Family Blog

If you can dream it, you can do it. (Walt Disney)

Happy Birthday, Manuel and Philip. In Germany you would be of age. Enjoy your last days in America. We are waiting for you...

Cordula, Carmen and me

My brother sent us a postcard from Kalifornien (California) where he was on vacation with his family. But this "Kalifornien" is a small town in North Germany (see Google Maps) near Brasilien (Brazil).

Manuel and Philip are seniors at school, i.e. they are both in the last year at the American high school. When they come back in July they have still two more school years here in Germany before they get their final secondary-school examinations (Abitur).

This week there was an info meeting at school which was a required course for the pupils of the 11th class. We learned what school objects the pupils have to choose in the 12th and 13th class (nearly all), and which they can choose (nearly nothing). How to select the right course is a ruleset with many exceptions. There is a program "WinProsa" available, which should help the pupils to choose the right combinations but the manual for the program is over 200 pages long and it does not run on my Mac.

After 2 hours the presentation was over. How can our politicans pass such a complex ruleset? Do they have too much time to think about how to bother parents, pupils and teachers? Never heard about the KISS principle (keep it small and simple)?

As I heard this morning in the radio news there was a tornado at Asperg yesterday (at the moment I'm in Wiesbaden). Asperg is about 20 km in the north of Gerlingen. When I was young I never heard of a tornado in Germany. But in the last years it sometimes happens. Perhaps a sign of the beginning climatic change. (ob)