I never got around to telling the story of our daughter's name. It is, indeed, one heck of a story, which starts even before she was born. You have to remember that she has a German father and a French mother. This led, before her birth, to endless dicussions about what names are suitable in both […]
Tuesday, April 22 2008
Truly multilingual
Tuesday, April 22 2008. the other words
Our neighbours are what one would call a really truly multilingual family. The mother is Swedish, the father is Italian. Together they speak English. The kids speak Swedish with their mother, Italian with their father. They lived the first years of their life in Switzerland, which means the children […]
Thursday, March 27 2008
The language before the language
Thursday, March 27 2008. communication(s)
I am still reading the book about bilingualism and before I write a more detailled review about it, I wanted to share my last experiences in terms of communication and languages. As you may know, or not, we had a baby. Emma was born a few weeks ago and I must say that the greatest challenge her […]
Tuesday, January 29 2008
Holy state! the Church got me (again)
Tuesday, January 29 2008. somewhere else
Well, here is the sequel to my very interesting story about the German Church getting a hold of me. Actually, I probably need to rectify something. It is not so much the Church that got me, but the German State. So let me explain the next steps. When I saw that the Finanzamt (Tax office) was ready […]
Thursday, December 20 2007
The Credit Card Hell
Thursday, December 20 2007. everyday life
I have already tackled one of the aspects that sometimes makes me think that Germany is a backwards country. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's an OK backwards country, but there are a few things that just drive me nuts. One of those is the fact that having a credit card in Germany is like owning a […]
Friday, December 14 2007
The Toilet in the Bathroom
Friday, December 14 2007. everyday life
We've just moved appartments. Apart from the fact that we now have double the surface, there is one very important thing to me, French woman, in this new appartment, and that is the toilet. In Germany, toilets (except in restaurants) are in the bathroom. Ouch, with the common use of bathroon as a […]
Thursday, December 13 2007
Shifting Standards and the Center of The World
Thursday, December 13 2007. the other words
I have been working on an international survey in the past few days, which is being answered by 11 teams of 11 different countries. And one thing really struck me in the way answers were given to certain questions. It was not so much the actual content of the answer which I found striking, but […]
Friday, November 30 2007
German punctuality is overrated
Friday, November 30 2007. somewhere else
I am pretty sure that if you ask anyone in the world to give you one cliché about the Germans, there's a pretty good chance that "The Germans are always on time" or "The Germans are very organized" will come up more than once. In any case, that's what French people would say. And […]
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