FRIENDS AND FAMILY
The day after we arrived we had tea at Elke’s house with Ulla and Heiner Hemme invited. Elke and Ulla are Kathe’s two best childhood friends in Winsen. We were served Elke’s homemade apple cake and and butter Kuchen from Vatter Bakery. In Germany a ceremonial tea with Kuchen and tea and coffee along with Schnapps or wine is how friends are welcomed. Meeting two or three families in a day can leave you a little wobbly. But this tea, and tea the following day with Eva and Maria, was special.
It was so good to sit in Germany eating Apfelkuchen and drinking Schnapps and to listen to the family stories, in German, that Elke and Ulla told and the male stories of Winsen that Heinrich and Heiner told. Ulla’s husband, Heiner, was was a well to do owner of a housebuilding company, now retired.
The second day, Saturday, Maria Schrader, Kathe’s brother Hinnerk’s daughter, the film star and film director, and Eva, her sister, who plays the cello and gives lessons, came to visit. But Maria, famous as she is, was simply cousin Maria, sweet and thoughtful and funny and a dear cousin, who happened in another life to be famous, and Eva was equally loving and caring with many stories to tell who made us feel good by her presence. My children, Tom and Susie, have three English cousins, the children or Kathe’s sister, Linde: Martin, Tina and Chrissy. They have three German cousins whose father is Kathe’s brother, Hinnerk: Eva, Henny and Maria. And they have three American cousins, Katie, the daughter of my brother Ted and Mike and Ted, the sons of my sister Anne.
We are in Germany to visit our German cousins. Two of them were here on Saturday afternoon and we are going to visit Henny in Haarlem for two weeks starting on Wednesday when Henny picks us up.
Saturday’s visit began with a sumptious dinner at Jann Hinsch Hof, an elegant hotel and restaurant just behind the Realschule. I had the special of the day, a marvelous wedding soup followed by roast venison with sweet red cabbage and beautifully browned potato puffs.
Then we visited the Winsen cemetery including the birch shoots where we placed Kathe’s ashes last year and then we came to Elke’s house for Apfelkuchen and raspberry cake and tea and coffee followed by a wide variety of liquors that lasted into the evening at 7 when Maria and Eva had to leave for Hamburg where Maria spent the night before returning to Berlin by train Sunday morning.
It was an afternoon and evening full of stories in English and German include a wild story Maria told us about being invited to the presentation ceremony of a new Cartier watch years ago in her one visit to Geneva. It was an over the top evening headlined by Claudia Cardinals, the Italian actress, with a set in a huge tent out of a Las Vegas extravaganza in which at the end she was presented, along with a number of very famous guests including Boris Becker, the tennis star, a 15,000 mark Cartier watch which she has kept in a drawer ever since. She was blown away then and is still in shock. Eva told us about her, by herself, several years ago, around the United States journey by train, bus and rented car when the bus broke down including being accosted alone in the woods by a group of punks from who she escaped by pretending to speak no English.
It was a wonderful evening and made us want to come back to Germany for a long stay as soon as we can.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 