remembering Oma

back blip due to the SD card being shoved into the wrong slot of the iMac (design FAIL!) and me taking a while to get it back out again (it wasn't me who put it in)

Yesterday we went on our annual trip out to where Mr Spitzi's Granny lived and where he spent many happy holidays as a child. We go there and meet two of her old "girls" who had been her apprentices MANY years ago and were her friends and helpers in her old age and, also to meet the woman who started off as her cleaning lady and became the treasure one hopes to find for all old people who need proper love and care and not just "care".
As always, we started off around 8ish in the morning, had breakfast somewhere on the motorway and then arrived too early (it's traditional!) which means we have just enough time to drive past her old house and make sure that the quince tree is still there (it is) and tell the children that, look, those are the steps where she used to sit and wait for us to come and there used to be a tree there and there, no there, she had her berry bushes and and and. And then we drive to the restaurant where we always went with her and where we celebrated her 90th birthday and then, a few years later, had the meal after the funeral which was so much fun and so sad at the same time. And then we churn out all the old memories and I eat chips, even though I usually don't, because she ALWAYS ordered chips, no matter how posh the restaurant was. And after that, we go to her grave and talk about that for a while and we go to the chapel, which is always locked so we can't get in and see Mr. Spitzi's biological grandfather's name on the war memorial. The grandfather he knew is buried with his grandmother.
And then we go off to eat cake and drink coffee and tell more tales. Yesterday, the old ladies were in fine form. They speak in a really thick dialect so I find it hard to understand but they got themselves stuck on WW2 and told us loads of interesting things about what it was like to be a young woman then. The older of the "girls" had been the blacksmith's daughter and she knew ALL the gossip. Apparently, people would gather at the smithy because it was warm, so all the stories got told there. The younger of the "girls" had left school in 1944, aged 14 and went, as girls had to then, into service to help a family where the man was at war. She told us how she would have to trudge through the snow to take lunch to the "frenchman" (a PoW, we assumed) who would work all winter in the forest and how she got bad chilblains so she could hardly sleep any more and her dad gave her rabbit fat to rub on her toes to keep them warm (bleurgh!!)
And we heard that biological granddad had a pet squirrel and he carried it round with him. And that great great granddad was a teacher and great granddad was his illegitimate off-spring "a secret that everyone knew", there was a lot of nudging and giggling at that point....
And so we went off home again, full of food and stories and family, looking forward to next year. The younger of the "girls" has said, after many years of meeting her, that I can call her by her first name, which is a real honour and she also said I looked healthier and happier than I did last year, which was a lovely thing to say!!