Revisiting the past
Forty five years ago, while working in Israel on a kibbutz, I met a pleasant German girl called Friedlinde. We clicked quite well and, in the course of my stay, she invited me to Germany to work for a church organisation. Her father was the director the organisation. After leaving Israel, I spent time in the UK, the stories of which are yet to be published.I contacted Friedlinde (pronounced freed-lin-dee) through the occasional letters we sent to each other and arranged to train to Stuttgart to meet her there. At the time, ferries took you from Dover and then you boarded a train in France, Belgium or the Netherlands. I remember little of this trip, but I know that I carried very little and certainly not any warm clothing. Germany was approaching winter - Herbst (Autumn). Upon arrival at Stuttgart, I was greeted by Friedlinde's family who spoke quite passable English.
As it transpired, Friedline's father had arranged for me to work in northern Germany, as they were in need of staff at a facility called Freizeitheim Hohenboken. This meant Friedlinde would have to drive me the length of Germany, as I had no means to get to the new workplace. We did this on autobahns and I insisted that I ought to drive. When we approached on enormous vehicle that was as wide as three lanes and accompanied by several police cars, I saw a moment of opportunity to pass in a wider section and accelerated to overtake this vehicle. Only after we were past did Friedlinde tell me that passing such vehicles was illegal. Oh well. Nothing came of it, so I guess they simply couldn't be bothered giving chase.
We were able to drive the length of Germany in one day (about 650 km). I was installed in my room at a grand 'hotel' like establishment that the church organisation used for conferences. Thence, I was 'employed' as a domestic worker, peeling potatoes, emptying bins, mopping rooms and carrying food and drinks from the basement to the dining hall.
I spoke no German at all but, as fate would have it, nobody spoke passable English in a small town called Bookholzberg or at the 'hotel'. The boss, Herr Zwingelberg, spoke English by adding 'ly' to a bunch of German words, some familiar but many not. Immersion in a language and isolation from your mother-tongue can lead to rapid language learning, albeit with lots of slang and idiom and large holes in vocabulary.
I worked with the boss and his wife Irene who was lovely but stern and I was forever being reprimanded. They were sure that Australia was a 'backward' nation only recently having appropraite sanitation in our buildings. They gave me clothes, as I have only a few shorts and T-shirts. I remember walking through the snow in tall boots with fur lining, with a T-shirt on a large jacket they gave me.
The other workers were a Brazilian girl who frequently praised 'Jesu Christu' (yee-sue crist-oo) most ardently which, because it sound like something fun to say, I repeated often. She was shocked by this and she quickly declared me a heathen. A German girl, a local, was stern and sharp. She declared, after a few weeks, that I was 'faul und drekig' (lazy and dirty). In terms of the directness of Germans, one might almost assume she was in love with me.
Harald Zwingelberg, the father of the boss, lived at the establishment. He was a member of the Hitler Jugend in his teens and spoke, as I found out through Friedlinde's translation, most glowingly of the Nazis. They had, he asserted, cleaned up Germany, banishing gay people and bringing the country back to God. Most interesting. I had only months before spoek, again through a generous German 'interpreter' to a Holocaust survivor (with a tatooed arm). She warmed to the young German visitors to the kibbutz and I surmised many years later that, as she spoke no Hebrew, that they reminded her of a life she had as a young girl in Germany, with many non-Jewish friends.
Learning another language requires the re-training of neurons assemblies in your brain. I found that making mistakes was very useful, as Germans were happy to correct me. In particular, one monumental mistake stood out. An ancient lady, not realising I was foreign, thought my stumbling German was unacceptable and called me 'frech' (to rhyme with Shrek) which, depending on tone and context means either 'cheeky' or 'insolent'. Naturally, I had no idea what she was saying, so I simply started repeating 'frech' around the place, which made her livid.
One of my regular chores was to take crates of drinks up and down from the cellar. This was uneventful and someimes a welcome relief from other kitchen chores. Mostly, this happened during the day. The door in the cellar was open and I simply walked into the store room and stacked the create where it best fitted. However, one night I was servicing a group and went down into the cellar, which was now dark. I was not accustomed to turning off the light, but knew the passage well. However, someone had closed the door. And this door was made of glass in a light timber frame.
Walking at full speed, I crashed through the glass door, impaling my arm as the glass fell. The boss and his wife, alarming at the crash, were soon on the scene but only after I had spilt a substantial amount of blood on the floor. There was a rush to stem the flow and then a journey into Delmenhorst to the doctor. Naturally, everybody assumed I was drunk, even the most pleasant doctor. Little did they know that I drank very little in those days, compelled into semi-tetotalling by my rigid Brehtren upbringing.
Late in my 'stint' at the hotel, Christmas came along with a yung lad who was completing Zivildienst, the alternative to miltary duty for those who can show religious or physical reasons why they cannot do military duty. He and I had a very merry Christmas indeed, the highlight of which was wandering through the recreation of the Nativity scene in several scenes, complete with live actors, sheep and a manger. Christmas is completely different to that to which we are used.
On New Years Eve, Germans light fireworks at midnight. As the balcony of the top story of the workplace was high above the surrounding country, which is dead flat, we could see for kimoletres. Everybody in northern Germany, it seemed, had set off fireworks. Reflected in the fresh snow and with the influence of alcohol, I might well have been in some fairy tale land. In particular, on firework created an enormous red glow like an atom bomb and I became convinced that the Cold War (at its height at the time) had suddenly turned hot.
Compared to the disasters and lucky escapes of other countries, the stories told elsewhere, my stay was quite uneventful. From time to time I walked down into Bookholzberg, a few kilometres away, for a beer and occasionally a sausage. I got to eat quark by the litre and attend coffee evenings at which it was considered ill-mannered to refuse slice after slice of rich cakes. Germans at that time still remembered the atrocious years after the war when women became sex workers for American GIs to feed their families and food shortages were frequent. Eat while you can, was the ethos of the old folks we visited as part of the Sunday ritual.
During these times, I had no money to travel and was bound to my employment by virtue of it feeding and accomdating me. The Zingelbergs treated me to trips to nearby cities and loaned me a bike to ride around the country. Thus, I saw little of Germany.
I could not have imagined at the time that it would take me 45 years to return to Germany. I figured that my life would be full of travel, as it was to some extent. But, my desire to return waned and other destinations became more attractive. But since I have started to recount my experiences to my children, it seemed not only possible, but also somewhat like a pilgrimmage, to return and to revisit my memories for the benefit of the stories I was telling to my children.
In the next chapter, I will recount my time travelling adventures.