Kristin Kaiser is a mother of triplet girls, age six. She lives with her family in Pulsnitz. Kaiser trained as a legal and notary’s assistant and now works as a paralegal at a firm in the heart of Dresden’s Baroque District.
I enjoy living and working in Saxony because...
I work in one of Germany’s most beautiful cities, and I can get to my favorite spots easily from where I live.
To me, “typical of Saxony” means...
Our dialect, which isn’t as bad as people think, and it’s definitely distinctive. I was in a big department store in New York once, and there were two people talking in front of me, and I could tell immediately where they were from. It was a little bit of home out there in the wide world.
To me, home means...
Being where my loved ones are. That’s why I came back to where I’m from a few years ago, after living and working in North Rhine-Westphalia for over ten years, to start my own little family here.
There are some preconceptions about the people of Saxony. The one that bugs me the most is...
Certain groups get much too much attention in public and in the media. Everyone else who stands for democratic and human values ends up being lumped in together with them.
My favorite places to be are...
Indescribable. People should really explore them for themselves. They include the historic city center of Bautzen, Dresden and its fine Baroque District, the Frauenkirche, the Saxon Switzerland area, and of course my hometown.
My favorite Saxon food is...
I have more than one! My kids and I love traditional pancakes and Quarkkeulchen, a local favorite type of sweet pancake made with potatoes and quark soft cheese. We also enjoy classic baked potatoes with quark. During the Christmas season, we munch on Pulsnitz-style gingerbread, and of course Bautzner mustard is a must-have on the kitchen table.
If I were to describe the people of Saxony in three words...
I’d say bright, polite, and hardworking.
The biggest challenge Saxony will have to face in the future is...
Embracing new and digital technologies and not trying to put the cart before the horse. Allowing for structural change, but also offering prospects for the future in return.
I’d like to pursue the following projects in Saxony:
Among other things, I’d like to counter the shortage of teachers in rural areas, improve the teacher to child ratio in childcare centers, and set up more ways for kids and teens to come together, since we still don’t have enough of those. And just in general, make it more accessible for families with children to enjoy recreation and culture.
How do you think Saxony’s image has changed in recent years?
It’s definitely improved. We’ve been able to show that investing in Saxony is worthwhile, and now we just need to keep up our efforts. But we do need less red tape and more clear decisions in some areas. We don’t have to hide. After all, we’re bright and hardworking. We can’t let negative reporting ruin it for us.
What were the biggest challenges for you personally in the past two years?
The pandemic, definitely. How do you explain to your kids that they can’t celebrate a birthday with friends or family, or worse, that they can’t go to day care? Explaining unprecedented things that I didn’t even fully understand myself was tough. Balancing working from home, being a mom, raising the kids, and cooking wasn’t easy, but we did it. Especially since we didn’t also have to teach them what they were missing in school, like so many other parents did, especially single parents. We were really glad that wasn’t our situation, so we can’t complain.
