The magazine Der Spiegel is compiling a Germany Survival Guide for visitors to Germanyin its English section . It might be needed.

I always knew it, I am completely out of phase with the rest of the world. Fully functioning at 8 in the morning? You must be joking!

As I always suspected this apparently is hereditory and getting up earlier than my body expects me to causes me to live with some kind of continuous jet lag. Brilliant.

If you still think I am simply lazy, read these:

• Delayed sleep phase syndrome
• Research: People in a Permanent State of Jet-Lag

The funny thing is that I actually like early mornings, especially in summer. The quietness, being ahead of everybody else, knowing everybody is still getting up, seeing a sunrise, that's all nice. It's just that my body simply does not want to be up at that time. It's like in the middle of the night for me and I always feel like having a nap after breakfast if I should have to get up early for some reason.

Especially growing up and living in Germany was often a nightmare for me as jobs and even school often start as early as 7 or 8am. Just do the maths: I had to travel to get to school for 45 minutes, so I had to get up at 6am and be mentally fit by 8. If you call for a plumber there are good chances that they tell you they'll show up at 7am the next day - eh, excuse me that's in the middle of the night for me!!! Moving to England where working times from 9 to 5 are normal helped a bit, but things only got better when I became a supervisor and nobody complained when I worked from 10 to 6 or even 11 to 7. In a global company this can even be helpful as you are available for conference calls late in the day. I was just happy that I was in Europe and not the US, where the call would be early in the morning!

Travelling to the US west coast was usually all right as it meant staying up longer, so the jet lag was just causing me to be able to get up earlier than at home. However, coming back home was a completely different ball game and I was shot for at least a week!

Having been out of work for several months now, my personal sleeping patterns has come back with a vengeance; I have no problem staying up to 1 or even 3 in the morning and sleeping until 10. I am actually surprised that I manage to pull myself out of bed at half past 6 on Frank's working days, to either pick him up from night shift or to take him to day shift. Afterwards I simply go back to bed and sleep until 11 or so. Bliss.

All of this will change soon, with a newborn baby demanding my attention probably every three to four hours, but then again, I can just go back to sleeping nevertheless as long as baby is sleeping too. I just hope that the baby will be just like its parents - both of us are nightowls!

There we have it, apart from not being a humourous nation, apparently Germans are not great on personal hygiene either:

A German in America / Reverse Culture Shock: from Germany to America / Interview with Regina Netterfield - Part 2

Even though I have lived away from Germany for nearly 14 years now, I never really noticed that we were a nation of uncleanly people, not even when going on public transport when I was back there on holidays. On the opposite, I think I noticed more BO problems outside of Germany working for an American company with employees from all over Europe. There is always somebody who has a bit of a BO problem, but that's not always a German… Or do I simply not notice slight BO because I am a stinky smelly German myself? I admit I love garlic!

So we are in the last weeks of pregnancy. Things are getting cumbersome. I'm seriously running out of clothes I can wear when sitting down - even the maternity trousers are starting to cut in below the belly and baby doesn't like that. It starts kicking when that happens. So, feeling a bit frustrated by being fat AND getting beaten up, yesterday I raided Frank's wardrobe and found a pair of combats that are nice and wide! Yippeah!!! Never mind style at this stage, comfort is most important.

And if you are interested you can watch this 10MB movie of my belly with hiccups. There isn't much to see really but I still wanted to record baby movements at least once. Since all other movements can't be caught (the moment you get the camera out they stop), the hiccups were the obvious solution.

Today I received 81 spam messages sent as comments to this blog. I had some before but this is starting to take the mickey. Especially as this vastly outnumbers legitimate comments.

So, to not have this rubbish appear on my site, I took a counter measure.

From now on for anybody to have comments appear automatically in a blog post you will have to have at least one approved message already posted. If you have not posted a comment before, your message will have to wait to be moderated by me first. After that it will appear on the site. This might take only a few minutes, or a day, or even longer, depending on the availability of Frank or me. It's a shame but unavoidable.

Having said that, please comment! I like to get legitimate comments!!!

Had some fun with these sites lately:

• http://thepregnancytester.com/
• http://trunks.secondfoundation.org/files/psychic.swf
• http://www.everything2.com/

Today I need to rant.

I don't know why but ever since I entered the third trimester of this pregnancy my mornings have become a major chore - that is when I eat something sugary. OK, I do know then, at least partly…

I've been having these daily bouts of feeling partly nauseated and really weak because of a rapid fall in blood pressure happening about 10 minutes to half an hour after breakfast.

During my first trimester I had got into the habit of having something sweet for breakfast. Normally I don't like having anything before noon (apart from some cold milk) and then I'd have savoury food for lunch. Being pregnant I noticed I was a lot more hungry and needed something to eat on a regular schedule, including the mornings. The only way I could get myself to eat something before my normal time was to eat something easy, like cake or cereal. It worked - for a while.

Ever since I am in the UK (shortly after commencing the third trimester), this seems the worst thing I can do. If I have anything sweet (even toast with jam) as a first meal, I can forget about the following one or two hours. I invariably find myself lying on my side on the sofa feeling very sorry for myself. Should I dare to get up and walk around I am incredibly short of breath and feel like fainting. When I am lying down I suffer of major heartburn. Catch 22. I can't win. Trying to outrun this (thinking maybe physical action would help with the blood pressure problem), the other day we went to a supermarket straight after breakfast and all I was doing was huffing and puffing, holding myself on the shopping trolley.

I found out that it doesn't really matter when I am having breakfast. I can be at 7am, just after driving Frank to work or picking him up, or it can be after my second sleeping session at 10 or 11am. Or just after a full night of sleep (on Frank's days off). The nausea bouts would even happen after delaying breakfast to 1pm (simply because I dreaded feeling bad so much).

As different timing didn't help I started experimenting with what I eat. I found that if I eat bread with savoury things I am mostly fine. Having a glass of water first also seems to be a good thing. With savoury food I can drink milk with no problem at all (most people seem to think that it's the milk). But if I should dare to have something sweet or just a glass of fruit juice too early in the day I am down again.

So, I am not only struggling with the fact that I have to eat at times when I don't want to eat, but also have to eat things that I am not keen on. Which means I have to THINK and be SENSIBLE in the mornings. Anybody who knows me also knows that I am not a morning person in the first place and that I am slow on picking up things then. *sigh* In that sense: I can't wait for this pregnancy to be over!!!