In my environment, I felt a distinction between "cool" and "not cool" back then, but probably not as extreme as in US high school shows, and it also depends on the school tier one attended.

Teen dating culture:
Yeah that's why I was wondering how a "chick magnet" would be perceived in a different environment than the US high school setting or in a mid-sized town. In that case, I will also consider downplaying the playboy behavior of Romeo (Romance aspiration, commitment issues) during the time before he goes steady with Juliette. In that case, I just picture him being overly nice and appearing flirty towards girls. Good idea about the secret "a girl in every port" alternative for the CAS Sim!

Rural teen nightlife:
I thought that underage drinking was more common in rural areas, like when hanging out at small Kellerpartys at their friends' home? Or is that more common behavior amongst teens in mid-sized towns?
Does "not going out after 10 PM" also include just visiting friends? If yes, then that sneaking-out curfew thing from the game would be realistic for kids below 16. But I can also pretend that teens drink alcohol illegally while "sneaking out" . In my story, Mercutio is the one who is 16+, so he can introduce his younger brother and other underage friends to booze.

Cool/not cool:
Maybe, I was lucky that it was not this way at my school, but I assume that it is also partially related to the type of school. There is a period (maybe 6th to 9th grade) when pupils who participate too much in classes (like raising your hand whenever the teacher asks a question) are at risk of being considered Streber (a too ambitious person - as a rough definition). A few pupils thought that it would be cool to do the exact opposite and tried not to participate in classes at all and look bored or even did other stuff. Some of these pupils changed their behaviours again after receiving some bad grades, but many either had to repeat a year or had to change from Gymnasium to Realschule which definitely is not cool at all. Therefore, most pupils tried not to stand out at all (neither positively nor negatively) so that they behaved very similar during the lessons. And when you only have school from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. you just have two 15 minute breaks so that there is not enough time for lots of self-portrayal.

Teen nightlife:
Parties with friends are the most common occasion for drinking alcohol. But your teen sim will not meet any new girls at these parties. Although we usually did not use any Partykeller for meeting our friends. The Partykeller that I know usually were rooms that were blandly furnished by the parent generation and not exactly the place where we wanted to spend our time.
As long as the teens are not too visibly drunken, they can meet in the teen's room (for smaller groups) or for a few special occasions (birthday parties etc.) with more guests the parents might allow them to use one of the common rooms. During summer, they also might simply meet in the garden and also have a barbecue (Bratwürste and steaks would be most common). For smaller groups, you can use the furniture next to the Gartenhaus. For bigger groups, most families own one or two "Bierzeltgarnitur" that you could use. If the inside of the Gartenhaus is for leisure activities and not a storage for garden equipment, the teens might also meet in there.
When your teen wants to drink a lot, I cannot really imagine him doing that directly in his parents' house or in the house of the Monty teens. In my home village, there was a vaulted celler beneath an unused barn relatively central in the village that was used for these kind of meetings. It was furnished with sofas, chairs and a table from bulky waste*, someone had somehow organized electricity for some lamps and the stereo, everybody brought some alcohol and snacks and smoking also was quite common there.
Do you have any plans for the silo lot? If not, you maybe could imagine that it belongs the Monty family. You could turn it into a community lot so that your teen and his friends can go there and you could ban all other people with the visitor controller. It might be helpful to also get the community time mod because it could ruin the imagination if your sim parties until early morning and then returns home and it is just 7 or 8 p.m.

*At that time, there were fix appointments once or twice per year where all inhabitants of a village or town could put old bulky items next to the street and the waste collection would pick them up. People usually put the stuff outside one or several days before the appointment and people who needed some stuff could have a look at it and take whatever they wanted. Strictly speaking, taking some of the stuff is theft and therefore illegal, but people usually did not care because they wanted to get rid of the stuff, no matter how. However, sometimes people also took stuff that simply was placed outside of a house, but not supposed for bulky waste (like an old bike that still was used regularly) and people from Eastern Europe knew the dates for these waste collection for many places so that they cae with small transporters, searched the bulky waste systematically and sometimes left behind the unwanted items widely spread and sometimes even on the roads. That is why there pretty much are no fix appointments anymore in recent years. When people have bulky waste, they can get an individual appointment just for their lot.

After 10 PM:
The law just applies to clubs, bars, restaurants, public events etc. Meeting friends is not a problem when the teen got the permission from his parents to be outside that late. This also applies for the way home afterwards although the police might decide to check your teen when they see him to find out whether he has the permission to be there. If they notice that your teen is drunken, they will bring him home regardless of whether he has his parents' permission and they also have to inform the youth welfare service about the incident.

Thanks for clarifying again!

School tiers:
I pretend that the CAS teen, Romeo and Puck attend Realschule, but that's based on my reference frame in my country where there's a roughly equal percentage between Real and Gym pupils. Also, where I live, village/countryside kids are more likely to attend the Hauptschule equivalent due to more availability of Hauptschüle buildings nearby the countryside and Real/Gymnasium buildings being too far away. So in my case, the smaller and more remote the village, the lower the average education tier over there. However, I'm not sure if that education-tier trend also applies to rural western Germany. So I wonder, to what extend were rural kids pressured to attend Gymnasium back then in the early 2000s?
I have pictured that the CAS teen has a phase in 9th grade that he neglects schoolwork due to the combination of social life, football and dating, resulting in bad grades (I originally based his character on the Dumb Jock stereotype, but now I'm going to water down that cliche). He has to fix his grades throughout spring because he doesn't want to repeat a year. Also, his (ironically sloppy) father is a chemistry teacher at his school but does not teach his class, so the teen has extra pressure to catch up with his grades.

Teen nightlife:
Thanks for the silo suggestion! No, I haven't done anything with that lot yet. I've already installed the Visitor Controller and Community time mods.
Now I picture that when teens get caught by the police when sneaking out, is because they got too drunk and did silly things like kicking trash cans or making too much noise during Nachtruhe . Btw, does the Nachtruhe also apply on Friday and Saturday night?
Regarding dating, I will consider letting the little "Don Lotharios" date with schoolmates that live in a subhood instead where there's a less strong gossip culture .
How common was underage smoking (<16) back then in the mid-00s? Did they also have to do that as secretly as drinking alcohol?
And since there's a lot of social control, how would Romeo and Juliet meet with each other if they don't attend the same school? Would the silo hangout also be a good option for them?

Is there a German saying for the small village mentality, i.e. "like knows like"?

Infrastructure
I'm going to download this road replacement because this is the best I could find. Is this color realistic, or actually too dark?

Schools:
In the generation of your teen's parents, children in rural areas definitely were more likely to attend Hauptschule or Realschule than Gymnasium. This has changed a lot because today pretty much everybody who can and may attend a Gymnasium does attend one. The change took place slowly, but I think that the situation between 2000 and 2005 was more likely to the one today.
Employees with a university degree in average earn about 50 % more than employees with an "Ausbildung". That is why there is a lot of pressure to have Abitur and go to university.

I was able to find some numbers for pupils attending the different schools in two states:
The percentages of 5th graders in Baden-Württemberg 2020/2021:
Gymnasium 42,6 %
Realschule 35,6 %
Hauptschule 6,2 %
Gesamtschule 15,7 %
The percentages of pupils enrolled in each school type in Rhineland-Palatinate in 2015/2016:
Gymnasium 50 %
Realschule 34 %
Hauptschule <1 %
Gesamtschule 16 %
Hauptschule has a rather bad reputation today so that pupils usually will prefer to attend a Gesamtschule, even if they obtain the same school graduation certificate in the end.
Please be aware that the numbers for RLP refer to the total number of pupils enrolled in secondary schools. Gymnasium has 8 or 9 grades while the other school types only have 5 or 6 grades. If you just had a look at 5th graders (unfortunately, I could not find data for that), the percentage for Gymnasium therefore would be lower.

The distance to school might have mattered in the past, but does not matter anymore. Between 1967 and 1978 many small communities were merged to bigger communities. Thus, a small village like Veronaville might have had a primary school and Hauptschule until then (frequently with just one class room for grades 1-4 and a second class room for grades 5-9 and one teacher had to teach several grades at the same time), but after that period, pupils had to take a bus to a nearby town anyway. The bus ticket is also paid by the community and/or administrative district until 10th grade (and families with a tight budget also can get help for grades 11-13) so that there are no financial reasons for attending a certain school type.
The funding might be different for each state, but as far as I know, communities fund primary schools and Hauptschule while administrative districts fund Realschule and Gymnasium. Thus, a Realschule does not necessarily have to be closer to Veronaville than the Gymnasium. Due to the school buses, it is convenient for communities and administrative districts that all schools are located in the same place.

Long story short:
There definitely already was quite some pressure to attend Gymnasium back then. However, I could imagine that your teen sim attended Gymnasium (especially as his father is a teacher) in the beginning, but then had to change to Realschule due to his grades. For the Monty's, Realschule or even Hauptschule also seems okay because they all work in gastronomy and graduating from Hauptschule is sufficient to start an Ausbildung in that business. And the Summerdreams are supernatural creatures so that I doubt that Oberon and Titania would care about something as mundane and trivial as school.

Nightlife:
Noise disturbances are not only a problem at night. You can get into trouble for causing too much noise during daytime as well. At night, people are just expected to be even quieter than during daytime. There is also a period at midday (usually 1-3 p.m.) so that people could take a nap if they want to. You can find signs at bottle banks that tell you that it is forbidden to throw bottles in there during these hours. The weekday is irrelevant for the noise and sometimes even bars and clubs get into trouble because of this. The police might make exceptions for annual events, but that also just would apply to the party area, but not to drunken people walking through the village.

Smoking:
Smoking definitely was done secretly, but many children or teens tried it and some got addicted. There still were cigaret vending machines (and also gumball vending machines - if you need some more inspiration for decoration) on the outsides of some buildings and you could buy cigarettes by throwing in some coins. There was no age check at all. Thus, it was even easier to get cigarets than alcohol. At that time, it also was common that people (older than 16) smoke at restaurants. Smoking bans only were introduced in 2007 or later and every state may decide itself so that you still might find some restanrants where smoking still is allowed.

Romeo and Juliet:
I do not think that Juliet would like to spend time at the silo due to the alcohol, cigarets and maybe Mercutio and Puck watching them.
And the way to the silo also would be a problem because many bored elders spend their days looking out the window and watch anybody who passes by. Therefore, people would quickly know that Juliet goes to the Monty side of Veronaville. I do not think that Consort really matters WHAT she does there. The fact THAT she is there is already enought to get her into trouble.
If the village has a neutral area with some hidden corners, they might meet there. Otherwise, they might meet somewhere outside of the village in the nature. I do not think that they can meet in the subhood because each of them would need a relative who takes them there by car.

Saying:
Do you mean "Jeder kennt jeden"?
I do not think that you can describe the whole mentality with one saying.
Here are two proverbs for you (just for entertainment, they are not relevant anymore today):
Schönheit vergeht, Hektar besteht. (Beauty fades, hectares remain.)
Heirate über den Mist, dann weißt du wen du kriegst. (Marry [someone from] accross the dung heap so that you know whom you will have.)
And my own opinion about living in a small village:
Da möchte ich nicht tot über den Zaun hängen (There, I would not [even] want to hang over a fence [when I am] dead.)

Infrastructure:
The color would be okay. I know some recently tarred roads that are similarily dark. The stones are a problem, however. They would cause a lot of noise whenever a car passes by and in villages cars tend to be faster than in towns and cities because many drivers think that the village is too small and not worth slowing down.
The vast majority of roads is tarred. Stones mostly are used in special places like in pedestrian areas or traffic-calmed areas close to squares.

Education of the Sims
The CAS Teen is a Leo, so his birthday is during summer break. I pictured him as an "early pupil" i.e. attending 9th grade when he just turned 14. However, I understood it's less common in Germany than my country to let kids attend primary school when their birthday is after June 30th, so I pretend he was ahead with educational development in his younger years but started having a hard time with school since 8th grade. When he switched to Realschule, he is in the same class as Romeo and Puck (he already knows Romeo from his football team). But once his grades are getting better throughout 10th grade, I guess he can proceed with Gymnasium after Abschluss.
So now my rule of thumb is: Sims with Knowledge parent(s) or having a Knowledge aspiration themselves are more likely to attend Gymnasium.

Romeo and Juliet relationship
I pretend that the subhood can be reached by bicycle, but that only active Teens are willing to cycle 30+ minutes. Puck is on the neutral camp, so I assumed he doesn't care that Juliet would hang out with Romeo. The Summerdream mansion is a neutral place, but a party or a friend group hangout would be safer for them to meet so it's less obvious that it's just the two of them. But maybe I should move their mansion away from the Capps mansion to emphasize their neutrality and reducing the likelihood of gossiping by the Capp relatives.
However, the relationship between Romeo and Juliet won't last too long because they have zero lightning bolts with each other (neutral chemistry), yet Juliet has one or two lightning bolts towards other boys (I installed some mods that alter the chemistry). I have to watch the anime Nikesoi to seek more inspiration about teen relationships within family feuds
My CAS family has more connections with Monty because the mother used to work in gastronomy (her OTH is cuisine) until she became a stay-at-home-mom. But now the kids are both in secondary school, she can consider going back to work part-time. Also, the CAS Teen is befriended with Romeo and the 16+ party-animal Mercutio. But I have to check how the father will interact with the Capps and the daughter with the Capp kids.

I will post photos very soon about my lot updates, including the silo! My next building project is renovating the Monty ranch into a renovated Villa Rustica using German-based villas as inspiration.

@aspersim:
Glad you liked it! I want to share with you some resources I use for German names:
On https://www.beliebte-vornamen.de, you can find the popularity of first names for each birth year/generation.
And here you can find the occurrence of German surnames spread throughout the states: https://www.kartezumnamen.eu/en/
I manually create Townies into playable Sim families since I use the townie-free clean Veronaville from @redandvidya as a base, so what I do, is looking up their names on the Fandom Wiki and check what their names are in the German/Dutch/Scandinavian version.

Have you already thought about which German state you want to base your hood on?

I also want to build a German-style Downtown, but want to base it on Windenburg from TS4. Unfortunately, there is no 4t2 Windenburg terrain at this moment, but I can consider creating my own after I managed to install SC4, so I can implement Ralna's notes about German road infrastructure.

Since I see you also own TS3, have you already checked Neustadt an der Sim?: https://gemeinsamesims3nachbarschaf...t-an-der-sim-3/
I'd love to see something like that for TS2 as well because I want to pretend that this town has the most nearby schools for the Veronaville kids (but still too far away to reach by bicycle, so they have to take the bus).

@Aspersim:
Thanks for posting here! I saw that more people rate our postings and was curious to know who else is interested in the topic.

For German family names, I can suggest these websites:
http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/Die_10..._in_Deutschland
On the bottom of the page, you can find links to places 1001-2000 and 2001-3000. The list is based on phone book entries in the year 2002.
https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/Verz...en_Deutschlands
This list includes more than 3400 family names. It is based on phone book entries in the year 2005. If also shows the number of entries for each name (the number of people with each name, of course, is higher).

For given names, Softlism already has posted the best link where you can look up which names were popular in which year or decade. The lists are based on the rankings created by one man who collects data of about 1/4 of all births per year. The lists just are based on the first given names. If you also are curious what additional given names are popular, you can have a look at this list from 2005: https://www.beliebte-vornamen.de/31...-zweitnamen.htm

Your question regarding the buildings in urban areas is quite general. Maybe list some types of buildings so that it is easier to answer. And how do you define "urban"? Any place with a certain number of inhabitants? City vs. town vs. village etc.?

Neideffer: I have never heard that family name and search results for that name mainly were for the U.S. Therefore, I assume that the spelling somehow was modified when your ancestors immigrated to the U.S.
For the meaning of the name, it would be important to know whether the "d" used to belong to the first or second syllable. When I did the search, "Neidhöfer" appeared amongst the search results as suggestion. If your name is derived from this name, the farmer part could be true as "Hof" is one of the German words for farm and "Höfer" refers to a person living on a "Hof". "Neid" means "envy" although it is possible that the first syllable originally had another meaning because spelling and pronunciation can change a lot over time.
If the "d" belongs to the second syllable, the first syllable should be derived from "neu" (= new) and "deff" could be "Dorf" (= village) so that the whole name with the "-er" refers to a person living in a relatively new village.
Here is a map that shows you where in Germany the name Neidhöfer is most common: http://genwiki.genealogy.net/Neidh%...r_(Familienname)
For names derived from "Neudorf", it makes no sense trying to look it up on a map because that term was used for many villages that are just a few centuries old. Frequently, the official name is something else, but if a village was the newest village in the area, that term could stick to it forever.

Btw: In Germany, family names only were fixed in 1875 when civil registries were founded. Before that date, it was possible to change the spelling, the whole name or even to live without a family name. Thus, it can be really difficult to trace back names and persons before that date because each priest had his own preference regarding the spelling and some even translated names into Latin. The same persons name could be spelled in a dozen of different ways for different events in life (baptism, wedding, birth of children, death).

Uploaded lot: I could not find it in the downloads section. Thus, I cannot give feedback unfortunately.


@Softlism
Education: I have two nice German terms for you: Muss-Kind and Kann-Kind. Each state has a certain fixed date and all children that are at least 6 years old on that date have to be enrolled in school (Muss-Kind). Children that are younger than 6 years on that date can be enrolled in school, but do not have to (Kann-Kind). This usually refers to children who are 1-2 months younger, but in my grade there was a girl with British mother who was born half a year after the required date and she still was allowed to start school.
Switching from Gymnasium to Realschule is possible without problems, but the other way round usually is really difficult. The level of difficulty in subjects like math, physics, chemistry and foreign languages is completely different. I only know one person who managed to do this and that girl had extremely good grades and even she had to move to a city to attend some special classes there before starting Gymnasium so that she had a sufficient level of knowledge for all subjects and she even had to learn a new foreign language during that year. Therefore, pupils who graduated from Realschule usually start an Ausbildung or, if they really want to study, they attend a Fachoberschule afterwards. When they graduate from Fachoberschule after two or three years, they can study at a Fachhochschule. Fachhochschulen usually are less theoretical and more practical than universities. Moreoever, Fachhochschulen are more similar to schools while at university, you have more freedom to choose which classes you want to attend - or sometimes even whether you want to attend them at all or just prepare yourself for the exams another way instead. For students with insufficient self-discipline that could be a problem because they enjoy the free time too much and are too lazy and then will fail at the exams. Such students might do better at a Fachhochschule. To me, this seems to be the more likely way to go for your CAS teen.

In addition to knowledge aspiration, you also could have a look at the parents' jobs and personalities. If they have jobs that require a university degree, the children usually at least will start Gymnasium (it will depend on the children/teens whether they will graduate). Rather strict parents would insist that the children do homework every day so that these children also would be good enough for Gymnasium. I also think that parents with fortune aspiration would make sure that their children attend Gymnasium. And maybe all children with C- or worse will have to drop out of their current school and switch to another school type (Gymnasium -> Realschule -> Haupt-/Gesamtschule).

Romeo and Juliet:
Going by bike definitely is an option.
It is not important whether Puck cares. In a small village, there is no way that Juliet can walk to the Monty side without being seen by several other sims on the way there.
I would not move too many lots around, if you can avoid it. Some parts of Veronaville are only slightly above water level and parts of your lot might be beneath water level after moving the lot.
Are Romeo and Juliet already in love (instead of just having a crush)? Because as soon as two sims are in love, they receive some kind of attraction bonus so that they usually at least should have one attraction bolt.
I assume that the CAS father as a teacher either would get along better with the Capps or would prefer staying neutral and I do not think that the family as a whole really would want to be on one side and be dragged into the feud.

Do you recreate the original townies or why do you look up the names? If yes, there is an easier way: Create a copy of the Veronaville template and rename all the files to N001. Temporarily move out the folder with the Pleasantview template from the base game folder and move the renamed Veronaville folder there instead. The next time when you create a neighborhood, the game will copy the Veronaville townies and NPCs into the new neighborhood instead of the usual Pleasantview ones. After you are done, remove the renamed Veronaville folder and put back the original Pleasantview one (or whatever you prefer). However, as you already have started creating townies, it might be too late to use this method.

SC4:
If you have problems to install the game, you might want to contact the support. When I did this, they gave me the Origin version of SC4 that could be installed without problems.

@ralna
Townies
I've already started recreating Townies as CAS, and I've adjusted the faces and skintones significantly for most of the Townies. I also have chosen to manually rename them (I've created a table with an overview of all the Townies and their face templates).

Storytelling
When I started playing Romeo and Juliet, they were merely crushes. Good to know that falling in love automatically means one bolt! I will pay attention to it when playing.

Were teens from very small villages usually more privy about their relationships at the beginning than kids from less small villages, due to being cautious about their reputation amongst fellow pupils that are from the same village? (E.g. no PDA in the bus or at school, rather visiting their lover at their town instead of bringing them home, no love status messages on their ICQ, only mentioning to close friends that they're in a relationship). Also, after how many weeks do they usually tell their parents they're in a relationship with someone if their lover hasn't come over yet since their relationship?
I understood that German kids get "WooHoo" education from an early age and that many parents don't let teens avoid WooHoo and even support them with proper birth control (unlike what you may have read about some American parents and puritanism), but I'm not sure if that's only a city thing or that this mentality also applies to really small villages, and to what extent it matters whether the teen is a boy or a girl. Is it correct that rural RLP is not as conservative as rural Bavaria?

Education
During which years are pupils usually downgraded in level instead of being held back a year? How bad is it for someone's reputation amongst peers if they downgraded from Gymnasium to Realschule, especially if one of their parents is a teacher at the same school? Would they still be attractive for dating amongst non-Knowledge Gymnasium Sims (they have gained more free time for that), or only amongst non-Knowledge Sims from the Realschule?
The chemistry-teacher father has Knowledge aspiration, but he is fairly nice and has Music as OTH (I made him rolling a Science career a long time before I had FreeTime). The mother has Family aspiration and used to work at gastronomy.
In RLP, is it correct that the cut-off date for Musskinder has always been Aug 31st, or did it used to be June 30th until the law changed at a certain year?

Relationships:
I do not think that there is a difference, but there simply is not much to do in a village. Therefore, meeting in a town is more appealing as there could be a cinema, public pool, ice-cream parlour etc. Going there does not mean that you are hiding - it is still quite probable that sooner or later you will meet someone you know because everybody in the village has limited options for leisure activities.
PDA in the bus is uncommon because buses usually just connect one village with the school and the bus then drops off all pupils and drives to the next village. Therefore, only when both teens are from the same village they could have PDA in the bus. And that happens very rarely because there are so few options in a small village.
And even if the relationship does not work out, you do not immediately get a bad reputation. Usually, you do not immediately have a new love interest so that some time will pass before you have another relationship. And if someone has a bad reputation, that will only affect changes for future flirts/dates/relationships, but not friendships.
Telling the parents: That really depends on the teenager's personality, the parents' personalities, how well teen and parents get along, how serious and stable the relationship is, whether the parents already knew the significant other before the relationship started etc. Some might talk to a parent even before the relationship begins, some might wait months.
At my school, we had Woohoo education in 6th grade and in 9th grade. In 6th grade, the emphasis was more on the biological process of procreation. In 9th grade, the emphasis was on birth control and the like. The public library that also was located in one of the school buildings had many books about Woohoo education, some of them even picture books for pre-school children.
I guess parents in Germany are just more realistic. Teens will do it anyway.
I do not think that there is a general rule for rural vs. urban areas, girls vs. boys or RLP vs. Bavaria. It mostly will depend on the parents. It will also depend on the environment. At my school, there was a quite open atmosphere so that several gays outed themselves. Telling the parents usually also was not a problem. They did not actively tell everybody in their homevillages, but they were not hiding either.

People who attended Realschule or Hauptschule and made an Ausbildung afterwards were (and maybe still are - I do not have any numbers from recent years) more likely to get married as very young adults and have children than people who attended Gymnasium. They can finish the Ausbildung at age 18 or 19 and when they then find a job they are financially independent while students usually still depend on their parents until they are in their mid-twenties or even longer. The vast majority of such marriages that I know about did not last very long, however.

Education:
There is no rule for this. The school simply tells you that you are not allowed to attend the next grade and then the parents and the child/teenager have to decide which option they prefer. Repeating a year is very successful when you have problems with minor subjects or if you only lack knowledge from the last school year. Otherwise, it will require lots of hard work by the pupil to also catch up on the missing knowledge from previous years so that the pupil will not fail again. Switching to another school type can be helpful if the pupil has problems in several subjects including the main subjects because the level of difficulty at the new school is lower so that the grades automatically will be better. Gymnasium also has more different subjects (e.g. additional foreign languages) than Realschule and Realschule has more than Hauptschule. Thus, if a pupil has problems with some of these additional subjects, they might be able to completely get rid of such a subject by switching school. Somebody who is annoyed by school might not want to spend an additional year there while somebody with a certain career wish might need Abitur so that repeating the year is the lesser evil for them. There also are some limitations for repeating a year: it usually only is possible twice and some time has to pass between the two times. And the possibilities for switching school types also are limited because once you attend Hauptschule there is no more school type to which you could switch to avoid repeating a year.

Repeating a year or switching to another school type does not really harm the reputation. Especially at Gymnasium it is quite common. At my school, we were about 160 children in 5th grade and by the time of graduation 9 years later only 100 were left which means that 60 switched to another school or left school after 10th grade (which is equal to graduating from Realschule). I do not know how many had to repeat years because you lose some pupils that way, but also get some new pupils from the grade above.
As your teenager is just lazy and not stupid, I do not think that it will have an effect on his dating chances. Many pupils from my grade had relationships with teenagers from other schools or who already had graduated from school. It is more the generations of the parents that worries about career chances and future salaries. Teenagers usually ignore that and listen to their feelings. Thus, your teen still can date sims from Gymnasium and if they have sufficient attraction, I would not even exclude knowledge sims (although attraction will not be too high due to the aspirations). I think the CAS father might be the one who feels worst about his son's school performance.

RLP has 30th June as reference date. Therefore, it would be rather uncommon.


(I am on vacation right now. Therefore, my answers might take a bit longer.)

Relationships & parties I thought that rural parties/gatherings hold by friends were more "wild" than in mid-sized towns and cities, or do they do it more secretly? Because I understood that Dorfkinder usually start drinking at an earlier age than Stadtkinder.
Are sleepovers also common amongst Dorfkinder when they're an official couple, or is that too awkward in this case because of the risks of spreading rumors about Woohoo if someone from the hood sees that a teen has slept over?

Education & culture
I pretend that the CAS father is a Realschule chemistry teacher and that he just started with his teaching career since the schoolyear that his son entered 9th grade and his daughter the 5th. However, he promoted to a teacher by Sims logic, so he didn't have a proper teacher apprenticeship and just rolled in there with his MSc Chemistry degree after previous job experiences in the chemistry field . I'm aware that becoming a teacher won't go that easy irl, but sometimes I choose to retain Sims logic in my story to add absurd humor.

Despite cultural differences, what high-school anime tropes and archetypes would make somewhat sense in a my romcom story, featuring Sim logic? Like cycling/running to the bus stop with bread in their mouth, shouting crazy names when doing football tricks, transfer students, Carnaval cosplay (instead of cafes), and swapping school and Japanese festivals for village parties?

Speaking of vacation, during what time of the year do teens talk with each other about the vacation plans they will have during summer break? Do they often have two vacation trips, of which one with family (abroad or domestic) and one with friends (e.g. domestic youth camps)?

Hope you have a pleasant and safe vacation

Parties:
I do not think that partying in villages is wilder than in towns. It is legal from age 16 (for beer and wine, "hard" alcohol from age 18) and in every place you have some parents who do not care whether their children start drinking at an earlier age. Most parents, however, do care and if the police becomes involved or a hospital stay is necessary due to alcohol intoxication, pretty much all parents will care.
And just because you live in a village, it does not mean that you have to stay there for all gatherings. From the age of 16 on, we usually went to some bigger towns or even a city (1 hour drive by car) when we wanted to go to clubs or bars. Someone aged 18 offered to take along the others and had to stay sober for the evening and night. The others could drink alcohol, but we all drank moderate amounts, not excessive amounts. In our own administrative district, there only was one club that had a recurring event every two weeks with music that we liked and one bar where we met on Wednesdays (due to the Happy Hour).

Relationships:
Sleepovers definitely exist and are quite normal for official couples. There will be gossip, but mainly amongst the elderly people of the village and hardly amongst the other teens.

Education:
Becoming a teacher that way is not that unrealistic. Of course, the majority of teachers has a teaching degree, but at my school there always were a few teachers with non-teaching degrees who got hired at a time when there were not enough graduates with teaching degrees for a certain school subject.
Teachers usually have at least two subjects that they can teach, in recent years some teachers even have degrees for three subjects (especially if physical education is one of the subjects). Only arts and music teachers have just one subject. Thus, it would be more realistic if your chemistry teacher had a second subject as well. I think that biology would be the most common choice.
Moreover, he would "only" be an employee of the school, not a state official. As teachers become state officials for lifetime, there is an age limit. If you are older than the age limit without being a state official, there is no chance of becoming a state official anymore. (For universities, this is different, because there you can be appointed a state official for a certain amount of years). Many non-state-official teachers have the problems that the schools end the contracts before the summer vacations and rehire teachers for the start of the new school years so that the teachers are unemployed for six weeks every single year. And they might not be rehired by the same school so that they might have to move to another town/city very spontaneously.
It does not sound too logically to me, however, that someone who already had a regular job starts to work as teacher. A chemist with some years of professional experience in the chemical industry has a much higher salary than what schools can pay for a teacher without previous teaching experience. How many people would be willing to accept a salary loss of at least 20 000 per year? And if the CAS fasther was really good in his previous job, the salary loss might be much higher than that.
At my school, career changers as teachers were young because for beginners the salary gap between public sector and industry is smaller and both sectors have salary agreements with salary raises after several years within the same sector so that it becomes more and more attractive to stay in the same sector. And due to their young ages they still had a chance to become a state official. The only exception was a middle-aged biology and geography teacher who had spent 15-20 years in South America and therefore had no professional experience at all before working as a teacher.

Culture and tropes:
Pupils who take the bus usually do no take a bike to go to the bus stop. For a small village like Veronaville, hardly anybody will have a longer distance than maybe 500 m to the bus stop so that it is not worth the time to get your bike from wherever it is placed on your lot and lock it somewhere close to the bus stop.
Running is common for pupils who are notoriously late. My way to the bus stop was the same way that the bus had to take. Therefore, most bus drivers were nice enough to do a short stop inbetween to pick me up whenever I was late. Sometimes, when they arrived a bit earlier than usual, they even stopped in front of my house and waited for me. However, not every bus driver is that nice.
As I am not interested in football, I cannot answer that question.
Transfer students do exist. However, teachers usually are hired at the start of a new school year or in the middle of a school year (at a certain date shortly after the pupils receive their intermediate report cards). It would be extremely unlikely that your CAS father was offered a contract to start at any other date than that.
If your CAS family previously has lived in another state, there could be problems even if the move took place during the summer vacation. As each state has its own dates for the summer vacation, the children could have had an extra long summer vacation or no summer vacation at all. And the level of difficulty of the classes varies between states. Thus, if your CAS family e.g. moved from NRW to RLP, the pupils had two additional weeks of summer vacation, but classes in RLP are more difficult than the ones in NRW and some of the bad grades of your teen sim also could be attributed to this. If the move was the only reason for bad grades, repeating a school year is the more common option. Therefore, you still should imagine him as being lazy to justify switching to Realschule. The CAS girl would be less affected because there is a big cut between 4th and 5th grade anyway and many subjects will be new for everybody so that all pupils from her grade will start at zero.
Carnival: In the region where I grew up, every village had a small event for pre-school children and there also was a day or two where children could wear costumes at the day care. However, there was no equivalent in primary or secondary school. Teenagers who want to party, might do a day trip to a big city for some street carnival events (usually a procession with several decorated trucks) although the music that is played there is not the most popular genre amongst teens. A few people who are very passionate about Carnival might join a club to practice a certain type of dance (Gardetanz), make the kind of music that is popular for Carnival or prepare Carnival speeches. However, they usually cannot demonstrate their skills in their home village, but have to go to a city and participate in the Carnival procession there (music and dance) or be part of one of the Carnival shows that also take place in some towns (music, dance and speeches). Some of the bigger shows also are shown on TV every year so that you could be able to find some videos online, if you are interested. However, I cannot really imagine that your CAS teen is that much interested in Carnival that he is willing to invest a lot of time in such a club throughout the whole year. Attending a Carnival procession as a guest or completely ignoring Carnival seems to be more likely.
Switching to another school type is relatively common for pupils attending Gymnasium. In my grade, we were approx. 160 pupils in 5th grade and 100 pupils in 13th grade. Thus, approx. 60 pupils either switched to Realschule or dropped out of school after passing 10th grade because then they automatically have Mittlere Reife (the same school leaving certificate like after graduating from Realschule). There also was one girl who had to switch to Hauptschule (I think because of some age limit for Realschule as she already had repeated one or two grades in Gymnasium). She attended a branch of Hauptschule that has an optional 10th grade where the pupils also can obtain Mittlere Reife. However, when applying for an Ausbildung, pupils with 10th grade of Gymnasium have better chances than pupils who graduated from Realschule and both have better chances than pupils who graduated from 10th grade of Hauptschule.
I have never heard about Japanese festivals in a small village. Smaller towns and villages might have twinning agreements with towns and villages from other countries (just like bigger towns and cities). If such an agreement exist, there might be mutual visits with smaller events for the visitors. However, such agreements and visits usually are more interesting for middle-aged and older inhabitants and agreements are much more common with other European localities and the closer the partner town/village is, the more frequent mutual visits will take place.
Schools also might offer school exchanges with partner schools in other countries. Most partner schools are in the United Kingdom, France and Spain because these are the most common foreign languages taught at school (for some states in eastern Germany Russian still might be popular as well). However, many schools try to establish more partnerships with schools in other countries as well so that more pupils per grade have the chance to go abroad for 2-3 weeks. My school tried to establish new partnerships with schools in Skandinavian countries and Poland while a previously existing exchange with Israel was not continued after more and more parents became worried about their children's safety there.

Vacation:
There is no general rule for this. Some people like to book vacations several months in advance, some are more spontaneous. Some people spend their vacation at the same place every year, some people with migration background visit their home country (e.g. the Monty's might go to Italy) and family and some people who do not have sufficient money might not go on vacation at all. People with more money might go on several vacations per year. Skiing holidays during Christmas break or Easter break were quite popular amongst these families.
I do not know any teenager who went to a domestic youth camp. They usually were for pre-teens and either used by families who could not go on vacation together or when the parents needed someone to supervise the children while they were at work. In the latter case, the camp could be very close to the village so that sometimes the child/pre-teen just would spend the daytime there and sleep at home. Some villages also might offer youth camps themselves for the children and pre-teens of the village.
The soccer club of your CAS teen might offer a group trip somewhere once per year. The teen and his friends also could attend a music festival in the region and camp there for a long weekend. For bigger festivals further away, I would wait until they are 16 years old. If the CAS family used to live in another region of Germany before (= more than just a few km away), the teen also might visit an old friend for a week or a fried might visit him (so that you have some use for the guest room).

Due to the devestating floodings in NRW and RLP, you might be able to see pictures of more towns and villages from these regions in German media than usual. Although I am not sure whether the pictures will help you due to all the destruction.

Thanks a lot for your wishes!

CAS family
In the game, being a science teacher earns more money than his previous jobs, but good to know about the reality anyhow. He can promote to a better job eventually if his teacher contract at the nearby school doesn't last that long. I do wonder, are chemists with a Hochschule degree also eligible to teach at a Realschule if they're an employee of the school, or only from the Uni? Until what age can people become a state teacher, and do they always need a special teacher degree in that case?

Tropes & culture
I pretend that the CAS family already lives in the village for many years; the transfer/exchange student was just a general trope I wondered about. Regarding traditional events, I'm curious what Japanese festivals (e.g. New Year's temple visit, summer festivals, sports day) could be swapped for German events/traditions to give the same trope vibe as in anime/manga. For the "Beach Episode" cliche, the teens might visit a nearby lake or go together on holiday to Mallorca once they're 16 . And instead of bento boxes, kids and teens bring sandwiches to school. So what other anime cliches would suit/be translated better into a Germany story than in an American story, you think?

Yeah, I just discovered some small villages through the diseaster, but I find it painful to see the damage So I better throw in a date filter when googling.

Do newspaper deliverers wear a certain color of coat, like red? I managed to age them up while keeping them functional, but I want to look for fitting clothes for Adult deliverers.

Monty Ranch
In the meantime, I've started renovating the houses of the premades. Here are some pictures I've made

Some things I haven't made up my mind yet: how many bathrooms and kitchens would this mansion likely to contain for multiple families? Which of the teens would most likely have taken over the room of their deceased parents, or would they rather choose to keep on sharing a room since the loss of their parents is quite fresh? How many cars would the adults own? Three? (assuming that the cars of the deceased Sims are sold or crashed)

Silo
Based on a quick google search on Silo using *.de, I managed to revamp the silo into an old stone one.

I yet have to find some distressed object CCs to use them as bulky waste. I'm considering to add more bigger shrubs so feud-neutral Sims have a private spot to kiss each other .
Would it make sense to build a decayed barn next to it, or would merely a silo be enough so there's more room for old bulky waste?

I hope that you and your loved ones are safe!

CAS family:
The degrees from Universität and Hochschule officially are considered equivalent. The difference is mainly in the heads of some people. There also still might be some wage agreements that consider degrees from a Fachhochschule on the same level as a Bachelor from Universität.
Just for your information: It is not possible to obtain a doctor's degree at a (Fach-)Hochschule.
For RLP, the age limit for teachers becoming a state officials is 44. However, the CAS father cannot just start teaching as a Referendariat is obligatory for all teachers. The Referendariat consists of 18 or 24 months of training at schools. In the beginning, new teachers spend most of their time watching other teachers and only teach for very few hours per week. During the course of the Referendariat, this will change and they will watch less lessons and teach more and more lessons themselves. Some people will regularly attend the classes taught by the new teacher to rate their performances. Considering that Germen men in average are 34,7 years old (and people with Hochschul/Uni degree usually are even older) when they have their first child, it is rather unlikely that the CAS father still can become a state official when his first child is 15 years old.

Tropes & culture:
I do not know a lot about anime/manga. Therefore, I cannot help you. However, I do not know any village or small town that has any Japanese festivals so that it cannot be that common.
Beach Episode: Apart from lakes, the teenagers also might visit a public swimming pool. Sometimes even rather small towns (like your subhood) have rather nice ones with several pools, slides, diving platform, meadows, beach volleyball pitch, some table tennis tables, a place that sells unhealthy food popular with children and teenagers etc.
Food at school: Sandwiches usually are made with Graubrot and look different than the sandwiches that already are ingame.
Newspaper deliverers usually do not wear any special clothing at all. They simply wear their regular everyday clothing. Daily newspapers usually frequently are delivered by adults because (especially in rural regions) there are many people who expect to have the newspaper in the newspaper tube at 6 a.m. and teenagers usually are not allowed to work that early. Newspaper tubes (in addition to the mail box) are more common in rural areas than urban areas and more common for houses than for apartments. When teenagers work as newspaper deliverers, they usually do this for weekly newspapers on Wednesday and/or Saturday afternoons.

Monty ranch:
The rooms are too big. The house also lacks some kind of hallway so that your sims can easily access all rooms without going through several other rooms. Maybe the Wikipedia articles for "Römisches Haus", "Atriumhaus" and "Atrium (Architektur)" can help you with layouts and so on. I did not read through all the articles in their German and English versions, but upon first glance, the German versions seem to be more helpful for your purpose.
As the house is supposed to have some Roman influences, classical round columns might be a more fitting choice. Maybe also do some research to find out how many staircases were common for a house of that size. As the rooms on the first floor are not connected to each other, you would need three staircases which could be too much.
The greenhouse roof also looks very unusual. If the house is supposed to be a bit older, it most likely is protected by the monument conservation and it would be difficult to get a permission for such a roof. Maybe you could replace it with some invisible/transparent floor tiles?
I assume that stones and terracotta are more common floor types for a Roman-inspired house than wooden floors.
Kitchens: As the Monty's are Italian-inspired, I rather see them as one big family instead of several nuclear families. Therefore, there should be one big kitchen with a big dining table where the whole family can meet for dinner (Wohnküche), probably even an extendible table as Antonio and his children and Bianca might visit often. In some households, such a kitchen is the most important room. As the house is rather big, there could be a second kitchen. Some people with big houses have a second kitchen as back-up. Most of these people that I know have the second kitchen in the cellar, but the houses are rather modern ones with a big cellar which does not apply to the Monty house. If the Montys also do some catering (in your imagination), the second kitchen could be the one that they use for their work. German authorities would not allow them to use the private kitchen for that. For professional kitchens, stainless steel is the most common material (even for counters) for hygienic reasons. You can google Profiküche or Großküche for some pictures.
Bathrooms: As mentioned in one of my previous postings, German houses usually have less bathrooms for the same number of bedrooms than an American house. One bathroom per floor plus a half-bath on ground floor for guests are quite normal, some houses have even less than that.
Bedrooms: With the old layout of the house, I would assume that Claudio and Olivia did not live there anymore at the time of their deaths because there is no room big enough for a second double bed. Thus, the room shared by the two teens might be a bedroom that was shared by Antonio and Claudio when they were younger.
Without taking the layout into consideration (because you can and will modify it), the usual constellation is that all three children stay in their parent's house until they marry and if you consider Claudio as Patrizio's heir, he might even stay there after his marriage. If Claudio and Olivia still lived there after their marriage, there was a need for at least five bedrooms for a short period of time (Patrizio and Isabella, Claudio and Olivia, Antonio before he got married, Bianca and Mercutio and Romeo as soon as they were born). Thus, it should be possible that each of the teens has an own bedroom without any of them moving into their parents' bedroom (maybe one of them kept the room that they previously shared and the other one moves into the bedroom previously used by Antonio or Bianca). I assume that Patrizio and Isabella would keep Claudio and Olivia's room the way it is. It might be reused again when Mercutio or Romeo will marry one day.
Cars: How many people will live in the house? Just the four like in original Veronaville? Will Bianca and/or Antonio and his Children move in as well? I think that Patrizio definitely would have a car. Isabella might not have one because many elderly women did not have a driving licence around 2000-2005 - they relied on their husbands and then had serious problems when they became widows. The teens are too young and are not yet allowed to drive. Antonio would have a car. For Bianca, it will depend on whether you play them more German or Italian. A German woman with a job in a rural area most likely would have a car of her own even if she still lives with her parents. If she does not have a job and income of her own, she might use her parents' car instead. Patrizio as an Italian patriarch however might prefer that she always has to ask him so that he knows what she will do and whom she will meet to ensure that she has no contact to the Capps. If many people live in that house, Patrizio might have a second car or might have decided to keep Claudio's car so that he can lend a car to Bianca and/or the teens might be able to use it when they are old enough.

Silo:
I do not think that such ladders would be allowed in Germany for safety reasons. As the ladder is outside of the building and accessible to everyone, I assume that the ladder would have to have some fall protection. You can google "Leiter mit Rückenschutz" for some pictures. For the inside of the building, it is possible to use regular ladders in combination with ropes and other climbing equipment to protect people from falling. As the ladders are attached somewhere, they usually are placed vertically without any angle and directly on top of each other. However, I do not know if there is any suitable CC for this.
You should not place too much bulky waste on the lot. If there is so much waste that it could attract rats or other vermins, authorities might intervene - and Consort Capp definitely would ensure that the authorities know about such amounts of waste.
Nowadays, silos usually only are placed next to other silos or in environments that resemble more a factory than a farm. However, I found a few pictures of old silos with barns or other agricultural buildings nearby. Thus, I assume that it is up to you whether you build a barn on that lot. If you build a barn on the lot and if Patrizio tolerates that the teens spend their time on that lot, the hangout more likely would be in the barn because it can be accessed more easily.

We are safe. Thanks for your concern! Both my home region and the city where I currently live only had "normal" floodings without fatalities and with manageable damage. After helping in their home towns/villages, several voluntary firebridgades and THW members (for technical support) were able to travel to the regions that were hit worse by the floodings and will help there for several days.
In the regions that were hit worse, the situation seems to improve a bit. The breach of the dam in Ahrweiler could be prevented and the water level is low enough that hundreds of people are allowed to return to their houses. On the flooded federal street, all stranded vehicles have been checked with sonar and by divers and there are no bodies inside. Nevertheless, the level of destruction still seems surreal - even historic buildings from the 13th century collapsed which means that no similar flooding took place for many, many centuries. I really hope that most of the approx. 1000 missing people are okay and just unable to contact their families due to the outages of electricity, mobile network, landlines etc.

Monty family
Thanks for the feedback! I let Bianca move in with her parents, so they're a five-Sims household and Mercutio might take over the room of Antonio since he's the oldest of the teens. Antonio lives in a separate lot with his twin kids as long as he can afford it. I want to give Bianca an own car as well since she has a job and lives like a German woman, so three cars it is for the Monty Ranch (one saved for Mercutio omce he has a driver's license). However, if a household lives in an old mansion, is it also common to store their cars in the open air because it isn't allowed to build an extra garage mansion? How many months does it take for a 16-year old someone before getting their moped license? Then I can pretend in what time of the year Mercutio would use a moped to drive to school.

The elders don't have very outstanding personalities, but Patrizio is somewhat neat (7 points) and is slightly less nice (4 points) than Isabella (5 points). Since they live in a small village, I assume they had more societal pressure to integrate with the local customs than if they would live in a bigger city, but correct me if I'm wrong. I haven't made up my mind how tolerant they would be about their teens doing underage drinking/smoking because I don't know anything about mentalities within the Italo-German culture.
I consider building an unused old barn with cellar since that might fit better with an old silo, but the silo can always be utilized for doing more sneaky stuff . I haven't found 1-tile ladder yet, hence I had to make this workaround. But I can try looking for longer fences for added realism.

Glad to hear that you're safe! I hope this disaster will pass soon and that the missing people will be found.

Cars/garage:
I do not think that many people really request a permission for a garage when they live in a monument protected building. When the lot is rather small, there usually is not enough space for adding a garage and when the lot is rather big, there already should be some subsidiary buildings so that one or more of these could be modified so that cars can park inside. These subsidiary buildings usually are open to a yard on the lot and not directly open to the street and you also might need some alternative for the EA garage doors - or, if only cars are parked and nothing else is stored there, you simply might leave the building open on one side. And if you have a bit of patience, you also can wait until a small lot close to your own lot is available for sale and build a garage there.

Driving licence:
It should be possible to do all theoretical and practical lessons and the exams in one or two months. As it is allowed to do the lessons and exams before the birthday, Mercutio could pick up the driving licence in the district office on his 16th birthday. If he fails one of the exams, he will have to wait three weeks before he is allowed to try again and after two or three failed exams, people have to wait even longer before trying again.
I am not sure, however, whether Mercutio really would want a Moped driving licence. His age also is sufficient to get a driving licence for a small motorbike (Leichtkraftrad) with speed limit (80 km/h instead of the 45 km/h of the Moped). This driving licence also would entitle him to drive a Moped while the Moped driving licence would not entitle him to drive a small motorbike. The driving licence for small motorbikes is more expensive (about 1000 euros vs. about 500 euros for the Moped driving licence), but I could imagine that Patrizio does not mind to pay for this for a grandson. Around 2000 or shortly afterwards, several German Moped companies went bankrupt. I do not really remember whether this had any effects on people who wanted to buy Mopeds, but I could imagine that prices were higher for a while due to this so that the difference between prices for Mopeds and motorbikes was smaller during that time.

Italy and Germany:
In a small village, there is more pressure, but this does not mean that everybody participates in the village life, not even all the people who originate from that region.
I would assume that Patrizio was a migrant worker who started working in Germany somewhen between 1955 and 1973 (in 1973, hiring from abroad was stopped). Many of these immigrants were from economically underdeveloped, more traditional regions. Isabella and the older children might still have lived in Italy until some laws related to child benefits were changed in 1975. Due to the cheap manpower from abroad, many companies delayed the automation. Nevertheless, when the automation finally took place, many migrant workers lost their jobs. If Patrizio had managed to save a bit of money until then, this might have been the time when he and Isabella opened an Italian restaurant.
I would assume that Patrizio was rather strict with his own children (due to his own upbringing in a rather traditional region), but he might have mellowed with age. I also read that the descendants of migrant workers felt a lot of pressure to integrate themselves. I do not have any experiences of my own with that topic, however. I have a few ancestors from abroad, but they moved to Germany 200-300 years ago and married Germans.

Underage drinking/smoking:
I once heard that in Italy (and some other countries like Spain) it is relatively common that even children are served a small glass of wine along with dinner. And it seems to be legal to serve alcohol to teenagers who are at least 16 years in restaurants - although it is illegal to sell them alcohol in a shop. The minimum age for buying cigarets currently is 18, but the respective law was changed in 2012 so that I would assume that it was 16 until then. Smoking is more common amongst workers and at the time when Patrizio was young, it still was common to smoke at your workplace. Therefore, I can imagine that Patrizio also smokes/did smoke when he was younger.
I am not sure, however, if these thoughts really matter. At the beginning of the game Patrizio is very close to dying from old age. Therefore, I do not think that he walks to the silo to check what the teens do there. And as you wrote yourself: You still can use the silo for the more sneaky stuff. The barn also could have a hayloft. The teenagers might hide the alcohol up there because an old man like Patrizio would not climb up there anymore.
I already assumed that it would be difficult to find more realistic ladders. I just wanted to show them to you nevertheless so that you know what kind of ladders typically would be used.



There has been no new rain which is really good. I hope that the water levels will become lower soon in the affected regions. The Rhine has high water levels further upstream that will sooner or later reach the affected regions and hopefully will not worsen the situation there.
I hope that you also are safe. Several other countries also had severe floodings recently ...

Motor vehicles
I guess I started to confuse Moped with a Scooter/Motorroller. Is the minimum age for getting a license for a Scooter also 16? I've already downloaded some scooter CCs, but I can also look for something similar to a Leichtkraftrad (I see Mercutio as the type for driving on a motorcycle).

Infrastructure inspiration
I've been browsing around RLP (Eifel area in particular) on Google Maps and found some small villages (<1K) with a river crossing through, like Mürlenbach, Rech, Insul, Schuld, Kyllburg and Sankt Thomas. After searching for pictures, I wonder: does Sankt Thomas have characteristics of a Weiler? Though I noticed that it doesn't contain many old buildings. Kyllburg is another <1K village but there's less space between the buildings and not really Fachwerkhäuser (from what I've seen on Google).

Besides exploring Google Maps and Luftbilder, can I also get a good impression from certain Modell(bahn)/Miniatur Dörfer, or do those building usually have too much space between to capture the realism?

I'm safe (we barely had rain), but the most southern province (Limburg) has been affected by the heavy rainfall. However, that province has already experienced severe flooding in the 90s, so since then lots of investments were done on improving water protection. And the government took actions immediately.

Vehicles:
Mofas (max. 25 km/h) are allowed at the age of 15. To be allowed to drive a Mofa, you have to pass a simple test. The certificate for passing this test is not called driving licence, just "Prüfbescheinigung".
Mopeds (max. 45 km/h) and Leichtkrafträder (max. 80 km/h) both are allowed at the age of 16. They both require a driving licence although the driving licence for a Leichtkraftrad is a bit more expensive. The driving licence for a Leichtkraftrad includes the driving licence for a Moped and if Mercutio ever wants to have a driving licence that entitles him to drive all kinds of motorbikes, he will have to get the driving licence for a Leichtkraftrad anyway because it is the prerequisit for the other motorbike driving licences.

Infrastructure:
Sankt Thomas used to be a monastery and some people who used to work there might have built there houses nearby so that they had a short way to their workplaces.
It might have been a Weiler at some point in the past, but it is definitely not a Weiler anymore. A Weiler has a maximum of 15 houses (in some German regions and in Austria a maximum of just 9 houses) while Sankt Thomas has more than 60 houses. A Weiler also is so small that usually there are no street names. People just use the name of the Weiler and the house number and the house numbers might seem to be in a random order because they were defined chronologically (the oldest house has no. 1, the youngest house the highest number). This also used to be the case for villages and towns, but there at some point the numbers were changed because it became to difficult to find the right house.
Bruderholz slightly north of Sankt Thomas looks more like a Weiler although even Bruderholz has too many houses and a street name for the northern houses.
Even Jakobsknopp further north is called a "Dorf" on several websites and not a Weiler.
It might be an option to have three separate groups of houses on the Veronaville terrain (one group for each family) so that you can consider them as three Weiler instead of just one.
Until a few decades, most villages formed a community of their own and therefore have some central buildings like a church. These are the places where you still can find some old houses. Settlements with more space between buildings usually are rather new and always were part of a bigger community so that there are no central buildings or if there are some, they are less relevant.
Modelleisenbahnen: Companies offer whatever people are willing to buy. Therefore, you can find some realistic stuff and some less realistic stuff. The distances between buildings also depend on the personal preferences of the owner of each Modelleisenbahn as the items can be placed freely.


It is good to hear that your region was not really affected and I hope that the situation in the Limburg region will normalize soon.
One of the places in Germany that was hit worst by the floodings also had newly improved water protection. However, the amount of rain in some places was much higher than any predictions - up to a quarter or third of the yearly amount of rain within just a few hours. And a 2-3 decades ago, many cities, towns and villages decided that they no longer need sirens to alert fire brigades etc. and the sirens were dismounted. The opinion on this topic has changed again a few years ago, but many places still do not have a working siren again and only few people have the disaster alarm app on their mobiles. Fire brigades and other organizations were trying to help as many people as possible, but there were too many people who needed help at the same time ...

Vehicles
I've learned something new again! I don't have much knowledge about motor vehicles, but here the minimum age for both a Scooter or a Mofa is 16. There are more Mofas than Scooters in NL since the last decade because it's more convenient and no helmet is required until June 2022. Since recently, Mofas are banned from the cycling paths within Amsterdam and a helmet is required if they drive on the roadway.
I picture Miranda with a Scooter (Vespa?), and both Mercutio and Tybalt with a Leichtkraftrad.

Infrastructure/hood planning
Do you know which RLP villages as small as Bruderholz have retained some Fachwerkhäuser? For Veronaville, my plan is to build not-so-old houses with plain white plaster walls after I've finished the makeover of the premade mansions.
I notice it's pretty challenging to rebuild a German village because of the lack of 3D houses in Google Earth! And the aerial photos I've found aren't always helpful enough for precise hood planning. Also, it's a bit complicated for me to spontaneously visit Germany for a few days because of tightened travel restrictions again between NL and Germany and the recovery of the floods in the Eifel area.

I hope that the affected areas recover soon and that the victims get good mental help and that the German government will take better measurements in the future.

Vehicles:
In rural areas, many people prefer the option with higher speed because otherwise it can take you quite long to reach your destination. Mofas are allowed to use cycling paths only outside built-up area and helmets are obligatory everywhere. Germany in general has less cycling paths than the Netherlands which means that especially in rural regions you might have to use the regular street because there is no other option. And if you have to use the street, it is safer if your vehicle can and may drive at a speed which does not make you an obstacle for other people on the street.
A Vespa requires driving licence AM which is the one also required for Mopeds.

Hood planning:
To know such small villages, you really have to live in the region for a while. I spent a lot of time driving through RLP and also have been there for many day trips, but I have never lived there. Therefore, unfortunately, I do not know any such villages.
Did you have a look at the list of smallest communities in Germany that I linked in one of my previous postings? If I remember correctly, most of the communities in that list were from RLP and Schleswig-Holstein (because they had a different approach when communities were reorganzied a few decades ago).
When I was searching for pictures for previous postings, I frequently had browser tab with the map of a region and another browser tab to google pictures from any village/town that looked interesting on the map. Of course, you will not get the complete picture that way, but if there are any notable historic buildings, you will frequently find pictures of them because many villages/towns want to attract some tourists that way.
It also might be an option to search on Wikipedia. There are many lists with Baudenkmäler or Kulturdenkmäler. Of course, not every tiny village has a Wikipedia article, but usually the town or community to which the village belongs has an article and for the articles that I have checked, each village had its own list of Denkmäler within the article.
Here is a list for RLP: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateg...Rheinland-Pfalz)
Here is a list with links to the lists of the other states:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateg..._in_Deutschland)
On the bottom of each page (at least the ones that I have checked), there are links to the lists of other towns/communities within the same administrative district. That way, if you find several small villages close to each other, you do not have to search the big list.

Wow, this project has to mean a lot to you that you even consider going on a trip to Germany because of it. It is true that nobody should not visit the flooded regions unless they want to help in some way (firebrigades for cleaning up, people who want to pick up relatives or friends from emergency accomodations etc). Currently, there are no big Corona-related restrictions for trips from the Netherlands to Germany - although that could change very soon due to the high incidence rate in the Netherlands. I am not sure whether there are any serious restrictions for returning to the Netherlands, but as the German incidence rate still is very low (although at the beginning of an exponential growth again) that also should not be a too big problem. As long as the incidence rate still is low, many activities are possible without a rapid test. If the incidence rate becomes higher again (it will!), you might need a proof that you are vaccinated or you might have to do rapid tests ever 48 hours.


It seems that the authorities have a good overview by now. The number of missing people has been lowered from more than 1000 to 175 while less than 20 bodies were found in the meantime (the total number is 170 so far). However, for the remaining 175 people there is not much hope.
The measurements definitely will be reviewed and improved (although most likely no politician/party will assume responsibility for the errors). However, I do not think that floodings like this can be completely prevented in future. The climate change causes higher temperatures and also has additional side effects like disturbing the jet stream. Due to the higher temperatures, air can become more humid and without the jet stream, clouds can stay in the same region for a very long time instead of moving in Eastern direction. Not all the floodings were near rivers or creeks. Some were in open country where the ground simply could not absorb any more water.

Thank you for the links!

Well, I haven't visited Germany for 15 years and it's much closer than let's say Scandinavia, Italy or Switzerland (I can go by car to Germany easily instead of booking a plane and it interests me more than Belgium or northern France), and I've liked the German subject when I was in sec school (but my German listening skills are very rusty). Also, googling for images helped me appreciating the lush hilly landscapes over there and old towns . But regarding holidays, I'm usually fine staying in NL during summer and save my travel days for going south in fall/winter (if still possible...)

Pictures of my progress of Capp & Monty mansion makeovers are coming soon! (I probably catch up building in TS2 again once it's getting rainy here upcoming weekend)

If you like these kind of landscapes and old towns, maybe the Bergstraße would be a good destination for you. It is in Hessen and nothern BaWü, but it is quite close to RLP and there are several towns along the Bergstraße that still have intact town centers, many of them with plenty of Fachwerkhäuser.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergstra%C3%9Fe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergstra%C3%9Fe_(route)
The articles contain many links to cities and towns along the Bergstraße and some of them contain quite helpful pictures with many Fachwerkhäuser (the German Bergstraße article especially highlights Heppenheim in that respect).

Thank you for the travel suggestion!

I just tried setting up a floorplan for the Capp & Monty mansions, using various pictures of Burger & German Villa Rusticae as inspiration.

The Capp Mansion
Herrenhaus board: https://nl.pinterest.com/Mediasimo/...-mansion-ideas/


The Monty Ranch
Villa Rustica board: https://nl.pinterest.com/Mediasimo/...ty-ranch-inspo/
The premade Monty Ranch: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Monty_Ranch

Short German lesson:
The plural of "Burg" is "Burgen". (Ham-)"Burger" is food just like in English. "Bürger" (singular and plural are identical) means citizen(s) and "Bürge(n)" means warrantor(s). The differences are just small, but it might have a big effect on search results.

Pinterest:
For Pinterest, I can only give you very little feedback because I do not have an account and they have a pretty annoying pop-up in the middle of the page.
The interior pictures seem to be from only partly furnished houses/apartments like from a website where people can offer/look for houses/apartments.
I found a website where people post pictures of their homes as inspiration for others: https://www.solebich.de/beliebt
Of course, not every house/apartment looks like this and I assume that elders are underrepresented on this website, but maybe it will help you nevertheless.

Capp mansion outside:
I think that not only the roof above the balcony is problematic, but also the roof next to it because of all the clipping.
I also think that such a balcony with separate roof is rather uncommon. The balconies that I know are either covered by parts of the regular roof or by upper floors or they do not have a roof at all. A separate roof is more common for a turret.
I would also try to reduce the number of wood colors used. Windows, door, columns, stair railing, wall cover of the house and wall cover of the balcony all have wooden colors, but none of these match. The wall covering of the balcony also seems a little "too much" compared with the rather clean and minimalistic timber frame of the rest of the house.
The front porch should have some fence or half-wall around it so that no one can fall down. And when you have some fence of half-wall, you usually would not have columns directly behind it. There are some fences that include columns or you can place the columns with SnapObjectsToGrid false. I would also reduce the number of columns as the two left and two right ones are directly next to supporting walls and therefore unnecessary.

Fireplace/stairs:
You also have to decide where you want to put the stairs. I guess that will have more effect on the layout than a bathroom and a fireplace.
I can imagine that the Capp's have a parlor where they receive visitors. The fireplace could be in that room. They also could have a library (either as separate room or combined with the parlor) to show people how much they care about education and knowledge. In addition to the rather formal parlor, they also should have a normal living room. You can google "Kaminzimmer" if you want to get some inspiration for the fireplace. There are many pictures that show rather old-fashioned parlors with fireplace.

Layout/hallway:
The layout looks fine for a first floor with bedrooms and the like. For the ground floor, I would start furnishing the rooms and to see if the room sizes are appropriate for your plans and adjust the layout if necessary.
I would shorten the hallway because the ends on both sides are wasted space. You could add 4x2 sized bathrooms or you could enlarge the two rooms next to it (at least for the right side of the ground floor and any upper floor). The hallway already has a source of daylight due to the windows in the middle. Thus, no additional windows are needed and you did not place any either. In real life, you also might have doors with some glass parts for certain rooms (like living room or office, not for bedrooms and bathrooms) so that there is more light in the hallway, but unfortunately lighting in Sims does not work this way.

Extra floors:
It might be useful to add this cheat to the userstartup.cheat file so that it is always active. I did not count how many floors you have used so far, but if you already have reached the limit, you might have to remove one floor again before the cheat will work.

Room arrangement:
Do you really want to move all children with families in again? If not: Miranda is just one day younger than Hermia. Thus, it seems realistic that Goneril and Albany got married around the time when Hermia was born and Goneril could have moved out around that time.
As the house has so many rooms available on the upper floors, I would not have a bedroom on the ground floor unless Consort already is very infirm. First floor definitely sounds more realistic than second floor.
Just for the record: I assume that you mean Hermia when you wrote Hermine. Nevertheless, it is a bit confusing for me because, in the German version, Hero Monty is called Hermine.

Monty ranch:
You do not have to connect the garage with the house. On a large lot like this, it is common and looks natural that there is no connection.
For the garage, I would use an invisible recolor of the driveway and use the same floor as in front of the house.
For the garage door, I also would look for some arch-shaped CC. You can google for "Garagentor Rundbogen" if you want some examples for what I mean.