Kassel

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In a land of fairytales, lives a woman who knows them all by heart. Not only does she know them, she uses them to explain her feelings; to explain how she sees the world. “There once was a King, who everyone thought was very smart. Then there was a man in the town who wanted to show that the King was not as smart as everyone thought he was, so he made him fine dresses and then King wore them into town. Then the man laid out nothing and when the King came out he said, ‘Where is it? I see nothing.’ And the man said, ‘Can you not see it? It is right here. You must not be very smart if you cannot see the special dress I have made for you.’ So the King, not wanting to appear stupid, very quickly said, ‘Oh, yes, yes, I can see it is right here.’ And so he went out in the streets with nothing on and all of the people stared and were too scared to say anything out loud so he could hear, but then a young boy shouted out, ‘Look at him! He is not wearing anything! What a silly King!’ So, when I look at this modern art I think that there are people who look and say ‘Oh, yeah its fine.’ But to me, it is nothing!”That was my favorite part of our visit to the Modern Art Museum on Saturday.



That is how Ilse sees the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all related everything to a fairytale? Heather and I relate everything to “Friends,” I suppose that’s good enough, I mean, Ross and Rachel do finally get together and as far as we know, it’s happily ever after. 😊



Kassel is the place I have been so excited to return to. Like Oma Ilse’s fairytales, it’s a place I associate with just about everything good in the world. Summer time and walks through the forest, with of course, fairytales being told by Oma Ilse, seeing the Herkules and running up the stairs with Conor, the zip-line at the playground and even complete with a palace, a castle and Rapunzel’s tower, for a ten-year-old girl life didn’t get much better. But if there is one thing that I have learned in the last week with Jana and Anna, so much changes in ten years. Karl and Ilse still have quite a lot of spunk, but they are 84 and 80, its winter and so Kassel isn’t lush and green as it has been engrained in my memory, and the absence of my family really stands out here. Until now, nowhere in Europe has actually had a previous memory attached to it. I guess you could say Kassel makes me familysick a little bit. Mom has been being nice and calling it “travel weary.” 😊



I feel bad saying that, since all of our family friends in Germany have made me feel like nothing but family. From Elisabeth to Jana, and Anna (especially her Mom) and now Karl and Ilse, I have felt a lot of German love. It was so great coming off the train and seeing Karl and Ilse waiting at the entrance. I walked up and Ilse immediately came forward and gave me a big hug and said, “Hallooo Devin! I am your German Grandma! As we were watching and looking at all of the people coming out we kept wondering, ‘Oh, is that her? Is that her?’ and then I saw you and I said, ‘That’s our girl.’”



I am SO excited to see Karl and Ilse again, but never have I wished so hard I spoke German! I feel so bad because Ilse is just trying so hard to remember her English and I can only understand bits of German. They are doing a wonderful job though, and it is really sort of neat to be in their house and I actually recognize it. Everything is the same, right down to their 130 year-old furniture they got from Karl’s grandmother, the only thing that has changed is that the piano has moved from their house to Iris’s. And some things never change, as Ilse’s cooking is as delicious as I can remember, although I think Conor probably remembers more than I do. Poor kid. I can still remember my Mom telling him to leave a little food on his plate because otherwise Ilse would just keep putting more and more on it. Unfortunately, I don’t think Conor forgot, but I think he thought he could handle it and he ate, and ate, and ate. I guess he was 15 and had the metabolism of Seabiscuit so it was no issue, but I still remember the rule and it has come in handy. 😊 On Sunday she even made kartoffelknödel. “I make this special for your Mom because it is her favorite, so I make it for you!”



Karl and Ilse have lots of stories to tell, and they tell them well considering how long it’s been since they have had to speak any English, and they are so funny too! “Opa Karl is in charge of the drinks.”



“Yes! Opa likes a beer. I heard Americans like Coca-Cola, so I bought some Coca-Cola. I also have water, tea, orange juice, beer, wine, liquor? You know what they say, wine is fine, but liquor is quicker. I heard that from a friend from America and when I told Loretta that she laughed. Yes, and she has such a nice laugh.”



I laughed at that, because it’s true! We all love Grandma Heiden’s laugh!



It was so nice to just sit and talk with them a bit and they showed me a video of the fountain at the Herkules since it is turned off in winter, but after that I was pretty tired. Iris, Mom, Karl and I all thought it would probably be best if I stayed at a hotel so that it wasn’t too stressful for Karl and Ilse. Ilse apparently needed some convincing but Iris and Karl are persuasive folk, however Karl and Ilse insisted that I stay as their guest at a hotel nearby. When I say nearby, I mean that if it were a very clear day I might be able to wave to them from the hotel, haha! It’s just about a five minute walk away and it’s the oldest hotel in all of Kassel! “We had some friends that came over the summer and we booked them rooms here in the hotel, so I came and looked at lots of rooms and I thought this one was so cute. Our friend that stayed in that room said that whenever she is back in Kassel she will always stay at this hotel and in this room, so I thought, well, maybe this will be a nice room for Devin.” See what I mean? Aren’t they just the cutest little German Grandparents you ever heard of? And it gets cuter. I should have taken the picture of the cell phone Karl gave me in case I needed them while I was at the hotel. Its probably from 1992. “In Germany we call it a ‘handy.’ Everyone calls it a ‘handy’ and they think that they are speaking English, but no one in America or England says ‘handy’!”



On Sunday we went to Schloss Wilhelmshöhe and Karl waited in the warm café with a nice drink while Ilse and I got a private tour of the palace! “Yes, you can tell everyone it was very expensive to get this private tour!” Well, it was “raining dogs” and Ilse and I were the only ones there! Haha! The tour was free for Ilse and cost a whole 2 euros for me. 😊 The tour guide couldn’t speak English but they had a guide book that I could read that followed the tour, so really Ilse got the super-private tour, but it I kept hearing the tour guide say “ja, genau” (yea, exactly!), so I’d image Ilse probably already knew as much as our guide! Haha!



After lunch we took advantage of the fact that it wasn’t raining to go and see the Herkules. Well, when I say it wasn’t raining I mean at least it wasn’t raining. Up at 600m it was terribly windy and super cold! I felt so terrible that Ilse and Karl stood out there at all, let alone long enough to get a photo! “Scheisse wetter!” I understood that one. Shit weather. That’s true Opa. In our defense it was sunny almost the moment we got to the house after we went to the palace, sunny all during lunch, and sunny when we got in the car. Then on our ride over to the Herkules it didn’t seem too sunny, and then at the top it was just awful! “The weather was kidding us!” This was Opa Karl’s catch phrase for the weekend I think, especially today. I woke up and saw sun shining through my window, but this wasn’t the first morning this had happened so I wasn’t convinced. Sun. Sun shining all morning up until my train left at 1pm and sun all on the train ride. The most sun I’ve seen since I’ve been in Germany!



Despite the bad weather, Karl and Ilse have enough photos and videos to keep a person busy for a century of rainy days. They showed me photos of my Mom’s first visit to Germany in 1976 as well as our family trips in 1990 and 2001 and Ilse even showed me her ice skating photo album! She has a poster in her basement that they made after she got to skate again on her 80^th birthday last year. I saw photos of their trips to the United States, Greece, Namibia, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, Bali, Morocco, Russia, New Zealand, Australia, really anywhere in the world you can think of, they have been. The have even been to Lake Bykal in Siberia! I really want to see Lake Bykal. It’s the largest freshwater lake in the world and holds 1/5 of the world’s fresh water! It’s as long as Nebraska, but 5 months out of the year it is covered in three feet of ice. It’s cool, right!?



They also had videos of my Mom and Dad and Conor back in 1990. What a cute little kid Conor was! “Hallo! Conor!”



“Guten Taaaaaag!”



So adorable with his almost-white blonde hair and action figures. I thought of Conor lots while I was here. On my first walk over to Petry’s from my hotel I passed the park that we played at when we were here 10 years ago, complete with the Zip-line. As Conor says, that thing is dangerous in all the right ways. 😊 Also my terrible fear of bee’s that I had (had? No, have) which Conor tried to cure by making me sit on a bench surrounded by bee infested plants. However, in winter there are no bees, no pretty flowers, but also no bees. Therefore, 10 years later, my Mom can finally have her photo of me smiling in front of Rapunzel’s tower at Schloss Wilhelmsthal, which we visited Monday…again in the rain. Although there was a camera crew out there for the local news, so Ilse and I might make it on the German News! 😊



Oma and Opa wanted to take me lots of places. Its harder for them to get around now, but they manage well. My fondest memories from our visit with them ten years ago are the visits we took where Ilse would tell me fairytales at the place where the fairytales are actually based from. Rapunzel's Tower at Wilhelmsthal was one of them. With the bad weather I was content to just be at the house with them, "Well, I think tomorrow we can go see Rapunzel's Tower and do you remember the story I told you when you were a little girl about the princess who lived inside of the tree? I think we can go for that walk again." Rain and mud prevented the walk to the old tree, a walk I do remember, very well. I loved hearing Oma's stories. She and Opa have literally lived through a war. I remember sitting on my Dad's lap on their porch as Oma told us of how she and her family fled from their home in what is today Poland, and Opa's story of how he was a Russian Prisoner of War and swam across the river to the American camp, thinking he was finally safe, only to learn that a rule between the Americans and the Russians is that they would give back any soldiers the Russians had captured. That is a story that Opa repeated to me. They have seen so much, and they document everything!



I also saw videos that they converted from celluloid that were of their first trip to the US in 1979. Pretty much, lots of seeing Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Terri and UB, and my parents looking very, very young. I told my parents about it that night when we spoke on the phone: “We were young once?” Yes, Dad, you were young once. And very svelte! 😊



"How old is Rex now?"

"Well, Dad just turned 60 actually!"

"Oh, he is still a young man."

"Is he still golfing? I remember when we went with your parents in the mobile-home we stopped and your Dad got out a golf club and hit it so hard you could hear it zoom and you couldn't see it but you could hear it!"

I didn't see a video of that one, but they did have a picture of Dad hitting a golf ball off of a ledge...isn't that illegal Rex R. atty? 😊






Karl and Ilse liked watching the videos because they said it had been so long since they had seen them that they had forgotten, and even though they can’t travel so far anymore, they can remember when they watch the videos. “If I could visit anywhere in the world again it would be New Zealand, but the trip is too far, too strenuous. I don’t get to go as many places now that I am old and I cannot walk as quickly and as far.”



“Yes, but you’ve walked a lot of kilometers in your life Opa.”



“Yes, that’s true. Many good kilometers.”



What a life they have lived. And all of it preserved in photos, videos, and their guestbook that has a note from every guest they have had since 1954. I got to read the notes left by nearly everyone in our family over the years since my Mom’s first visit in 1976. And I got to write my note, with much better handwriting than when I was ten. 😊



It’s hard to describe how much this visit has meant to me. Karl and Ilse are so special to my Mom, and our visit ten years ago could quite possibly be the root of my desire to study abroad. I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt that it was me and not my Mom who got to see Karl and Ilse. It’s amazing to think how much has come of the little exchange program that Mom and Iris did over 35 years ago. Our relationships with Karl, Ilse, Iris, Nicole and Thorsten and now baby Luca! Saying goodbye to Karl at the car wasn’t so bad, but saying goodbye to Ilse as I got on the train to actually leave was a bit hard. They treat me as like I am their granddaughter. They gave me a hug and a kiss every night when I left for the hotel and every morning when I got to their house. They sat with me for hours to show me photos and films of all of their vacations and of their lovely Kassel. They are very special people and I am so lucky my Mom got placed in their home with Iris. As I said when I was ten, I hope I get to see you again, Opa Karl und Oma Ilse. 😊



Love always,

Your Honey Girl 😊



(or Chocolate Girl)

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Photos

The Herkules on my walk to Oma and Opa
Cloudy days!

The Helper
"Before the woman stayed in the house and we had helpers to help with the cleaning and the children."
"Yes, we have the bell, but when we ring it no one comes."
"Yes, no one comes but my wife."
"No. No one comes."

Kartoffelknödel!
Mom's favorite food of Ilse's

Looking so Young!
Opa and Oma with Mom and Dad at Mt. Rushmore!

Rapunzel's Tower
Much happier without the bees!