DISCOVERY, DELIGHT, DESTRUCTION

Do you remember the song, The Happy Wanderer by Friedrich-Wilhelm Möller? I guess it’s only fitting that it bounced through my head repeatedly during the eight or nine hour flight to Frankfort. I was on my way to join my husband in a foreign country for the first time ever. I couldn’t wait!

I’ve always loved travelling. My mother dubbed me “Captain Gada$$” at a very early age. I was always on the go, or begging to go somewhere the minute I got home from wherever we happened to be returning from. Yuck! I know that sentence is a mess, but hopefully you’ll overlook the grammar lapse for now.

My husband and I had travelled some over the years, but never outside the contiguous states, so this was a thrill. However, once I arrived at the Frankfort airport, I was convinced it was all a hoax. Sure, there were signs posted throughout the terminal in a language I couldn’t read, but that didn’t mean I was actually in another country. And once we got on the bus, the landscape was unfamiliar and much greener and more lush than that which I had left behind, but that didn’t mean anything. I remember commenting to my husband that I knew it was a joke and we were probably somewhere in the upper northeast.

Then we arrived at the post where he was stationed, and we piled into the little German model Ford my husband had already purchased. My 1967 Mustang was still on a boat and wouldn’t arrive in the country for another two weeks.  

One of my husband’s coworkers picked us up. We drove through an unfamiliar town and headed out along a highway with breathtaking scenery. As we proceeded, the elevation rose. Before long we turned off the highway and began a sharp climb up a mountain. I counted (for the first of many times) thirteen switchback turns until we reached the top. A scene right out of a storybook unfolded before us. A lovely little village spread out all around, with a twisting, narrow thoroughfare cutting through the middle. If I looked out the side window I could see sheep grazing on the steep hillsides. Window boxes filled with bright blooms decorated windows that were opened wide to the brisk mountain air and golden sunshine. I fell in love.

We lived in that little village for several months while we waited for government housing. The apartment building we found was small, just two apartments upstairs, and the other family were also American military people, so I had someone to talk with. But I didn’t have a lot of time for talking. I spent many of my days exploring the village. I would pack my daughter up in her stroller and walk up the hill to town. We had to shop daily, because our refrigerator was tiny – as were many of the conveniences we Americans take for granted. But I loved exploring the shops and getting to know the inhabitants. I found that if I at least attempted to speak to them in their language, they were more than happy to laugh at my efforts and then explain that they could speak English. I never left a shop without a small token prize for my daughter. A generous slice of delicious bologna from the meat market. A piece of ripe fruit from the grocery store. And the tiny department store – where I purchased a pillow, towels and blankets, always gave her gummi bears. She learned to say, “Danke” very quickly, which delighted the townspeople.

But all the time I was finding so much enjoyment in this new culture, my body was trying to destroy itself. One luxury I did not have was a clothes dryer. My husband managed to procure a miniature washing machine, which I had to push across the kitchen and attach to the very small sink in order to fill it with water. It wasn’t very efficient, and I usually had to wring out the clothes by hand. The forceful twisting soon became painful, and before long my hands began to swell across the lower knuckles. Then I had to hang the clothes outside from the balcony. The weather turned cold soon after we arrived, and often the clothes would freeze before they would dry.

I found that soaking my hands in hot water relieved the pain a bit, but our water heater was about the size of a backpack, so I didn’t like wasting it. Also, our landlady, although a very sweet woman, was very frugal with the coal, so our apartment stayed cold. I was grateful that I had listened to a friend when she told me to pack for colder weather. The cold didn’t seem to bother my daughter too much, but I wore numerous layers, and often gloves, just to stay comfortable in the house.

Before long the snow came, and I would sit in the living room and watch it float down in flakes the size of baseballs. The valley became a winter wonderland as the snow turned everything white and turned every unfamiliar landmark and bush into mysterious creatures. I tuned out the aches and pains while I absorbed the scenery and basked in the beauty that surrounded me.

Unfortunately, all too soon we received notification that we were up for housing. We left the mountaintop and became town dwellers. And the disease moved with us, voracious and armed for battle.