Memories

Guten Morgen! For our first night in Deutschland, we stayed at the Hotel Zum Bohmegrund in a little village called Dorfmark. Dorfmark is in between Hamburg and Hannover and slightly northwest of Bergen-Belsen, which if you remember your history, was a concentration camp. Now, I am not a breakfast person. In fact, if possible I will skip breakfast and just go to lunch. If I do eat anything for breakfast it is usually a granola bar or dry cereal. I am not a huge fan of donuts or Danishes. However, I will make an exception for breakfast when in Germany. You haven't eaten breakfast until you have had a German breakfast. When you come down for fruhstuck (breakfast) everything is laid out with perfect German engineering precision complete with dainty flowery decorated china plates and coffee cups. There is orange juice, good strong German coffee (not the weak American stuff), cream, brotchen (a roll that is hard on the outside and soft as a cloud on the inside), a plate of assorted meats and cheeses, hard boiled eggs, black currant and apricot jams, butter, muesli, and Nutella. It is simple, delicious and helps you last through the day!

Our hotel for the night in Dorfmark!

The carved symbols at the top of the building at our hotel are common throughout the northern part of Germany and the Netherlands. The symbols are specific to the type of farm or business you have, in this case, horses, as the hotel did also own horses.

On Wednesday we started our genealogy quest in Germany but on the way to our first stop we decided to take a detour to Kleinrinderfeld which was the last place we lived. On the way, however, we made a little stop where I experienced my first "two footprints and a bulls eye." For those of you who know what I am talking about, it merits no explanation, for those who don't, look it up. Anyway, Kleinrinderfeld is a little village about 15 minutes down the road from Wurzburg, which is where I went to school. Again, there were some waterworks, especially when I saw our old house. We drove by the bakery we frequented, Speigel Bakerei, and Muller's, our favorite restaurant. Herr Muller was the owner and a really cool guy. His food was awesome and he always came over to chat. He was so disappointed when we moved and gave us a going away present of sauerkraut, homemade of course!

A view I remember well. This is what I saw every morning from my bedroom window.

Our house, 13 Rockertstrasse.

Heading down the hill into downtown Kleinrinderfeld.

Herr Muller's, a weekly treat! He would always give me a cookie with my meal, two wafers with a chocolate hazelnut filling.

We also went to St. Leon, a town outside of Heidelberg where we lived for two years in between Berlin and Kleinrinderfeld. The town had changed so much that we had a hard time finding our street, and when we did, we didn't recognize it because there had been so much remodeling done on the houses. We had to drive up and down a about ten times to find our old house which had been seriously remodeled. Once I spotted the little farm that had been across the street we were able to focus and find which house was ours. It wasn't too disappointing for me because we had only lived there two years and it wasn't my "favorite" house. 

What was our house. The right side of the building was our house and the left side was a driving school. The front part of our side was covered in glass squares so it looks like they kept the front glass. But we used to have a larger garden area where my dad and I planted marigolds together. The owner of the farm across the street gave us huge pumpkins once for Halloween. 

         Driving through St. Leon.

It was bittersweet to see where we lived but it was nice to go back, especially to Kleinrinderfeld, so many great memories!

Cheers!

Elizabeth