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Lab Assistant
#51 Old 13th Jun 2021 at 9:45 PM
At the start of the game, Consort still is in the business career.

I think you might mix up parent-teacher conferences with the interim reports. At the middle of each school year, all pupils receive interim reports that show the grades for each subjects that they got until then. This used to be somewhen during February at my school, although the date could be different for each state because the school year starts at different dates (so that not everybody has holidays at the same time).
I do not know whether there is a fixed schedule for parent-teacher conferences. It might be up to each school. At my school, I think there was one per half-year.

For 13 and 14 year olds, babysitting, newspaper delivery and Nachhilfe are the most common jobs. Only soft jobs are allowed. Lawn mowing and going for walks with dogs might be additional options.

I do not think that there is a fix schedule for scoccer matches. The clubs usually have six youth teams (A to F depending on age), one or two regular teams and one or several teams for older men (Minimum age varies in some regions, but it can be as low as 30. They usually do not play league games, but tournaments and friendly games.) and on a regular weekend, about half of the teams have a home match. Not every team plays on the same play field, but I assume that the matches do not take place at the same time. In my home region, scoccer matches take place both on Saturdays and Sundays and in the morning and afternoon. Currently, there even are some matches in the late afternoon or early evening on other weekdays because many matches had to be rescheduled due to Corona.

Restaurants: I do not know how common it is compared to other countries, but it definitely is more common than just for the special ocasions that you mentioned. However, a restaurant in a small rural village often will struggle to be profitable. Thus, for Veronaville itself, one restaurant (usually with "gutbürgerlicher Küche") would be the maximum. Additional restaurants (like Italian, Asian, Greek) could be located in the subhood.

Many people have the option to have a warm meal at lunch at work or at school. That is why many of them prefer to have some cold meal like bread for dinner. Maybe that has an impact on how often Germans go to restaurants.

Christmas in Germany: The 24th is the most important day in Germany on which you usually go to church and exchange presents. Nevertheless, dinner usually is quite simple so that preparing it is not too time-consuming and you can spend more time with each other. Celebrations with the extended family usually take place on 25th and/or 26th and on these days, lunch or dinner might be more elaborate.
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Inventor
Original Poster
#52 Old 14th Jun 2021 at 8:56 AM Last edited by Softlism : 14th Jun 2021 at 9:07 AM.
@ralna
School: Yes I meant interim reports. If a pupil receives a bad report in February with the risk of being held back a year, do they still have a chance to fix their grades during the remaining months to pass their year? Do grades of certain subjects weigh more for passing the year? (Asking this for my written story about the CAS Sims)

School: then I will let Antonio Monty run the Italian restaurant in the subhood . Perhaps a Townie family can run the German restaurant instead (the Capps don't run a restaurant, right?).

Landscaping: Would History Lover's Simblr landscaping tutorial examples be a good example for a playground, or does it have too many bells and whistles for a rural town? I am going to google ideas on "Spielplatz grundriss" anyhow.

Events: What other yearly events do small/rural towns (<5000) usually host, besides Schützenfest, Maytree, a party host by the firefighters, and Carnival? Does every small town organize a Kirmes week/weekend, even though it's a tiny one? In the neighboring country where I live, certain towns have enough space/permit in their town centrum to host a large Kirmes with plenty of attractions, but the Kirmes in a small town/village usually consist of bumper cars and the kids' attractions and event revolves more around booze than in larger Kirmes (from my own understanding).
So how was the German Kirmes culture like in small rural towns?
Note: I'm not sure what's the correct German translation is for a "traveling funfair"; Kirmes or Vergnügungspark?


Have you played a lot with the Veronaville pre-made characters, or not that much?
Lab Assistant
#53 Old 17th Jun 2021 at 8:04 PM
School:
Of course they still have a chance. During the second half of the school year they will receive more grades and the final grade will be an average of all individual grades. Thus, it is not possible to get the best grade anymore, but an average grade or a bad, but passing grade still is possible.
As mentioned before, each state has its own school system. Thus, the following information might not apply for every state.
The German grades range from 1 to 6 with 1 as the best grade. With grades 1-4 you will pass the year without a problem. With 1x 6 or 2x 5, you will have to repeat the year. Good grades (1 and 2) in some subjects can be used to "compensate" bad grades in other subjects to avoid repeating the year. Bad grades in main subjects can only be compensated with good grades in other main subjects. There are more rules and limitations for this, but I do not want to bore you with the details. Sports/physical education usually is not relevant for passing a year so that you can have a 6 without having to repeat the year. All the other subjects are relevant and I even know somebody who had to repeat a year because of religious education.
Main subjects are German, any foreign language, maths, physics and chemistry. All the other subjects are minor subjects. For minor subjects, you can receive grades for general participation (e.g. answering questions), for written exams (not previously announced and only about the content of the previous lesson), for being questioned about the content of the previous lesson (teacher frequently do that with pupils who do not participate that much voluntarily), for presentations etc. The final grade for these subjects simply is an average of all the individual grades. For the main subjects, there are additional written exams that are announced at least one week in advance and that cover the content of several weeks. The average grade of these written exams will account for 2/3 of the final grade and the average of all the other individual grades will account for 1/3 of the final grade.
Grades in minor subjects usually are snapshots of your performance on a certain day. Thus, when you are lazy, you will get bad grades relatively soon. However, it will also be relatively easy to get some good grades if you invest a bit of time. If you want to improve your grades, it will be sufficient to pay more attention to the classes in future. Sometimes, teacher even will offer pupils to give presentations at the end of the school year to improve their grades, if needed. Thus, while it is possible to have to repeat a school year due to bad grades in a minor subject, it is rather the exception.
Grades in main subjects depend less on your daily form. If you become lazy, your grades will drop much more slowly (at least within a school year - at the beginning of the next school year, everybody will start with a clean sheet again). When your grades have dropped, however, it also will be more difficult to get better grades again. A good presentation will not change the grade a lot because of the way how the grades are calculated. And for the written exams you do not only have to know all the content from the past few weeks, but also all the "basics" that you learned in the past. Thus, it will be very time-consuming to catch up on all the content that you missed. This is the situation when you might start having private lessons. And if you cannot improve the grades until the end of the school year, you either have to repeat the school year or change school (e.g. from Gymnasium to Realschule).

Restaurant:
I do not think that the Capps would run a restaurant. Maybe they own the buiding and rent it to somebody who wants to run a restaurant. That way they can earn money without actually having to work for it.
However, I do not know whether there is a mod that could enable this ingame.

Playground:
Definitely too many bells and whistles. The lot looks more like a park with a small playground area. Playgrounds are exclusively for children under 14 (plus supervising adults). Thus, you usually only find items and equipment that are appealing to children, but nothing that would encourage an older person to spend some time there. Apart from items like swings and slides, there might be a few benches facing towards these items (so that parents can watch their children) and maybe also a waste bin. Usually there are no lights because children are supposed to be at home when it is dark. Of course, teenagers sometimes still will meet at the playground, but usually due to a lack of alternatives and not because the lot is so appealing to them.
As I assume that your are not happy with this answer: I think you should not add anything to the playground. However, if you really want that lot to be a meeting place for people of all ages, you rather should create a small park and then fence a smaller area of that lot as playground so that it is separated. Then you can have seating areas, barbecue, lights and other items in the park part of the lot while still having a traditional playground in the other part of the lot. Villages usually have no parks (as there is enough green around the village), but it is the better compromise. You might also place some lots outside of the village with a woodland playground, some benches at a landmark (e.g. on top of a hill) or the ruins of an old castle.

Events:
Schützenfeste are not that common, thus a village most likely will not have one and only few towns (<5000) will have one. Many Germans are against weapons and laws are rather strict compared with other countries. For Carnival, the options also are limited when you only have few inhabitants. A village might host a Carnival event for children in the gym of the sports club, but bigger events like a parade or a show with carnival speechs, music and "Gardetanz" usually take place in towns bigger than that (and even then it frequently is a collaboration by several towns) or cities.
You could have an Easter fire (in my home village it was made by teenagers and young adults on a hill outside of the village and they spent the whole night together on that hill). There also could be an event to burn the Christmas trees after 6th January. Pretty much every single club (marching band, singing club, country women's association, a club for making the village more beautiful, the sports club, the kindergarten etc.) of the village has its own party although these events usually mainly attract inhabitants of the village. The events usually start at lunch time and include a barbecue (Bratwürste and steaks), cakes and coffee, all kinds of drinks and usually the marching band makes music annd the event ends somewhen in the evening. It might not be too attractive for teenagers, but most families who live in the village for a longer period of time will show up at least to pick up some food. The fire brigade usually has another event in addition to the party for teenagers and young adults. On the other event, the members of the fire brigade do some kind of practical exam while the whole village can watch. Afterwards they also serve food and drinks and offer some entertainment for the children like taking them on a ride with the fire truck or letting them use fire hoses to "shoot" at pyramids of empty cans until they all fall down. Once per year, there also could be a celebration of the elderly of the village. They are served some cake and coffee while some teenagers (although probably not your teen sim) and young adults of the village put on a show to entertain them. Before Christmas, you also could have a "Weihnachtsmarkt" although that would better fit into the subhood than into Veronaville itself. There will be many sales booths with food, drinks, but also all kinds of Christmas decorations and things that you might to give to someone as a gift on Christmas. There usually is music and there might be some fairground rides for children. In the evening, many people like to drink Glühwein there with some friends. As Veronaville has a river, there could be a fishing club as well and that club would have a party once per year where they sell a lot of fish dishes amongst other things.
For villages and towns in areas with vineyards, there also might be a bigger event (called "Weinfest", usually instead of the big party by the fire brigade or whichever club hosts such an event) where the vineyard owners sell their wine amongst others. These kind of events usually last a whole weekend and frequently there are several stages so that there is music for all ages and preferences. Frequently, 10 000 to 15 000 visitors squeeze themselves into the center of a town of 2000-3000 inhabitants.
If you like traditional stuff, there could be a parade and event for traditional clothing (Trachtenumzug/Trachtenfest), or a parade in remembrance of a vigilance group (frequently replacing real weapons with walking sticks or the like; If you google for "Bürgerwehr", please be aware that there will also be unwanted search results for right-wing groups that do not have anything in common with the historical stuff). Every couple of years, ther also could be a long walk (lasts several hours) along the borders of the community which in the past was to check whether all boundary stones still were in the correct place. Many villages also have some sort of pilgrimage once per year where they walk to a certain pilgrimage church. Frequently, this will include one or more overnight stays and people also might party during these nights. Some people in your Veronaville also could do some research to find out how old Veronaville is and whenever the age is a multiple of 25 (e.g. 700, 725, 750, 775 years), many villages like to also host a bigger party/event for a whole weekend. These events frequently include all the activities of all the other parties and events so that they are interesting for all ages. And when you just had such an event, you do not necessarily have to wait 25 years before you host the next one - just do a bit more research and you might find a document that proves that your Village is even older and the next celebration might take place again after a few years.
There is also something called "Tag der offenen Tür". This event usually takes place once per year and different buildings (historical ones, but also factories and other kind of buildings) may be visited for free while not being open to the public for the rest of the year. Frequently, you just can visit the building, but sometimes communities or companies organize an accompanying event.
Kirmes is a regional term for Kirchweih. Kirchweih is a celebration on the name day of the saint to whom the church of the village is dedicated. Thus, every village with a church has a Kirchweih. However, frequently, in small villages it is just an event like described above with some food, drinks and music. If you want to have fairground rides, you usually have to go to towns with at least a few thousand inhabitants.
You could try "Jahrmarkt" as search term. That term can be applied for any kind of annual fair that includes some fairground rides. Kirmes/Kirchweih (and there should be dozens more regional terms) is linked to the religious event and does not necessarily include fairground rides. A Vergnügungspark may have the same kind of rides, but it has a permanent location (e.g. Disneyland in Paris).

I have played Veronaville a few times, but I spent much more time with Strangetown and Pleasantville. I know all the playables, but I do not know all the townies and NPCs.


If you can watch German TV: Maybe have a look at "Schnäppchenhäuser" on RTL2. In this show, they film people who buy very cheap houses (usually very run-down as well) and renovate them (frequently with a very tight budget). That way you could see many different houses to get some impressions of size, house plans, ideas for renovations etc. You also could watch some of the episodes on tvnow.de althouh you might have to fake a German IP for that. As they show so many episodes, you might want to have a look at the descriptions first so that you can skip the ones that are not relevant for you. Nevertheless, houses in former East Germany will be overrepresented because in some regions there are lots of uninhabited houses that you can buy for very little money. As the show is about cheap houses, many houses are completely outdated regarding heating, sewage water etc.
Inventor
Original Poster
#54 Old 21st Jun 2021 at 5:39 PM
@ralna

Monty Ranch renovation
How would you renovate the Monty Ranch into a German-based "Villa Rustica"? I definitely want to rearrange the rooms, add a 1st floor and a cellar and replace the windows and convert the hipped roof into pieces of gabled roofs. What's a more realistic tile ratio for a Villa Rustica building? How many tiles does the entrance usually have? More than 2 - 3 tiles in this case? (on the English Wiki, I've found a list of Roman villas in Germany)
Regarding living with multiple generations, would it make sense that Romeo and Mercutio always have lived with their grandparents even before their parents have died, while the other adult Montys (Antonio and Bianca) have chosen to move out of the Villa?
The mansion was revamped by the creator of the clean hood, so it doesn't resemble much the pre-game lot.

Creating Sim families
I want to create a "Tussi" kind of single mom Sim. What were some good examples of German Tussi TV personalities from the mid-00s? When googling, I mainly get the 2010s "Eine Tussi wird Mama" book as result, or NSFW stuff.

School and culture
Is it correct that children and teens bring home their test results and have to let their parents sign the grade? How did school notebooks/folders usually look like during the 2000s (before digitalization of schoolwork was common)? What kinds of folders or notebooks were common to write the homework assignments in? Did they bundle spare A4 papers in e.g. one 23-rings folder, or did they use a separate A5 or A4 notebook for each subject? Was there some kind of color-coding of the notebooks/folders?
Pictures are appreciated since I don't know the English or German terms for every type of folder. Asking this so I can select specific office supply clutter for my Sims.

Was using a webcam during chatting common amongst mid-00s teens? I understood that ICQ was the most popular chatting platform throughout the country (though in some regions AOL or MSN was also used).

What are the main differences between Catholic and Protestant Carnival parties?
Lab Assistant
#55 Old 22nd Jun 2021 at 9:12 PM
Tile ratio:
I cannot give you any advice on the tile ratio. I have seen less than ten Villae Rusticae in my life and did not pay too much attention to the measurements back then. Here is another link to a list of Villae Rusticae that might help you: https://www.wikiwand.com/de/Liste_v...ae#/Deutschland
Some of the pictures show the layout with a scale so that you can do the calculations yourself.

Entrance:
A Villa Rustica is a type of farm and therefore would have some kind of gate or arch for a carriage leading to an atrium, a barn or the like. For the main building, I guess that the door would not be too wide. Winters can be cold and any opening for a door or window means that heating becomes less efficient and more expensive. For this reason, I do not think that arches on the outside of a residential building are a good choice for Germany. Maybe have the regular front door (or more than one) on the outer wall and the arches where you currently have the regular front door.

Monty family:
If Patrizio planned to have Claudio as heir of the estate, it definitely would make sense that Claudio and his family also lived there. I guess as long as you have a second bedroom big enough for a double bed, it is plausible.
It also sounds plausible that Antonio moved out when he married. As the Montys are rich, I assume that they would own more than just one lot so that Antonio would receive one of the other lots upon marriage. I usually substract some of the cash from the main Monty and Capp households to give it to the respective bin households so that they can afford some of the bigger and nicer houses in Veronaville and so that the Montys can stay on their side of the river (I also use the mortgage bushes in addition to this).
Due to the somewhat historic setting (based on plays by Shakespeare) and the fact that the Montys are portrayed as a patriarchal family, it would make more sense if Biance lives with her parents until her wedding.
Therefore, I would have four bedrooms in the house: one for Patrizio and Isabella, one shared by Claudio and Antonio until Claudio married, one for Bianca and one that was used by Antonio after Claudio got married and now is shared by Mercutio and Romeo.
(Sorry if any of the names are wrong. I play with the German names and sometimes I mix them up.)

Tussi:
If you really want the clichee, search for Daniela Katzenberger. However, her appearences on TV only started around 2008 or 2009.
For the mid-00s, it is a bit more complicated as there was less reality TV and no social media back then. Therefore, there is no woman where "Tussi" is the first word that comes into my mind. Thus, the following persons might not really fulfill your expectations: Jenny Elvers, Kader Loth, Verona Pooth, Djamila Rowe, Tatjana Gsell. In 2008, there was a German copy of "The Simple Life" with Gülcan Kamps and Collien Ulmen-Fernandes.

School:
I do not remember that my parents had to sign my test results. Thus, it definitely is not obligatory for everyone. But I can imagine that teachers do that for pupils with bad grades to ensure that the parents are aware of it.
Digitalization of schoolwork? I am not sure whether this already has happened in Germany. Due to Corona, it was a big topic last year and this year and German schools apparently are not really up-to-date. Notebooks usually looked (and still might look) like this: https://www.mueller.de/schreibwaren...arf/schulhefte/
You have one notebook per subject and once it is full you start the next one. In primary school, A5 was the more common size, in secondary school, A4 was more common, except for vocabulary books that always were A5. You also could buy covers (google "Schulheft" and "Umschlag") for the notebooks. In primary school, usually all pupils had covers with the same color for a subject. In secondary school, you usually can choose the colors yourself and the covers are just for protecting the notebooks and many pupils stop using covers at all at a certain point.
During the last few years of Gymnasium (approx. grade 10 to 13) many pupils switched to spiral note pads ("Collegeblock") and ring binders ("Ordner").
For additional clutter, you also can google words like "Wasserfarbkasten" and "Schulmäppchen" (the more organized ones usually are for younger pupils, the less organized ones for older pupils - for the latter you also could try "Schlampermäppchen").

Internet:
Webcams were not that common back then. Yes, ICQ might have been the most common chat software back then. I also know many people who used IRC for group chats. I do not think that AOL was common for chatting. They did a lot of advertising on TV for their service as internet provider, but they somehow also had a bad reputation. MSN and Hotmail mainly were common amongst teenagers who had friends abroad because ICQ might have been less common there.
However, chatting in general was not that common back then and only the teenager with a bigger interest in computers used it. Thus, I do not think that your teenage sim would have used it. SMS still were incredibly common back then and a sim like your teenage sim always would ensure having a modern mobile (modern back then) and a contract that includes many free SMS per month.

Carnival:
Carnival does not really have a religious background. Carnival has some pagan influences (frightening away the cold, darkness and bad spirits) and during the middle ages, there also were some jester parties where people made fun of clergy and nobility. Church and governments tried to stop these parties.
In many mainly Catholic areas, these parties have continued after the reformation. I assume that it was a good opportunity to have some fun before the fasting period before Easter starts. In mainly Protestant areas, the parties usually have disappeared. Maybe parties are less necessary if there is no fasting period afterwards. Nevertheless, today's Carnical parties always are non-denominational and not related to any church (except for making fun of it, of course).
Inventor
Original Poster
#56 Old 23rd Jun 2021 at 10:31 AM
Digitalization: I guess there is/was a significant gap in digital development between Germany and their neighboring countries. At least back in 2005, chatting through MSN was very common where I live -- I guess even amongst people with low to average computer skills. And owning a webcam was also common here so far I know. In this case, I pretend Puck is the one who taught his peers some basic computer skills in the hood since he's a tinkerer . How common was Windows XP in 2005? Because I've found here some Windows 98 computers if I want to give some Sims a dated OS for that time.

Clutter: sounds like the colored Maxis homework books don't look too off. Was watercolor painting that common amongst kids? Also, any suggestions on what clutter could be placed underneath the bed? (I didn't have space underneath the bed back then)

Community lots in a Weiler: What are your thoughts about the playgrounds? What kind of fence would suit around this lot?
From what age is it common for village kids to go to the playground without parental supervision? I understood that European parents are/used to be less protective than American parents. If the extra teen/YA playground is a bit too much on the adjacent turnaround, what would suit better on that ground instead?


CAS family home: Any suggestions to add/modify on the garden of the CAS family? I used hood deco for placing a row of hedges for the sake of ease. And I also placed an invisible soccer field.
Lab Assistant
#57 Old 24th Jun 2021 at 8:25 PM
Digitalization:
I think that (almost) every teenager knew how to chat, many just were not interested. Most teenagers had contracts for their mobiles that included one or several hundred free SMS per month and you can send SMS from wherever you are. For chatting, you have to be at home and many families only had tower computers, sometimes shared with the whole family. Thus, SMS were more convenient. Webcams became more common a few years later when notebooks (frequently with built-in cameras) became more popular.
Win XP should have been far more common. Many people bought their first computers after Win XP was launched. And the ones who already had computers before usually were willing to spend money on a newer OS or even a newer computer. After 2000, it also became more and more popular to use the computer to prepare presentations and hand-outs for school (at least at my school).

Clutter:
Watercolor painting was done frequently during art classes. Therefore, it was obligatory to own a set of watercolors.
You also could get some maths stuff line ruler, triangular ruler for geometry, compass etc.
Many beds have boxes built-in beneath the mattress so that you have additional storage. For beds that do not have such a box, you could buy a big bag made from cloth and/or plastic that also serves as storage. If you do not want to do anything like this, you could put shoes, sports equipment like a deflated football and other bulky stuff there for children and teenagers. For a teenager, you might also put some bottles of alcohol there. Buying beer and wine is legal from age 16.

Community lots:
For a Weiler, pretty much any community lot is too much. There simply are too few adults that pay taxes to maintain all that stuff.
For the football and basketball equipment I would do an extra lot (rather in a subhood than the main hood) with a sports club as a building.
And as I said before, I would have a playground with just playground equipment on it (and also on a much smaller lot). In a small village, it would take maybe a 5 minute walk to go home to go to toilet, if needed, so that after 10-15 minutes the child could be back at the playground to continue playing.
Regarding the age: That is difficult to say. When I started school, it was common that one of your parents walks to the bus station with you in the morning for the first few weeks and afterwards, you were allowed to go alone. I assume that for most parents this also was the age to go to the playground without supervision. However, in my village the playground was completely run-down and all the items except for the sandbox had been removed (lack of funding - and my home village definitely was bigger than a Weiler) so that we were not interested in going there. I do remember that I was allowed to walk to my grandparents' house by myself about from the age of 4 or 5 (a few hundred meters distance similar to the distance to the playground) and on a few ocasions also to the sports club (more than one km distance) at age 5 together with my younger cousin.
However, a few years later (= at the time relevant for your Veronaville), there usually were two or three women at the bus stop in the morning "supervising" the children (i.e. gossiping with each other and smoking cigarets). I am not sure whether they just wanted to socialize or whether they really thought that it was necessary to watch their children. Thus, I assume that some people want to have a closer eye on their children than in the past, but they definitely still are more relaxed than parents e.g. in the U.S.
Btw: School hours in Germany are different than in the game. For primary school, four or five lessons (= 45 minutes) per day were common (= end of school at 11:15 or 12:15, including breaks), in secondary school, six lessons (= end of school at 13:00) were usual during the first years and during the later years, it was common to have one or two days with lessons until 15:30 or even 17:00, but 13:00 for all the other days.
In rural areas, there still was a relatively high percentage of housewives back then because day-care offers for toddlers were so bad (e.g. closed for 1 or 2 hours at lunch time so that you had to pick up your children and bring them back after the lunch break) and it was difficult to find a job with sufficient flexibility and close enough to the village. If both parents were working, it was common that school-aged children were at home unattended and the children even were allowed to use the stove to warm up food that their parents had prepared for them.
Nowadays, the situation has improved and day-care usually is available for more hours so that many women resume work when the child is 1-3 years old (due to paid parental leave and dismissal protection, one parent usually takes more time off than in many other countries). Many schools also offer after-school supervision today so that the children can stay at school and do their homework until their parents return from work.

CAS family home:
Your sim girl might like a swing in the garden.
The bushes and trees along the lot border and the chairs in front of the Gartenhaus look realistic. Maybe you can find a matching table, e.g. a folding table or any other table that can be moved into the Gartenhaus easily when the weather is bad.

Front yard:
Have you tried how it looks like when you replace the metal fence with the stone wall? It seems strange for me to have another type of fencing for just four tiles.
I like that the wheelie bins rotate after use. It would be unrealistic if they all were perfectly lined up.
Inventor
Original Poster
#58 Old 24th Jun 2021 at 9:30 PM
@ralna

Infrastructure: I used a 3x3 lot for the playgrounds to entirely fill those roundabout kind of streets. Maybe you've already mentioned, but what kind of lot or hood deco would suit better in those spaces instead?
Were in the hood is the most plausible spot to place a bus stop hood deco? (I have a mod where Sim kids can choose to walk to school)
I've also created a family where I want to let the father work as an agricultural farmer. In the case of a Weilier or Haufendorf, is the farmer's crop field usually right next to their lot, or rather somewhere else at the outskirts of the village? When taking a look at the ground plans of the village types, I nothes that the residential lots are bordered by fields on the back, but I'm not sure if it differs between livestock fields, meadow fields and crop fields.

CAS family:
Would it make sense that the teen Sim's bedroom is on the second floor instead. so the child sister's bedroom space can be doubled? Both children are fairly active unlike their parents, so the teen Sim wouldn't mind walking more (and I guess he would have more rest on the top floor). Thanks for the garden feedback and clutter tips! However, I yet have to find or request a mod where Sims can chat with others through texting on their mobile.

Storytelling questions (want to write stories about them as well): Do school kids usually the the bus at fixed times? (I understood the bus schedules are very limited in rural areas, i.e. driving once every hour) Are primary-school and sec-school kids mixed in one bus if both schools are at the same location?
If school is already finished at lunchtime, do the Nachhilfe sessions usually take place at school or at the teen's home that needs help?
Before covid, on what days do soccer training sessions usually take place, and are they hold before or after dinnertime? And do amateur sport coaches get a small amount of money, or is it solely volunteer work with compensations? (in my country, coaches are volunteers)

Sorry for all those questions, but I'm just eager to learn more about those small cultural details in a different country
Lab Assistant
#59 Old 25th Jun 2021 at 4:36 PM
I'm not sure about the other questions, but as for Nachhilfe this is typically done by other students looking for extra cash, so either college graduates or 10th-12 graders (those doing Abitur). Where it is done depends, but in smaller towns it is AFAIK quite typical for the Nachhilfe-giver to just go to the kids home. I can't exactly speak about small towns because I'm from a big city, but in general Germans are quite strict with their regulations, and having people on school property after hours is not covered by insurance if an accident happens. If the Nachhilfe is given by a teacher, however, that is probably a different issue and would likely be allowed.

Re: football (if you are aiming to create a German town then I must insist you stop calling it Soccer. It's Fußball ), the training would likely depend on the organisers but with us, it was always after school but before dinner. So around 16:00/17:00. Dinner in Germany (like many cultures) is an important meal for families because it is the one meal a day where most families sit together at the table.
Lab Assistant
#60 Old 26th Jun 2021 at 9:04 AM
Infrastructure:
You could place the day care center for children there or the sports club and/or a football pitch (if you choose to have two different lots, they should be relatively close to each other), the church, rectory, fire station or if you want to have a restaurant in main hood Veronaville the restaurant plus terrace/garden.
If you do not like these ideas, you also could split up the area into several smaller lots (e.g. 2x2, 3x1 and 2x1).
The bus stop should be in a central location so that children from the outskirts of the village still can walk to it. If you plan to have a central square (that is surrounded by many of the important buildings like the church), the bus stop could be included in that square.
Farmers: Fields usually are outside of the village although in small villages with few streets it can look like they are adjacent to the lots. But even when a field is close to a lot, it does not mean that the field and lot belong to the same person. As the land was distributed amongst the heirs every generation, the fields of a farmer would be scattered in several different places.
On the lot itself, farmers frequently have a big garden where they grow vegetables and fruit that they eat themselves. Livestock might be in a stable on the lot, too.

CAS family:
If the teen prefers a room on the second floor, of course he could have a room there. However, I would not make the child's room bigger because it would be too big.
I guess for game purposes, it is okay to ignore texting and use chatting instead.

School/Nachhilfe:
Buses once per hour? That would have been luxury. In the morning, there were two buses - one for primary school and one for secondary school. The primary school was just a few hundred meters away from the secondary schools. Primary school pupils usually only used their own bus and most secondary school pupils also used their own bus, but it was possible to use the primary school bus as well. I often did this because the Gymnasium had an additional building that was closer to the primary school and the public library also was in that building.
After-school supervision and Nachhilfe are not the same. After-school supervision just means that an adult with a pedagogic background is around while children from different grades do their regular homework and spend time with each other afterwards until their parents return from work. The room usually is provided by the school itself or the community that also pays for the school so that this can take place in the same buildings.
For Nachhilfe, I agree with Morrwindnostalgia that it is usually done by older pupils and takes place at the home of either the Nachhilfe giver or receiver. I usually had the Nachhilfe receivers come to my house because they were from other villages or towns so that their parents had to bring them by car.
Germany does not have colleges so that there are no college students or graduates who offer Nachhilfe. University students usually move to bigger cities to be close to their universities (and might offer their services there, but not in a rural village) and university graduates try to take up a regular fulltime job and usually are not interested in offering Nachhilfe. In bigger towns and cities, there also are companies that offer Nachhilfe. These companies usually hire teachers that did not get a job at one of the public schools and these teachers then work fulltime for the company. Teachers who work at public schools usually are not interested in offering Nachhilfe either.

Fußball:
It was me who started using the word "soccer" instead of "football". Thus, I should be the one to be blamed. I think that "Football" might be ambiguous depending on the home country of some readers. And both "football" and "soccer" are just translations for "Fußball", but it would be strange for me to use the German word in an English text when there are no national differences that would justify using the German word.
For a teenager, I also would assume that the training takes place in the late afternoon for most clubs. However, there might be exceptions. Even small clubs have seven youth teams (A to G youth; A to F each include teenager/children from two years, G includes all children aged 6 or younger) and one or two adult teams that train at least once or twice per week (depending on the league maybe more often). If there are not enough children/teenager for a youth team, two villages might form a joined team for that age group. Nevertheless, all clubs have to find time slots for the training of all teams.
Coaches usually receve a small amount of money, but it is more a recompensation and not an incentive to do the job. If the adult team does not play in the lowest league, the club even might offer a small amount of money to some talented players from other villages to play for this club instead of the one of their home village.
Inventor
Original Poster
#61 Old 26th Jun 2021 at 9:31 AM
@ralna @morrowindnostalgia: yeah, I was also switched to "soccer" to avoid confusion for American readers. And Fußball can be confused with Foosball tables.

Thanks for the suggestions! Then I'm thinking of building a restaurant+terrace with the Antonio family living upstairs (so an OFB lot) anyhow, and on the other plot either a football pitch, church, or the football clubhouse (depending on what suits best close to a restaurant lot). I consider placing the bus stop somewhere near the bridge.

Do you know where I can find a list of Weilers in Germany? I'm not sure if it can find it on the (German) wiki.

In the meantime, I'm going to look for renovated Villa Rustica inspiration. So far I've found Mehring, Roma Villa Borg, and Villa Otrang.
Lab Assistant
#62 Old 27th Jun 2021 at 8:06 PM
3x3 lots:
Many sports clubs have a restaurant included in the building. However, these restaurants in sports clubs frequently do not have the best reputation beause many people have prejudices that the food in such restaurants has rather bad quality and is unhealthy. Thus, many of these restaurants are not under lease anymore and only used by the sports club for events related to the club.
Regular restaurants in small villages also have problems to generate enough profit for the owners. Many of these restaurants therefore just are opened on weekends (and even then they often have to have themed events or some special food to attract a few guests) or for groups (weddings, funerals etc) while the owners do another job on weekdays.
Most restaurants in rural areas have regulars' tables. On Sundays after the church service, some men go there to have "Frühschoppen" while their wives prepare lunch. I assume that this habit will die out sooner or later because the younger and middle-aged generations go to church less often than the elderly people and more and more women of these generations also do not accept that they have to do the chores while their husbands have fun drink alcohol at such an early time.

Weiler:
I could not find any lists for Weiler or Dörfer either. Most likely this is because they usually do not have an administration of their own.
I did find a list with the 100 smallest municipalities: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste...h_Einwohnerzahl
You will have to look up the background of these municipalities to find out whether they are a small Dorf or Weiler or whether it has a different background like a secularized monastery or a hotel for tourists with inhabitants/staff living there.
These municipalities most likely will have more public buildings than villages that do not form a municipality of their own. Municipalities have to offer certain facilities like a primary school although these very small municipalities usually form a union with one or more neighboring municipalities to fulfill these requirements.
Top Secret Researcher
#63 Old 28th Jun 2021 at 9:02 PM
Sorry to chime in so late.
I suggest to pick a few small places from Google maps. Plug them into google or your search engine of your choice and have a look at the images that pop up. That might give you an idea. To be honest, what I'm seeing in Veronaville is not something I expect to see where I'm from. Small town (about 5000 people) surrounded by smaller villages in the Western parts of Bavaria.
But maybe further South towards the Alps?
Houses are not built with wood in Germany, they haven't been for a long time and wooden panelling on the outside wall is not soemthing you'd see on a house except for accentuating.
And in the smaller towns in the South, you will find almost always a church or at least a chapel. If you are going for a Southern type village.
Inventor
Original Poster
#64 Old 28th Jun 2021 at 10:16 PM
@310175: thanks for the suggestions! The original VV houses have half-timbered plastered with brick walls on the ground floor, but I was planning to give them a Fachwerk makeover anyhow.
Atm I'm thinking to make it set somewhere in Rhineland-Palastinate due to Italian influences (like the Eifel area).
Top Secret Researcher
#65 Old 29th Jun 2021 at 1:06 AM
Ah, I have no intuitions or memories about Rhineland-Palatinate. Probably add castle to church. More hills and forests. More gorges and bridges and narrow rivers. Less open space. Not sure about the Fachwerk but I would gess that again, they're not that common anymore unless the place could avoid damage in WWII. To me, Fachwerk goes with Alps, Switzerland, Austria, and the occasional one or two in small places. Rarely residential single family homes. I never quite understood what Maxis was going for with Veronaville.
Inventor
Original Poster
#66 Old 29th Jun 2021 at 8:41 AM
@310175: I want to build more houses and place closer together, but I was also thinking of creating it into a Weiler type of village, so more clumps of houses between open spaces.
Freudenberg in NRW has many Fachwerkhäuser, probably most of them detached.

Maxis' Veronaville was based on UK and Italy due to Shakespeare inspiration, but when I played it for the first time, I associated timbered houses only with Fachwerk and back then I didn't know that UK also has those kinds of timbered houses (Tudor), so that's why I've wanted to create a German alt Veronaville and retain that idea for nostalgic reasons.
Lab Assistant
#67 Old 30th Jun 2021 at 4:41 PM
310175:
Fachwerkhäuser were quite common in several regions within Germany and in these regions, you still can find a lot Fachwerkhäuser. Small towns and villages were not that popular targets during the war so that not that many Fachwerkhäuser got destroyed. In posting 11 in this thread, I linked some pictures of towns and villages in Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Hessen that have many Fachwerkhäuser.

Softlism knows that lots with big gardens are extremely uncommon for Fachwerkhäuser, but decided to have such lots nevertheless. I think that especially for the center of a village, lots with a width of 10 would be the most common size. Nevertheless, Softlism decided to use bigger lots and avoid the lot adjuster. Therefore, I looked up some typical village layouts and Weiler was the only one where some open space between houses was common. However, Weiler usually are too small to have a church of their own. I assume that you have to make some concessions when you try to built a neighborhood in Sims 2.


Softlism:
Freudenberg is an exception in that respect. As you can see on the other pictures that I had linked, the more common option is that the houses are built directly next to each other or with a narrow gap inbetween where only a single person can walk through. I assume that detached Fachwerkhäuser like in Freudenberg were even less common in the past, but these houses had a lower risk of getting destroyed by fire because fire cannot spread as easily when there is a bigger distance between the houses.
Inventor
Original Poster
#68 Old 30th Jun 2021 at 10:46 PM
@ralna: I'm still open to narrowing down the lots with Lotadjuster, but I wanted to be settled with the architecture first. The CAS Sim family's home is 12 tiles wide, but I can consider narrowing down the extra tiles if that's safe to do with inhabited lots.

Anyways, I've played around with attic roofing and ceiling beams, and recently found out ceilings could also be recolored, so here are some pics within the spoiler tags! Feedback and suggestions are welcome
Lab Assistant
#69 Old 1st Jul 2021 at 8:14 PM
Lot adjuster:
If you want to use lot adjuster, 8 tiles is the maximum size for a house on a lot that is 10 tile wide. It is possible to place walls in a 90° angle to the lot boarder so that from neighborhood view the houses look like row houses, but the adjoining walls have to be at least one tile away from the lot boarder.
Here is a tutorial by plasticbox on how to built fake row houses: https://modthesims.info/t/286909
According to this tutorial, it is safe to adjust inhabited lots as long as the sims are not placed within the area that you want to delete.

Living room:
I like the ceiling beams. Sure, they do not look like they are more than a hundred years old, but they do create the right atmosphere.
The curtains should be placed further below slightly above the window frame. That way you also avoid the problems with the ceiling beams. The windows definitely lack window sills (which also would save the problem with heaters and curtains being too close to each other).
The current placement of the sofas looks strange. You could replace the loveseat with a living room chair. You also could keep the loveseat and try to shift the sofa one tile backwards.
For the game console, I assume that most people would place it in the TV cabinet. Would it still be usable if you place it there with an OMSP? A small stereo frequently also would be placed in the TV cabinet or in a shelf. However, there is not enough space in the TV cabinet. Therefore, I would keep the stereo on the floor. If you add an end table, the stereo would be at a strange height in relation to the window.
I do not mind the American football. Maybe it is a souvenir from a past vacation trip. Or maybe the teen tried playing American football and when he stopped playing, they put the football there.
Most people that I know do not have that much more stuff in their livingrooms. Some photos on the walls and/or in a shelf (e.g. in the TV cabinet) are common. Some pictures of relatives who do not live in this house, but also pictures from important events like the parents' wedding, but also any kind of nice memory like when the children were younger or from a vacation, for another family maybe pictures with their pets etc.
Plants also are common. Bigger ones can be placed on the floor, for smaller ones, the window sills are the most common place. Depending on the preferences of your sims, you also can add newspapers, magazines, cut flowers, candles or a wall clock. Some people also like dust traps. The coffee table should not be empty like this. You could add some glasses, bottles, juice bags, bags with potato crisps/chips or other snacks/nibbles/munchies, maybe a bowl that can be filled with the snacks. For healthier families you could have a fruit bowl.

In addition to this, many people also have seasonal decoration, mainly for Christmas, but also for other seasons and holidays. For Christmas, an Advent wreath is quite common from the end of November on and the children would have Advent calendars (anything goes - from cheap chocolate ones to elaborate ones that you fill with presents yourself). Star-shaped lamps on the window sills are common (so that the light is visible from outside) and for the whole house anything related to stars, angels, Nikolaus (like Sinterklaas, not like Santa Claus), snow, fir branches etc. If you want some additional inspiration, google "Erzgebirge" and "Weihnachten" for many hand-made decorations like Christmas pyramids - although it might be difficult to find that kind of stuff as CC. Many people buy the Christmas tree only a few days before Christmas because the Christmas tree has to last until 6 January (at least in Catholic regions). Some middle-aged and older people also might have a wreath with seasonal decoration on the outside of the front-door year-round.

Heaters:
I tried to explain two different types of heating.
The first one is central heating where the main part of the heating system is in a separate room (most frequently in the cellar). This heating system heats water and transports the hot water to all the other rooms of the house. There you have heaters like the standard EA ones (or other not bulky ones) that frequently are mounted to a outer wall beneath a window. The heaters are connected to a tube (for the hot water), but do not need any electricity. For newer houses, you also might have underfloor heating and no visible heaters. In this case, you have a small box (Raumthermostat) somewhere on the wall of each room with which you can adjust the temperature.
The other type of heating is for houses without central heating. In these houses, heating with electricity is common, e.g. with night-storage heaters. These heaters have to produce the heat themselves which is why they are bulkier than the other ones. These heaters usually are not attached to the wall, but placed on the ground and usually (at least all ones that I have seen so far) also not placed directly next to a wall, but with at least 20-30 cm distance. They also are not necessarily placed close to an outer wall. In houses without central heating, you also have water boilers in kitchen and full bathrooms because otherwise you will just have cold water.

Hallway:
I would place a longer ceiling beam. These beams are the supporting structure of a Fachwerkhaus so that they go through the whole house and do not simply end somewhere in the middle of a room.

Guest toilet:
A wall lamp usually is placed close to the mirror (above the mirror or next to it) so that you can see sufficiently when you look into the mirror. If you want more lamps, ceiling lamps should be more common.
Hanging sinks are much more common than standing ones (I do not think that I ever saw one in real life). And a tooth brush in a guest toilet is rather uncommon as well. For the full bath, it is common that everybody has glasses or cups of their own where they place their toothbrushs.
The ceiling beam should be dark even though it does not match the color scheme of the room. Old beams have a rough surface, cracks etc. Therefore, it would be extremely difficult to paint them perfectly in another color.
The lace curtains are placed a bit too high (in a bathroom, you do not want to have such a gap between the curtain and the lower end of the window) and apparently also a bit too much on the left side.
As the room is very small, it might not be necessary to place a heater there. The rooms next to it should be sufficient to keep the temperature at a comfortable level.

1st floor:
For the bathroom, you could look for a "Handtuchheizung", if you do not mind looking for more CC. These heaters have more gaps inbetween so that you can put some towels there so that the towels are warm when you use them. Although they might be more fitting for a modern house with central heating.
Hand towels are placed close to the sink, bathing towels close to shower and/or bath tub. Having them so close to the toilet seems unhygienic for me.
The curtains in the other rooms are too high and in the girls room, it looks like they are clipping. It might be better to have just one window in the middle of the outer wall instead.
The furniture of the girls room looks like it does not match at all. Bed, desk, chair, shelves, toy box and the thing in the lower right corner (dresser?) have so many different colors. Such a mix would be more common for e.g. students who share an apartment. Of course, the furniture items do not have to be from the same set, but it would be good to have only like two main colors for the furniture.

2nd floor:
The chaos looks realistic for a teen. As there is so much to see in these pictures, I most likely will miss many details.
Again, I think that the furniture (plus the wooden beams and the door) has too many different main colors. I like the ceiling light. Most families have lamps in rather neutral colors because then you do not have to change them whenever you are redecorating a room.
One of the wall pieces has a different color. The jeans on the TV should be moved a few cm. The teen might have a small stereo instead of the radio with tape deck. The posters seem to be quite mixed. Maybe it might be better to focus on one or two topics for the posters. Does the teen only play scoccer himself or does he also like to watch scoccer? If he also likes to watch it, he could have posters of famous players, jerseys from his favorite club and/or the national team and other decoration.
The glass bottle on the shelf looks dangereous and I am not sure whether the teen would place it so openly. You might put it between desk and dresser instead. The backpack behind the fan fascinates me because it looks like it was carefully placed in that corner. If this is the backpack that he uses for school every day, I would place either the fan or the backpack a bit differently so that you can assume that the teen just threw the backpack into the corner when he returned from school.
Would it work to create a high pile of notebooks, books and other school stuff on the desk?
I like the Mezzo Mix bottle because it is not available in every country. It might be a bit too much that you have bottles, cans and paper cups for softdrinks in one room. The family most likely would buy either bottles (far more common) or cans and a small village usually does not have any fastfood restaurant or other place where he could have gotten the paper cup. If he got it somewhere else, I think he would have emptied it there and simply thrown on the ground. Btw: In 2003, Germany extended its bottle deposit to single-use bottles and cans (The deposit now pretty much applies to all drinks except for juice, wine and Schnaps). After this date, the number of sold cans dropped drastically.
I assume that even a sloppy teen would want to use the sofabed as sofa as long as no friend of him is staying overnight.
Walls: I would assume that the room was renovated before the teen moved into this room. Thus, I would keep the style consistend with the rest of the house. Maybe you can find more horizontal beams that you could place maybe on eye level. Then your teen would have another place where he could have place some used clothes that would partially block the view. If he becomes a bit less sloppy one day, you also could have beams beneath the ceiling and attach some kind of curtain to that beam. I am not sure whether he is the type for a folding screen.
Did you place the diagonal beams in different ways on purpose?
Inventor
Original Poster
#70 Old 2nd Jul 2021 at 10:07 AM Last edited by Softlism : 2nd Jul 2021 at 10:40 AM.
@ralna: thanks again for the feedback!

Furniture colors:
I colored the door white to match the white windows. Would it make more sense to match the other furniture with the beams instead, i.e. recoloring the furniture into similar dark wood shades as the beams? Regarding the walls in the Teen's room, I have to find a recolor with dark wood skirting boards.

First floor:
Any suggestions on what to place in the empty room next to the girl's bedroom?

Deco:
It's a pity I cannot adjust the height of curtains
I've found some clutter through German Sim sites as well, which was great. The Teen also likes to watch football (sports is his OTH based on his personality), but I couldn't find more "soccer" posters . I can play around with OMSP to stack books and notebooks on his desk. I had placed the diagonal beams asymmetrically because there was a gap between the wall, but I fixed it by placing ceiling beams as well and thus I've made them symmetrical again. Wall deco clips with the horizontal beams if I use the quarter-tile cheat, but I can try placing more surface deco with OMSPs.
Can you show me pictures of electric night-storage heaters that aren't attached to the wall?
What kind of deco is common in German guest's toilets besides a toilet brush, a small towel, magazines and a toilet refresher? In my country, it's common to place a birthday calendar in the guest's toilet.
And what kind of wall deco is common to place in the dining room?

Lot sizes:
Are Fachwerk farmhouses also common in the (south)west? Because during my google search on Fachwerkhäuser (either general or a specific state), I observed that Fachwerk-Bauernhäuser are usually detached with more garden space. Or are bigger lot sizes amongst old houses more common in northern regions and Bavaria than in BaWü and Rhineland-Palastinate?

EDIT: Around 2004/2005, did 8th and 9th-grade boys and girls usually carry backpacks or rather messenger bags? What brands were popular besides Eastpack, and what colors and patterns were common?
Lab Assistant
#71 Old 2nd Jul 2021 at 8:49 PM
Furniture:
The furniture does not have to match the beams. The main problem was that the girl's room has about eight pieces of furniture in eight different colors. It would be better, if at least groups of three or four furniture pieces have matching colors. The furniture for a child's room usually is bought as a set with maybe a few add-ons that are not part of the set. I think that even charity shops try to offer matching sets.
Extremely mismatched furniture should be most common for students who share an apartment or similar households. Many students prefer to live in the city center and therefore rent an apartment with a few other students. These apartments usually are empty except for bathroom fixtures. Even a kitchen might not be included. When the students move into such an apartment, they frequently bring along some old furniture pieces that they got from their parents, grandparents and other people, sometimes furniture from bulky waste and when universities get net furniture, they might allow students to take some of the old furniture for free. And of course, not all studens stay in the apartment for the same amount of time so that one student might move out first and leave some of their furniture behind and a new student moves in and brings along more new, mismatched stuff.

First floor:
Just leave the room empty for the moment. I am sure your sims will develop interests, hobbies and friendships while you play them and you will realize what THEY want to have in that spare room.

Decoration:
Is that a general problem or just problem with these curtains?
Night-storage heaters: You will find a lot examples when you google for "Nachtspeicherofen". These results also will give you an impression how many of these heaters are placed on the floor and how many on the wall. In pretty much all the pictures shown, the night-storage heaters are placed directly next to the wall while the ones that I have seen in real life all had some distance to the wall.

Guest toilet:
Magazins and a toilet refresher are an option, but not a must-have. I have never seen a birthday calendar. Most bathrooms that I know do not have that much decoration. Usually, you have an item in which additional toilet paper can be stored ("Toilettenpapierbehälter" offers some good pictures as results) and you might also have a small shelf cabinet (one tile wide, but it can be high) for additional towels. If the full bathroom does not have enough storage, you also might put other stuff like shampoo and shower gel into the shelf or cabinet. I know several families that have the medicine chest (with a mirror so that you can place it above the sink) in the guest bathroom and not the full bathroom. In the guest bathroom, they key usually is in the door lock so that guests can lock the door if they want to (common when there are many people in the house at the same time, less common when only few people are present because then everybody knows that the toilet is occupied).
If you have an older sim lady who likes needlework, you might want to look for "Klopapierhut" instead of the "Toilettenpapierbehälter" (Warning: The search results show things that are considered very bad taste by the majority of people ).
The old lady/older couples also might have plush rugs in front of the toilet and matching covers for the toilet lid. Google "Toilettenteppich" for some examples (although most search results look too modern). The vast majority of people does not have these kind of rugs anymore because they are extremely unhygienic.
In recent years, more and more restaurants, companies and other semi-public toilets have some necessities lying around in the restroom: Hair brush, comb, hand cream, deodorant, sanitary products etc. So far, I have seen this in two or three private households as well. The items usually all are placed in a small basket or bowl that is placed somewhere where people can see it easily. But that trend might be too recent for your Veronaville.
There is something else that is relatively common for bathrooms in Germany although I do not think that it can be included in the Sims. The water connection for toilet and sink might not be inside the wall, but in front of the wall and covered. The top of this cover can serve as a shelf and frequently is cluttered. Google "Vorwand" and "Waschbecken" or "Toilette" if you want to see some pictures. (It was really difficult to find appropriate search terms for this because I did not know how this officially is called. I wanted to try the German word for "sill" because of the shelf-aspect, but the German word for this is "Sims" and I got tons of results related to the game, but not to real life architecture. )

Dining room:
You could place pictures on the wall. I think wall tattoos with some kinds of sayings also were more popular 15-20 years ago than they are now. You also could place a sideboard in the dining room. Especially when your sims like to cook themselves, they might need a bit more place to store kitchen equiment. And on top of the sideboard, you can place alcoholic and/or non-alcoholic drinks. Above the sideboard, you can place a wall cupboard with glass doors and have different kinds of glasses (for different kinds of drinks) and dessert bowls in there. I also know many people who have some paper and pens/pencils lying around somewhere, but that stuff usually is placed so that you do not immediately see it (e.g. on a window sill behind the curtain). And of course, like in every room, you can have smaller plants or some clutter on the window sills.

Lot sizes:
In general, lots and houses are a bit bigger in regions where just one child inherited than in regions where all children/all sons inherited, but even there you will hardly find any villages with a significant number of detached houses with garden on both sides of the houses in the village center.
Thus, it is more about the location of the lot within the village. There you usually have houses with either no gap to neighboring houses at all or just a narrow gap where a single person can walk through. Some of these houses have a garden behind the house. Just the space in front of the house and on the sides is very limited. Farms usually are not located at the central place of a village, but may be located along the main street because most villages just consisted of one street (Straßendorf) when they were founded and additional streets only were added at a later point. Such farms usually have a paved yard (nowadays maybe also tarred or concreted) and all buildings are accessible from that yard (so that you can reach them easily with a vehicle). A U-shaped form should be most frequent (with the opening to the street), but there also are farms with just two rows of buildings on each side boarder of the lot or rectangular shaped forms with a big arch in the front.
Farms like you imagine them do exist, but they are much less common than the other types of farm (at least in your preferred region) and they would be located at the very edge of the village. I do not think that the village will have a realistic flair, if you just built detached houses.
(As mentioned in one of my previous postings, there are some isolated farms, Aussiedlerhöfe, like one or two kilometers away from the next village. These farms were built after the Second World War due to the lack of available space within the villages or even after the Flurbereiniging about 50 years ago. These farms frequently look like the farms you would like to build, but the Veronaville map imho is too small to have something like that.)

Maybe go to this website: https://www.geoportal.rlp.de/search/, open the "Liegenschaften RP" map, zoom in and scroll around a bit. The map amongst others contain footprints of all the buildings in Rhineland Palatinate like they were officially registered. That way you get a good impression of the more densely built village and town centers and where and how many detached houses are realistic.
Inventor
Original Poster
#72 Old 2nd Jul 2021 at 10:17 PM
@ralna

Furniture:
Thanks for clarifying! If needed, I can look for recolors to match the furniture better with each other.

Deco:
I have this no-shifting issue with every curtain (either Maxis or CC), except one sheer curtain CC, but if I shift it down, the curtain mesh turns black. Since I'm not so handy with SimPE, I have to post requests somewhere else.
For the hallway, are coat racks and shoes usually open or stored in a closet/cabinet? Are coat racks usually one or two tiles long?
Regarding window sill deco, aren't German windows usually turned inwards, whether or not they have a tilt-and-turn system? In that case, it would look unpractical to me to place plants on the window sill, but it must be said that I don't have much experience with TNT windows.
What are some common ceiling lamp fixtures in German households? (before I pick something too American from the Maxis stuff)

Mansions:
What kind of mansion building styles would suit best for the houses of the Capps and the Summerdreams? A Landhaus or a Herrenhaus? For the Summerdream mansion, I want to preserve the timbered walls, but for the Capp mansion, I'm open to recoloring it with a different wall type.
Lab Assistant
#73 Old 3rd Jul 2021 at 3:09 PM
Hallway:
All versions exist. I guess it depends on the inhabitants. Sloppy sims would have their shoes lie around while neat sims would store them in a rack or cabinet. For shoes, we also have cabinets like this that seem to be uncommon in some other countries: https://i.weltbild.de/p/schuhschran...jpg?v=3&wp=_max
For clothing, you can have anything from a few coat hooks to some kind of big cabinet with mirror etc. You can google for "Garderobe" to have a look at some pictures. For bigger households and single sims who care a lot about clothing and fashion, I definitely would choose a two-tile version while for singles and couples who do not care that much about clothing, a one-tile version should be sufficient.

Windows:
Yes, when you open the windows completely, they turn inwards. As long as you just have one or two plants on the window sill, it just takes one second to move them out of the way. And when it is windy outside, it might even be good to sandwich the window between two plants so that the window does not slam due to the wind.
When you tilt the windows, they also turn inwards, but this mainly affects the upper part of the window so that it is no problem and you do not have to move any items. At least for the period of the year when you have to heat to have a comfortable temperature, however, it is not recommended to tilt the windows because it takes a very long time to exchange the air and the energy from the heating literally goes out of the window. The recommended version therefore is, to open several windows completely for a few minutes (usually in the morning). For this, you open at least one window per room (which means that you can have more decoration on the sills of the windows that you do not open) and also open all doors so that the exchange of air happens really quickly.

Ceiling lamps:
Many households have rather neutral lamps like you can find here (assortment of a German DIY chain).
For those households that are supposed to have more fancy lamps, you can have a look at the lamp sections of the furniture stores that I linked in one of my previous postings and IKEA stuff is also quite common, especially with younger people. Look for words like Beleuchtung, Lampen, Leuchten, Licht and Elektro on the pages. That way you will find the right categories quickly.

Mansion:
Due to the size of the house, you could go for a Herrenhaus, but I think the transition between Landhaus and Herrenhaus is fluid.
I guess you should choose a year when the house was built (according to your imagination) and then look up, what architectural style was popular at that time. You can look up that period in your language version of Wikipedia and then just click on the button for the German version. That way you get the German name for this period so that Google will show you search results from German-speaking countries and Wikipedia itself most likely also will have some good pictures in the article about said architectural style.

Regarding your search request:
Plastic bags in supermarkets and other stores cost some money (to encourage people to bring their own, reusable bags instead). In supermarkets, they started charging money many, many years ago. In some clothing stores, you still could get some free plastic bags until about 2015 (there is no exact date because many shops stopped offering plastic bags voluntarily to protect the environment). From 2022 on, the classical single-use plastic bags even will be completely forbidden.
I can imagine that your sloppy teen might have some plastic bags lying around, but for most other sims that type of clutter might be out of character.
Back then, some people already used the big IKEA bags so that you maybe also want one of these as clutter. Today, reusable bags like this can be bought in almost every shop (usually with the shops branding on it): https://www.highflyers.de/images/35..._RPET_weiss.jpg
Inventor
Original Poster
#74 Old 3rd Jul 2021 at 4:22 PM
Deco:
The mother is slightly neat, but the father is sloppy, so I will aim for a mix of organized and messy for the rest of the house. When I was googling for teen room clutter inspiration, I stumbled upon pictures from the 2000s with plastic bags lying around, so that's were I got that clutter idea from. In my country, money is also charged for plastic bags for all shops since a few years, but before it was only applied to supermarket bags.

I've added it later while editing in reply no.70, but I wonder what the schoolbag trends were amongst 8th/9th graders in the 00s. Did the "cool" boys from that age mainly wear shoulder bags, or was it variable? What colors and patterns were common for boys backpacks? Bold or rather dark? Colorful or neutrals? I assume that certain decorations/drawings were a thing back then, but that's probably impossible to find as CC and I'm not good at recoloring, so I will omit that detail in the game.

Storytelling questions
Do the Nachhilfe sessions usually take place in the pupil's bedroom, or rather in a common room?

I've designed the outgoing yet grouchy 9th grade Teen boy as a chick magnet, but he is a player with short lasting relationships (usually meets/kisses girls at parties involving booze). He has a Popularity/Romance aspiration with the Irresistible trait mod. Besides his looks, what traits would make him attract girls and make him having many friends, despite his moments of a**hole/cocky behavior?
He's friends with e.g. Romeo (no outstanding personality traits, artsy), Puck (neat, shy, serious, nice) and the NPC Renee Andrews (outgoing, grouchy, tomboy, footballer). He doesn't like Tybalt (outgoing, grouchy, footballer), so he gravitates towards the Monty camp but he's probably ok with the Capp girls (but I have to see how their interactions will turn out).
Asking this because I assume that social dynamics amongst teens work differently in Europe than in the USA, so I try to limit/downplay the American-only teen character stereotypes. I can't watch many German produced teen shows due to limited amount of subbed shows/movies and my German skills are too limited to follow shows without subs. But How To Sell Drugs Fast is on my watchlist for sure .
Lab Assistant
#75 Old 4th Jul 2021 at 2:40 PM
Hallway:
What about a two-tile clothing rack and the teen and the father have their shoes somewhere next to the cabinet (lying around, not neatly placed)? And if you find a jacket that is bent like the jeans on the TV in the teen's room, you could place it on a surface of clothing rack (e.g. a clothing rack that has a clothing rail for jackets in the upper part and a shoe cabinet with doors in the lower part. That way it would look like somebody quickly threw the jacket there instead of placing it properly with a coat hanger on the clothing rail.

Plastic bags:
As I said, I think it would be good clutter for the teen, but not for everybody.

Schoolbag:
At my school, the vast majority had backbags. Eastpak as a brand was extremely common (like 80 % of all backbags). There also was a short period when backbags with just one diagonal shoulder strip were popular although they rather were used during leisure time and not for the heavy school books. The Germans used to call this type of backbag "Bodybag" which is another example that Germans overestimate their English skills. If you want to do a Google search, it might be helpful to add "site:de" so that the search results show backbags and not bodybags.
This U.S. highschool clichee distinction in "cool" and "not cool" did not exist at my school and at hardly any school of my friends.
Shoulder bags only were a thing for the last two or three years of Gymnasium and even there many pupils still used backbags.
The majority of backbags hat just one color without a pattern and especially for boys, darker colors were more frequent than bright colors. But there also were exceptions and nobody cared about it. Thus, just choose the color and pattern that your teen likes. You can have a look at the Eastpak website, to get some inspiration.
For decoration, key fobs were the most common thing and were added to the zip fastener of the small bag of the backbag. Small stuffed animals (approx. 5 cm or less - frequently not the type of toy for children) were the most common key fobs although mainly for girls. Depending on the interests of a person, key fobs also could be related to a soccer club, music band, anime or even be a bottle opener.
Drawings on the backbag were not really common and there also was just one pupil who covered his whole backbag and coat with buttons of punk bands.

Nachhilfe:
Both is possible. Sometimes, I had my own school stuff placed all over the desk in a certain order to prepare for an exam or work on a project. On these days, I preferred using the living room, but I had to make sure that other family members would not disturb us there. When my school stuff was not arranged in a special way and I could remove it in 1-2 minutes, I used my own room so that I would not have to ask the other family members to stay out of the living room.
For your teen, if the Nachhilfe giver comes to his house, I would suggest a common room. The teen of course would not mind having someone in his bedroom, but his mother might not be too happy if others see this chaos and the Nachhilfe giver also might prefer a table with an empty surface like the dining table.

Chick magnet:
I am sorry, but I cannot answer this question. At my school and amongst my friends, even just two or three short relationships in a short period of time would cause a too bad reputation to attract anybody. No positive trait could make up for this.
You might have him try to have the relationships in different environments, e.g. with somebody from his school who is not from Veronaville and with somebody from Veronaville who is not from the same school and maybe he also gets to know some girls because of a hobby (apart from soccer) that are neither from his school nor from Veronaville. That way it might take a bit longer until the gossip spreads and he gets a bad reputation.
At the age of 14/15 and in such a rural area, the chances for having big parties with booze are rather limited. As mentioned in one of my previous postings, there might be one or at maximum two events per year in the village itself and there the people who sell the alcohol will at least roughly know the age of the guests from the village. For events in other villages, the teen would depend on his parents to bring him there and pick him up later on. He might have one or a few drinks without problems, but if he is visibly tipsy or drunken, his parents will refuse to help him in future.
Teenager younger than 16 also only are allowed to go out until 10 p.m. This can be extended when the teen has a form that his parents have signed and when another, older person accompanies him. A teen of 16 or 17 years as accompanying person would be realistic and delay the curfew until midnight. If the teen got drunken in the past, the parents might refuse to sign and your teen definitely would not be perceived as cool if he has to go home at 10 p.m.
Thus, the most probable occasion for drinking alcohol would be when the teen meets his Veronaville friends and at least one of them is 16 or older so that this friend can buy beer and wine legally. However, these meetings are not the kind of occasions where the teen could meet new girls.

Teens and TV:
I have to admit that I pretty much watch no such series and movies and therefore even know less about how teens are represented there.
If you also are interested in non-fictional TV that was popular amongst teens: From 1999 on, there was a show called "TV total" that was quite popular amongst teenagers and sometimes also a topic for conversations with friends. Most of the episodes of this show are available legally on a website called myspass.de. You can find the exact link at the bottom of the Wikipedia article (both DE and EN). Unfortunately, the episodes do not have captions and I am not sure whether you can watch the episodes with non-German IP.
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