want to switch (just yet) make sure to put it in your luggage or shipping container when you move.

Lots of Love – Judi