Hair New Era

It is five years ago today that my mom passed away. She was 85 years old. I still miss her very much.

My mom was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1921 as the oldest of four children. She is a real Berliner, always missing that city throughout her life. During her childhood, however, she spent many summers in West Prussia (Poland today) and always remembers it tenderly. She told us many stories of her childhood which was a happy one. My favorite one was how she pushed her brother into an anthill as a revenge that he had damaged her doll. I loved this story as a child, and now of course my daughter loves to hear this story over and over.

She married rather young and had her first child, a girl, in 1943, almost two months after her husband was killed in Russia. She was 21 years old.

Because of the heavy bombardment of Berlin, women with children were "ordered" out of the city. My mom (unfortunately) went to the East, to a small town which after the war belonged to East Germany and is right at the border to Poland. At the end of January 1945 the Soviet Army came into town, but was beaten back for a couple of days. During that small window of time, the residents of that town packed and left to the West in a long trek of people, becoming refugees in the dead of winter. My mom didn't tell too much of that time, only that every night they found a place to sleep at some farm and somehow they survived. It must have been traumatic. What she told us, though, was, when finally in the West, one GI took a picture of my sister (who was just two years old) sitting on her pot peeing at the side of the road! Funny, what one remembers.

She settled down in Lower Saxony where she worked at a doctor's office (the closest she ever got to her dream) and had a rather unhappy second marriage (she had remarried in late 1944). Here she met my dad and, after her divorce, they married in 1955 in Lüneburg and a year later my brother was born.




She was also a very compassionate woman. For decades she volunteered at the hospital as a so-called "green lady" who looked after patients, read to them, talked to them or just listened. She only stopped doing this when she was 82 years old.



When I became a mom myself, my mom and I connected on a different way - as mothers. I could tell her about my doubts, and how helpless and stupid I sometimes felt. She could understand. And she would put me at ease.


I wish I had asked her more questions. I wish we had gone away together more, just the two of us. We once spent two weeks on Sylt, the island in the North of Germany, and we had such a wonderful time. I found out how important mother-daughter time is, how rewarding. I regret that she never came to visit me in the States. I am sad that Kaefer has lost such a wonderful grandparent.

Of course she and I had our difficult times - but we were always very honest with each other. We both knew that we loved each other very much. She was very special for me. I love her - and I miss her terribly.

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This is the setting for one of the most beautiful traditions of the town: the Christmas Market. It's nothing like its big siblings in Nürnberg, Stuttgart or München and so many other cities. First, it only takes place from Friday to Sunday and not weeks and weeks and weeks. Second, it's not commercial. There are tons of local artists who sell their work, school classes who raise funds for their annual end-of-the-year trip, small local environmental groups who fight for preservation, neighborhoods who try to raise awareness and money for the disabled - the list could go on and on.

So that's the eye-candy. The next is the food - just one word: delicious. The food is mainly local specialities, the best time to eat "Bubaspitzle mit Sauerkraut" (a thin rolled kind of potato pasta with sauerkraut and sometimes bacon), one of my fondest memories in the food department. There was a guy with a complicated portable special oven who made Swiss Raclette that was to die for. Of course there was Glühwein (mulled wine), very welcome in the cold. None of the food or the drink was allowed in any kind of plastic or paper container, everything had to be re-usable! So you bought a beautiful mug with the words "Tübinger Weihnachtsmarkt" written on it and this could be refilled at any booth that offered Glühwein or juice punch (I still have half a dozen of those mugs - each year has a different color). Most of the plates were eatable - envision big sturdy waffles for apple strudel! No trash!

Throughout the market you could listen to music. Children were singing, little choirs stood at the fountain in the market square, someone played the violin, another one the bagpipe, and again another one the flute. There was a cantata concert in the main church. There were jugglers and clowns. It was a very festive atmosphere.

We felt like community, we were community. People spending three days in the cold in order to help someone else. To serve others. To share stories. To entertain children and their stressed parents. To bring smiles on the cold faces, red cheeks from the mulled wine.

That third weekend in December, no matter whether the sun was shining, it was raining or snowing, was spent in the streets among those medieval buildings. It was freezing cold - always. But everyone was there. Community.

Carmen of Tails of a Biomouse chose the word for this week, "gypsy".

The very first thing that came to my mind was the song "Gypsy" by Fleetwood Mac, written by Stevie Nicks. I could hear her smokey, sometimes almost hoarse voice that I love so much, singing those beautiful lyrics, "to the gypsy that remains faces freedom with a little fear".

To the gypsy that is within all of us, often hidden away.

Somehow, gypsies belong to my childhood. The Roma people, who used to tour around the country in their trailers, making camp for a few days at the edge of a town, observed from the distance by the "decent" people, not welcomed, and finally seen with relief how they were leaving the area again. Whatever happened during that time - a break in, a car that disappeared from the street, stolen bicycles - was blamed on the gypsies. No one who talked about them had anything good to say.

They hold a big fascination for me. I tried to imagine their lives, envied their kids who did not have to go to school but could run around barefoot. I envied them for living in a trailer instead of a third floor apartment. In my eyes they were wild, free and had no worries. Their life was colorful and adventurous whereas mine was just plain boring.

Later, they disappeared more and more. Only seldom did a group of Roma make camp anymore.

I found them again in the book "Chocolat" by Joanne Harris. The theme of homelessness and traveling took stage in the movie "La Strada" by Federico Fellini, a movie that deeply touched me.

And then I found them again on another continent - the Bedouins in Egypt. They lived in tents in the desert. They had no steady home. They were curious. They were friendly. They offered us tea. They tried to sell their handmade jewelry, a meagre way to make some money.

I felt the same fascination as I did when I was a child.



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Inspiration Avenue's weekly challenge really got my thinking cap on this week. "Community" is the theme, and if possible connected with food. Think Thanksgiving, huh? After all, it's November. But I thought there must be more to it than a turkey and a friendly gathering of family and friends.

And I remembered the third weekend in December back in Tübingen, Germany, where I spent twenty years of my life. It's a medieval university town with its typical old buildings that look like they're straight out of a fairy tale by the Grimm Brothers. Narrow lanes wind among those houses and cars are not allowed within the city center. It's a huge pedestrian zone that makes wandering the old alleys so peaceful.

This is the setting for one of the most beautiful traditions of the town: the Christmas Market. It's nothing like its big siblings in Nürnberg, Stuttgart or München and so many other cities. First, it only takes place from Friday to Sunday and not weeks and weeks and weeks. Second, it's not commercial. There are tons of local artists who sell their work, school classes who raise funds for their annual end-of-the-year trip, small local environmental groups who fight for preservation, neighborhoods who try to raise awareness and money for the disabled - the list could go on and on.

So that's the eye-candy. The next is the food - just one word: delicious. The food is mainly local specialities, the best time to eat "Bubaspitzle mit Sauerkraut" (a thin rolled kind of potato pasta with sauerkraut and sometimes bacon), one of my fondest memories in the food department. There was a guy with a complicated portable special oven who made Swiss Raclette that was to die for. Of course there was Glühwein (mulled wine), very welcome in the cold. None of the food or the drink was allowed in any kind of plastic or paper container, everything had to be re-usable! So you bought a beautiful mug with the words "Tübinger Weihnachtsmarkt" written on it and this could be refilled at any booth that offered Glühwein or juice punch (I still have half a dozen of those mugs - each year has a different color). Most of the plates were eatable - envision big sturdy waffles for apple strudel! No trash!

Throughout the market you could listen to music. Children were singing, little choirs stood at the fountain in the market square, someone played the violin, another one the bagpipe, and again another one the flute. There was a cantata concert in the main church. There were jugglers and clowns. It was a very festive atmosphere.

We felt like community, we were community. People spending three days in the cold in order to help someone else. To serve others. To share stories. To entertain children and their stressed parents. To bring smiles on the cold faces, red cheeks from the mulled wine.

That third weekend  in December, no matter whether the sun was shining, it was raining or snowing, was spent in the streets among those medieval buildings. It was freezing cold - always. But everyone was there. Community.

While I visited some blogs today I noticed a photo on Kat's The Kat Eye View of the World, a blog that I read regularly. Kat's photo showed some wooden toy characters, one of them being Pinocchio.

"The Adventures of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi - written in 1881 - is a very popular children's book in Germany. Kat's picture reminded me of our visit to Pisa in 2000 when then two-year old Kaefer checked out the little Pinocchio string puppets that were for sale almost everywhere.

Over the weekend I was looking through some older pictures, of my daughter's first years. All these pictures were taken as slides and scanned and transformed into digital over the past 12 months (about 13,000 slides all in all - a lot of work, as you can imagine). Since I haven't seen them too often when they still were in the slide format, I have forgotten about some of them.

I had such a blast looking through them. These were taken while we still lived in Germany and I suddenly remembered so many happy moments. This particular picture belongs to a series of my daughter playing at the fountain in the centre square of the little village where we lived. I love this shot so much that I decided to have it as my Best Shot Monday since I re-discovered it over the weekend.


If you want to see what other photographers have as their best shot, you can stop by Tracey Clark's wonderful blog. Always worth a visit!

Happy Fourth of July to you!!!

On this day I remember our very first Fourth of July in the US. We had moved here two months before and didn't know many people. Kaefer asked almost every day when we were going back to Germany, she really missed her little friends. I felt pretty lonely, too, and was yearning some adult conversation. I found myself WAITING for the Geek coming back from work. In short: we weren't what you'd call happy.

In the evening of July 3rd, we had just finished dinner, our door bell rang. Standing outside was a middle-aged couple holding some homemade pie in their hands. Turned out they were neighbors a few houses down the road who wanted to welcome us to the neighborhood. We invited them in, shared the pie and had some wine - and received an invitation to join the neighborhood fireworks in front of their house the very next day.

It was a happy Fourth for us. We got to know so many neighbors, had some food and wine, lots of laughter and, of course, colorful fireworks. It was the very first time since moving to the States that I felt some sense of belonging. I love my neighborhood.