Christmas in Lindau and New Year’s in Berlin Part 1

Before I left for a year teaching in Germany (1966-1967), my mother pleaded with me, “Please don’t go to Berlin.”  Berlin. . . . the city that had captured my attention for the past 5-6 years.  I had been so focused on the events of Berlin in the late 1950s early 1960s that my parents had taken me on trips to “get me off the grid” which at that time was television and newspapers: a road trip to the East Coast in 1961.

Ironically, in the summer of 1961,  we were in New York City in Times’ Square when I looked up at the moving billboard reporting the news: the East Germans were building a wall to keep people from going to the West. West Berlin would be a large island in the middle of Communist East Germany (the DDR—Deutsche Demokratische Republik) .  I stood there watching the news crawl around the building  reading it outloud with tears. After “The Wall” was built, we heard about people trying to escape East Germany: ramming their cars through the gates, swimming and being shot at, digging underground tunnels, being smuggled out in automobiles. The whole situation was horrifying.

I wasn’t just interested in Berlin politically but also had heard about the museums and the artifacts that were there.  One of my majors in college was history, especially ancient history.  West Berlin had the famous bust of Nefertiti but East Berlin had the re-constructed Ishtar Gate of Babylon in the Pergamon Museum.

I didn’t promise my mother I wouldn’t go to Berlin in 1966, but I thought it was unlikely a poorly paid teacher’s assistant could afford a trip to Berlin which required an airplane trip from Munich. Neither of us knew I would fall in love with a Berliner.

I arrived in Germany September 1966 with my high school friend Carol arriving a few weeks later.  We were fortunate that her nanny position was a few hours awy by train so we could see each other once a month on holidays.

I celebrated Christmas 1966 in Lindau with three friends:  Carol (American), Monica (Irish) and Helga (German).  We had a wonderful time.  Everything was hilarious for the three of us away from home for the holidays.  We decided to cook a turkey which none of us had cooked before.  Although the “giblets” are in a nice neat bag in America, the organs were still attached which grossed all of us out.  Helga’s mother had left a tree for us with candles for us to light Christmas Eve after dinner.  Then we went to midnight mass which was beautiful.

Although Lindau has a very mild winter being on a large lake and shielded by the Alps on two sides, ski lifts in Austria took us up a mountain so we could have snow at Christmas.  Monica and Carol had no boots but they really weren’t much help with 4 foot drifts. Carol and I were bi-lingual,but Monica could speak no German; Helga could speak no English.  And, yet if I try to remember that Christmas I just remember laughter.  Monica and Helga even tried to communicate with hand signals and very limited vocabulary of the other’s language, which also made us all laugh.  I don’t think I had time to get homesick for the holidays.

After several days in Lindau, I spent the rest of the holidays with my boyfriend, Reinhard——in Berlin.

fortgesetzt werden.. . . .

Pride and Prejudice

 

You grandchildren never knew your Grandpa before his accident.  Your mothers can tell you all about that but I want to tell you about Grandpa and I meeting and falling in love.

We did not fall in love at first, second, third, fourth or fifth sight. I can see Grandpa getting all fidgety in heaven because he knows what’s coming.  He never defended himself or explained, so you just have my word that the story is true. If you have read Pride and Prejudice at a slow speed, you will soon recognize a theme.

My friend Hilda and I were at church Easter Sunday 65 years ago.We were 14 years old.  She spotted Dave across the parking lot. He was class president at her high school and he was gorgeous. Hilda grabbed my hand to go over and “meet” him.   She giggled and squealed “I’m Hilda—-I go to high school with you.  Just wanted to say Happy Easter.”  I saw how arrogantly he reacted to us like we were beneath his recognition, so I just said ” Happy Easter” and turned to his brother Tom for conversation to hide my embarrassment.  For years, I never forgave his 17 year old self  for his reaction of superiority to Hilda and me. 

A few years later, I started picking Tom up for youth fellowship.  On at least one occasion, Dave was sitting in the living room and looked out the door.  Years later, I asked him about this and he said, “Did you drive a Studebaker?”  “Why, yes I did.”  “I don’t remember you but I remember that car.”   

Fast forward to our mid twenties.  He was dating my friend Mary.  We attended parties together and even doubled on one occasion, but he never acted like he  knew me so I stopped introducing myself and just ignored him.

One Friday I asked Mary if she wanted to go to Collegiate Club with me—-a huge city-wide dance party.  It was a place to meet other single people..  She said she couldn’t go because she was going out with Dave. I nodded and went with other friends.  After we got there, I saw Dave walking in with his best friend Elliott. I looked at Dave, my eyes widened and I was so angry I was actually shaking.  His friend picked up on my “interest” and urged him to ask me to dance.

Trying to collect my thoughts, I agreed to dance with him.  He did not recognize me or pick up my anger vibes.  After the music stopped, I looked up at him and said, “I thought you were going out with Mary tonight.” He LOOKED at me and said, “Please don’t tell her you saw me here.”  “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t”  And I held my head high and walked away. They left.

After that we continued to go to parties together knowing of each other but keeping our distance.  He and Mary drifted apart. Other friends of mine had expressed interest in Dave but I discouraged them telling them he was “stuck on himself”. He with his Pride and I with my Prejudice based on my 14-year-old opinion of him.

This group of friends that we partied with also went on float trips together. One September, I arrived at a float trip a day late..  When I got there, everyone was sitting around the campfire and they were remarkably glum—-not the usual lively crowd.  I saw that two of my friends were bedraggled and drying their clothes over the fire on sticks. When I asked, they told me they’d been in Dave’s canoe. They’d hit a rock and capsized in frigid water. They’d given him a tongue lashing which is why the party was so quiet upon my arrival. I thought, “And for this you’re ostracizing him?”He looked so pitiful..  I didn’t like him, but this was harsh.

The next morning we got up bright and early, were choosing who we’d canoe with for the day.  No one wanted to be with Dave. I found my opinion of him starting to change—-I felt sorry for him, so I volunteered to  paddle with him.

He later told me that is when he started falling in love with me.  After the float trip, we started hanging out together at parties more.  My friend Mary noticed and said, “I think you should go out with Dave.”  We started dating in November and married in June—-more than ten years after we first met. And i loved being married to him every single day: for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and that doesn’t change with his death. He was well worth waiting 10 years for—-my Mr. Darcy.  

September 1966-September 1968 RIP

After our tearful parting

We promised to live happily ever after. . . 

Later.

Letters for fourteen months of you

filling out job applications 

And, hearing from family,“what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you 

getting transcripts translated 

And, hearing from friends, “what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of  you

interviewing others about working in USA 

And, hearing from associates, “what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you

trying to uproot your life to move here 

And, hearing from Kneipverein,“ what about Viet Nam?”

Letters for fourteen months of you

trying so hard to save our relationship 

And, hearing from board members, ”what about Viet Nam?”

One last letter from you about

going to the consulates in Munich and Berlin

And, finding out about Viet Nam.

I didn’t have the strength to write you back

When you said it wasn’t going to work out:

You would be drafted to fight in Viet Nam.

I didn’t have the courage to say

I would rather you be alive and out of reach

Than dead in Viet Nam.

I was too consumed with my own hurt 

To respond with “Thank you for trying so hard.

I’m going to miss you. I love you. Good bye.”

And 57 years later it haunts me.

I never said “Auf Wiedersehen.. . . . “

Reinhard

 Before I left home for Germany, Denny McClelland  told us that he’d written his best friend when he’d been the exchange student—-Reinhard.  He’d sent Reinhard my name and address. I’d received a letter very formal and stilted before I left for Germany and I’d replied with my itinerary and where I would stay.  My family and I tried to imagine what he would look like.  We all agreed blond hair and blue eyes, muscular and tall.

I’d been expecting the phone call and was dreading another “set up” that would be TV at his apartment fending off his moves or a drunken night at a disco dance cafe again fending off the moves.  So, I took a deep breath and agreed to a date the following week. I still had my hands full with TV-Peter, Disco Hellmut and Georg who talked down to me like I was his “little woman”.  My “dance card” couldn’t get any fuller and I was not looking for another one to “dance “with..

A week later, in walked a handsome,bespectacled, tall, dark man with bushy eyebrows, a cleft chin and a friendly smile. We’d already decided to go to a cafe to get acquainted.  I think my mother knew Reinhard would be “trouble” when she read my one page description of our date.

“We went to a cafe and talked for about five hours. . . .We talked about Berlin and divided Germany, Nazism and the last war, communism and Viet Nam, literature, art, music.  Hearing him tell about East Germany and East Berlin (where he was from) is enough to make you realize the threat [of Communism]. Reinhard said that he can’t understand why his parents didn’t realize what was going on in the concentration camps during WWII.”

After that date, we went out to an organ concert in Ottobeuren basilica, went hiking, ball room dancing at a nice ballroom. out for dinner at one of the local inns, played cards with an older couple, a cafe for wine and talk again, and finally on our 8th date. . . . he kissed me.  That was the way to my heart:  hiking, dancing, concerts, wine and talk, playing cards and then after we went walking in the rain window shopping at night, he kissed me.

I soon joined his exercise class called Kneipverein where we also played volleyball and basketball followed by wine and beer at a local pub.  Everyone in the class was older than we were, but I enjoyed the companionship of more mature people.

Kneipverein Group

Well, they might have been more Reinhard’s age since he was 6 years older than I was which means his childhood was during WWII and the harrowing last days of Berlin being bombed.  He went to the university, got his degree in architecture/civil engineering and was working on a large municipal project for an indoor swimming pool in Memmingen.

Several weeks later, we went to our favorite pub for dinner and he confessed he was concerned about our future.  I laughed and said “That’s 8 months off” and thought, “I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than 3 months”.  He said, “It’s going to get worse not better, “ meaning our parting would be more difficult than if we ended it now.  But we didn’t break up but kept seeing each other several times a week.

We even went on several trips together including several ski trips, a trip to Switzerland and one to his home in Berlin for New Year’s .I stayed at his home and met his widowed mother.  I got along with her pretty well, but there was some friction when she and I shared a room on one of the week long ski trips. I think she was beginning to worry.

Berlin NYE

Reinhard was very kind and gracious even inviting my friends out to dinner when they visited me and served as chauffeur and tour guide for our excursions in Bavaria. A close friend of mine, Carol, visited me about once a month. Our activities usually included Reinhard.  She confessed that she never thought we were that serious about one another.  We certainly didn’t cling to each other in public.  To be honest our size difference made it difficult to walk arm in arm or even to slow dance.  He once said he’d never danced with a Zwerg (dwarf) before.

On an excursion with friends---Boden See

 As the year came to a close, he gave me a ring.  I had to return to St. Louis to finish my degree, and he had another year on his construction project, but he vowed to come to America in July of 1968 after I’d graduated.  We kissed and cried as I got on the train and headed for the long trip home.

Taking Flight

Libby asked me a year ago to tell her about my German boy friend.  All of the “letters” before this were a way of introducing you to my 20 year old me.

Although I dated a lot, I never had a boy friend until Tony Edwards, the English boy that I met when I was 19.  I realized I liked having a boyfriend who wasn’t an American:  someone who was more intelligent than I was, someone who was interesting, someone I could talk with for hours, someone who wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship because I had too much that I wanted to do, that I wanted to learn. 

Following Tony’s example, I applied to be an exchange student in Germany.  Before I was chosen, the other students had been males who had graduated from college.  I was the first female undergraduate. I contacted Dennis McClellan who had been the exchange student before to get information on what to expect.  He was eager to share his experiences and offered to introduce me to his closest friend in Memmingen, Reinhard.

I confidently got on that air plane in St. Louis on August 28, 1966 at 5 PM:  a 20 year old wearing a light weight 3 piece suit, heels, a hat and white gloves with a few small suitcases. (my trunk with most of my clothes had been sent earlier). My first flight was exciting.  I landed in New York City at 8PM, but had to get transportation to JFK Airport for my flight to Europe on Icelandic Air Lines at 1 AM.  I sat alone in a cafe sipping coffee and wondering if this was the cafe Tony had called me from a year ago.

Icelandic was the most inexpensive way so the flight had many students and young people like myself. We had to land in Iceland to refuel before taking off for Luxembourg. We boarded Icelandic but I no sooner closed by eyes than the sun rose and we were over a tree less land.  I thought we were going to crash because without trees, I couldn’t judge our height.  We landed safely in Reykjavik to refuel and were allowed to get off the plane.  Iceland looked no better on the ground than it did in the air.   I went to the hanger that had refreshments (not a real terminal). So, my first foreign country to visit was Iceland.

Landing in Luxembourg, at 8 PM, we boarded a bus that took us to Germany.  That was quite the rollicking bus ride with singing, laughter, jokes which even the bus driver got in on.  One girl shouted to him, “Ich bin heiss”.  He pulled off the road, slammed on the breaks and headed to the back of the bus with an exaggerated lear on his face.  Then, she realized her mistake.  She’d said, “I am hot” which has a more sexual connotation in German.  “Mir ist heiss” is more appropriate for someone who wants the heater turned down.

We arrived in Mannheim at 2 AM and joined several other American passengers for a train  to Munich where we arrived at 7 AM. I was exhausted from sleeplessness and yet I needed to see when a train left for Memmingen and I needed to find my hotel.

Unfortunately I was attracting too much attention. American girl, alone with white gloves and maps…. Men were everywhere offering help (???). I couldn’t understand a word they were saying and I just smiled which encouraged them.  Not wishing to appear unfriendly, I kept nodding and smiling which only made things worse—-one even grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a building. 

Finally, I found my voice and said, “NEIN” (no).  I could speak only a few phrases fluently:  “Can you tell me where I can wash my hands”, “I don’t know why I’m so sad” and ”a girl without freckles is like the sky without stars.” The first phrase was fairly useful because I could change that last part of the phrase to the hotel I was looking for: “Can you tell me where Hotel Garni is?”  

Once at the hotel, I called my German benefactor who had set up the exchange program, Herr Doktor Maximillian Dietrich.  He was a grandfatherly man who owned the local newspaper. He met me the next day at the train station in Memmingen, introduced me around and filled up my “dance card” with several evenings of activities with some of Memmingen’s bachelors: the head master’s son and two former  exchange students I’d met in Cape when they lived there.  

All Peter wanted to do was go to his parents’ house to watch TV.  All Helmut wanted was to stay out partying until 3AM at the local disco. All Georg wanted was a relationship.  After several weeks of forced joviality and friendliness,  my anxiety level was building. Although I like a good party and I like to watch TV, day after day, week after week was not me. And I wasn't ready for a relationship.

And, then I got a phone call from Dennis’s friend Reinhard… ….

Love, 

Grandma

Once Upon a Time.. . . .

 

Princess and the Pea

Although I've loved historical fiction my whole life, I was always especially fond of medieval history. As a child, Princess and the Pea was my favorite story and I often tried to prove I was a princess because my skin was so easily irritated by stiff fabrics, tags in the back and hair brushes. I even went so far as to put things under my mattress to see if I could feel them: I did not. Over the years, I leaned toward the King Arthur legend, Charlemagne and the Crusades.  

Although genealogy has been a hobby of mine for 50 years, I have never been on a quest to find famous people in our family. I was content with finding where our ancestor came from. Recently I've tried a new web site that I'd only "visited" briefly over the years.  It's the Wikitree site which has a "World Tree".  The concept is we all add to the same tree.  There are problems galore when thousands (millions?) of genealogists around the world are contributing. But, we are supposed to provide proof for our additions not hearsay or family legends.

So, I spent several weeks entering information (with sources), and then I found "gateway ancestors" which aligned my tree with royalty and nobility.  The royals have been genealogists for centuries so they aren't marrying too many cousins (like the Hapsburg line did).  With a "gateway ancestors", they've introduced me to family on every throne throughout Western Europe for centuries---most are cousins (King Charles III is our 16th cousin) and uncles, but several are indeed royal ancestors. 

Charlemagne

I think the first "royal" I found in our direct line was Charlemagne (748-814)  who is also known as Charles the Great.  It's been suggested that every person of European descent has Charlemagne as their ancestor. For many years, I've considered him the greatest king of all time. When I taught, I often told the story of Charlemagne learning to read because he knew the power of reading.  He encouraged education, opening schools and promoted legible writing including the widespread use of the question mark.  He always had a book under his pillow.  We have 76,759 paths to Charlemagne.He's my 33 and 36 great grandfather through my father LeRoy Long which makes him 35 and 38 greats for my grandchildren.  I sat stunned probably for about a week with the news.

He was the first emperor of the Carolingian empire consisting of what is today France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Luxembourg,  and part of Italy and Czech Republic.  He is often called the The Father of Europe. He was very large even by today's standards 6"2".  The photo above is his reliquary located in Aachen, Germany.

Charlemagne had over 20 children with numerous wives and mistresses.  He insisted that all of the children receive a liberal arts education in addition to needlework for the girls and riding and weaponry for the boys.  I descend from two of them for sure : Bertha and Hlodowic (Louis). Others have some degree of uncertainty in the lineage.

Hlodowic

Hlodowic (Louis/Ludwig) was Charlemagne's heir becoming King of the Franks and King of Aquitaine. He is sometimes known as Louis the Pious, Louis the Fair and my favorite: Louis the Debonaire.  We descend from his daughter Gisela who was known for her virtue and piety.  She dedicated her life to educating her children with her husband Eberhard who became St. Eberhard. (We descend from at least three saints: St. Eberhard, St. Margaret of Scotland and San Fernando)

None of Charlemagne's daughters married---he feared their husbands would become political rivals.  It didn't stop them from having long-term relationships and children. But, it shows the political importance of marriages at this time.  Bertha is praised in particular for "having critical discernment and an appreciation for poetry".  

When her father died, she and her sisters went to live in convents which their father left them.  It's unknown which convent she entered but it was probably St. Riquier where her partner Angilbert had become the lay-abbot.

So, now when the tag in my shirt hurts, I nod and think, "It's just my Princess gene".