A Bit About Our Tour In Germany

I realized when a friend asked that I have never blogged about our time in Germany.  I don't know why I haven't before this, because it was a very special time in our lives.
We were there on a farm between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, and more or less adopted by our landlords, who lived upstairs. 

This is the house as seen across one of the fields owned by our landlords, the Knoebel Family.
The road was called Frankfurterstrasse, or L3113.  The farm was really between the smaller towns of Graefenhausen and Moerfelden. 

 

Here's the house from the end of the drive.  We had the back apartment downstairs.  For the first year and a half, an American family lived in the front apartment, and Willi, Elfriede, Silke, and Tanja lived upstairs.  (Willi was the son of the landlord, Peter.  Peter and his wife Irmgard lived in Graefenhausen.) 

 

This is the side of the building, showing our windows and door.  Left downstairs window is our kitchen, next is the dining room, and the small window is in the entry.  Then you see the shelter around the door, and beyond that, where you cannot see it, is the window for the powder room.

That powder room was really half our bathroom.  The other half, containing a larger sink and a huge tub, was through a storage room just off the entry across from the front door.  The powder room was basically right inside the door!  (I didn't make pictures of the bathroom, for some reason.)

 

This is the view from our front porch area on a snowy day.  The venerable Mercedes you see on the left was ours.  It was a retired taxicab.  It had over 227K miles on it when we bought it.  It was fairly reliable, a gasoline engine, not diesel.  

 

This is our first German Christmas tree.  We put it in the entry hall, because all the rooms in the apartment were very small.  See how thick the walls are?  Very old building.  I could touch the ceiling in many rooms.  Because we were downstairs, and the family upstairs kept their apartment so warm, we didn't need to run the radiators very high at all. This one was off while the tree was up.

 

This was looking from the entry hall into the dining room, then the kitchen.  It was VERY cozy. This was our Christmas dinner setting.

This is our Christmas Eve dinner all laid out on the kitchen counter.  I loved the view from my window.  It was warmer that Christmas than it was the next.  In 1990, Matt was deployed for Desert Shield, and got to come home for Christmas by the luck of the draw.  His crew drew the plane coming home for maintenance at that time.  THAT year it snowed, but not while he was home.

Here I am kneading bread dough on our little German kitchen counter.  I baked a lot of bread while we were there.  Shared with the landlady when she had field hands to feed, because I had to keep the sourdough starter going, and all the recipes made more than we could use.

Here is a way to get the scale of our tiny place.  This is me next to the divider between dining room and kitchen.  I'm 5'4", wearing probably 2 inch heels.  I weighed about 130 pounds at that time. This was Thanksgiving in 1991, and we were having friends over.  VERY cozy!

This is our little tiny living room, decorated for Christmas.  Piano is on the right, & there's a bookcase behind the door on the left.  This room is straight across from where Matt was standing when he made the previous picture.  This was really supposed to be a bedroom, but we put our bedroom in what was supposed to be the living room because our bedroom set was so big.

Here's our bed in the bedroom, of course, with Taz holding court.  He let us sleep on it sometimes.  That is a standard double bed.  Taz weighed 20 pounds.  He was a BIG kitty.

Here is my desk, the same one I use now, crammed into a corner of the smallest bedroom that we shared as an office.  There was another desk on the other side that held the computer, and two book cases. The computer was a 286.  A Gateway PC, at that.  The package and stuff with it was a care package I was getting ready to pack up and send to Matt.

 

When Matt came back from Desert Storm, I made banners on the computer and put them up all over the place.  This is the one that was on our little porch, or windbreak, around the front door.

And this is the banner that was on the front of our garage.  We did eventually clean it out and put the car in there, but not until after Matt got back from Desert Storm.


I really enjoyed our time in Germany. I walked a lot with my little dog Dougal, our first Schipperke.  He was not as sweet as Mr. Bear, but he was my baby boy, and spoiled, and I loved him.  He just adored his walks in the country out there.  We saw rabbits, hedgehogs, meadowlarks, woodpeckers, hawks, magpies, and horses, and of course the bulls that Peter kept on our farm.  There were also pigs on the farm, but they were kept in the barns and we never saw them.  There were also geese and ducks, and they would escape now and then.  Peter also had two large dogs Blackie, a Newfoundland/Chow mix who was beautiful, huge, and could walk silently.  He was really a sweetie, but he scared the crap out of anybody who didn't know him.  The other dog, Rex, was an elderly German Shepherd with a VERY grouchy disposition.  I had to rescue many truck drivers making deliveries from the dogs until one of the Knoebels could get downstairs to meet them.  I also had to use my sketchy German to tell those wishing to buy a goose for Christmas that they'd have to contact the family upstairs, as I was just a tenant.  (They'd see me in the kitchen kneading bread, and just assume I was the Hausfrau.  So sorry.  ) 

When Matt was deployed in August of 1990 for Desert Shield, the Knoebels took it upon themselves to keep an eye on me.  They checked on me if they didn't see me out and about, invited me up for coffee, taught me a lot more German, and were just wonderful loving people. 
When Matt came back from Desert Storm, they were watching for the car, and all came tumbling out of the farmhouse to greet him.  Even the Yugoslavian guys that were helping with some ordinance removal and the other crew that was helping pick the asparagus came out to shake his hand.  They gave us a bottle of wine, too.  They were all very proud of him, like he was one of the family, and glad to see him home safe and sound.  I really miss the Knoebels.  Silke got married while we were there, and I got to go to the Polterabend.  That means "noisy night" when traditionally guests bring porcelain items that are broken to ward off evil, and the bride and groom to be traditionally clean up.  Well, the Knoebels had LOTS of friends and family nearby, so they set up a HUGE fest tent, hired a small band, and had the Polterabend out on the large front lawn.  People brought porcelain FIXTURES to break, like old sinks and toilets, and they festooned every tree with toilet paper, shredded paper, and confetti.  We ALL helped Silke and Thomas clean up the next day.  Leftover wurst  and beer were served to the helpers. It was great fun.  I had to lock  my apartment door, but only because Irmgard was afraid somebody'd let my dog out and he'd get lost. (Or that they'd use my bathroom and not be very tidy because they were a little the worse for the drink!) I'm glad I never had to buy German toilet paper.  The streamer of it that they managed to toss up and onto the TV antenna on top of the front part of the house was there for at least two years before it disintegrated.  Tough stuff. 

We have lost touch with the Knoebels.  We've been back here for more than 20 years now, and though we corresponded for a few years, time and busy lives got the best of us.  Silke's little Nina was three when we left, Stefanie about a year old.  Nina used to see me in the kitchen making cookies, and I'd hear her out there playing in her sandbox, singing in German, "Katie's making cookies!  She always gives Nina one!"  Even then I had a reputation as a baker who shared. 

I know that Irmgard passed away a year or two after we moved here.  Silke and Elfriede sent me a letter and a photo of the grave, with mounds of flowers on it. So sad, she was such a dear lady, and so kind.  We talked a lot, and the language barrier wasn't so bad.  She taught me a lot.

Perhaps I'll think of a bit more coherent narrative about our time in Germany someday, but for now, this is what I remember, based on these pictures I found.