"SOMETIMES PEOPLE FALL INTO OUR LIVES CLEANLY--AS IF OUT OF THE SKY" John Irving

       I was seated in the living room of my German friends’ home waiting to bring in the New Year.  Much to my regret, John could not be with me, nor could Matthias’s wife, Regina, who was in no shape for the New Year festivities, asleep upstairs fighting the effects of a lingering winter “bug.”  Their teenage children Zuren and Kursten, were long gone to friends for their own party, leaving Matthias and I to bring in the New Year on our own.  I thought to myself that it would be a quiet evening and I felt the loss.

      It was five minutes until midnight when Matthias sprang the news on me. “There’s going to be fireworks, let’s view them from upstairs.”  We ascended the stairs to the third story, where he popped open the skylight to the night air. I rubbed my arms and shivered, standing on my tippy toes with my chin resting on the window ledge looking out over the neighboring rooftops toward the Rhine, my breath suspended in the cold crisp air. Matthias switched off the light.  It was dark and cold and I was waiting and unprepared for the event that was about to unfold.  I heard the top pop off of a bottle of champagne, the tall-stemmed glass in my hand now filled with the bubbling spirits.  “One minute,” Matthias said holding up his glass.  His eyes widened with excitement. “Now you will see fireworks, for sure!”  Our glasses met. “Prost!”  I waited.

     It was as if every clock in the region had been set to go off at precisely midnight.  The quiet night erupted with sound and an explosion of shimmering patterns, shapes and colors lit the sky for miles. One after another the fireworks crowded the sky booming and popping and sending an unceasing shower of sparkling stars drifting downward over the landscape and along the Rhine. I tore myself from the window ledge long enough to grab an office chair (the swivel-type with wheels--not the best choice) and stood on it for a better view, leaning farther out of the open window oblivious of the cold or the long drop to the ground below.  I was transfixed by the sight, feeling every nerve ending tingle with excitement. Boom!  Bang!  Pop!  Matthias was saying over and over, “I told you!  I told you.  Really... fireworks for sure.” Pop bottle rockets were going off all around us in the neighborhood as well as firecrackers, whining bombs, and more fireworks disappearing behind the rooftops.  Five minutes.  Ten minutes.  No letup. The sky was on fire!  Tears were streaming down my face.

      Twelve-twenty, all was quiet.  The scene below resembled a London thriller, the air thick with fog, the streetlights casting an eerie and diffused light over the blurred houses and landscape, the smell of black powder lingering the air.  There was a deafening silence.  Jack the Ripper had to be lurking in the shadows.

      All Matthias could say was, “I told you so!”  Fireworks for sure!”

      I shivered, but not from the cold.  All I could say was, “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!”  

     This was one time when I did not have the camera in hand!  You will have to use your imaginations on this one.

XXX

       I am the guest of this wonderful German family who reside in a small village in the heart of the Rhineland.  They have opened their home and their hearts to me and for that I am very grateful-- if not privileged--to have been given this experience. I currently occupy the one-bedroom, fifty-square meter flat in the lower level of their modern, Bauhaus-style home. I lack for nothing. 

       Despite their busy lives (Matthias and Regina are both doctors with two teenage children) they manage to make time for me, in particular the evenings where I am a regular at the kitchen table enjoying another of Regina’s great home cooked meals. There, I am a spectator to their table talk (German spoken of course.) which I don’t completely understand, but body language is universal, especially teenagers’ so I often get the gist of their-- as Matthias puts it--“discussions.”  Above all I have observed that they are a loving family where affection is openly displayed and an unshakable devotion is shared by all.

      The day before Christmas Eve the family packed up the car with presents, prepared meals and our sleeping gear and we traveled along the autobahn to the nine-hundred-year-old village of Medenbach near the city of Wiesbaden (once home to a large American military base.)  This time was going to be dedicated to opah Helmut, (grandfather) Regina’s father, some eighty-plus years in age, who would revel in two days of family and willingly share his table with the American lady who enjoyed stroking his head and occasionally leaning in for an embrace.

      It was a simple atmosphere in this quiet country home near the tenth century church, the barn long empty of the chickens and geese that were once tended to by Helmut’s late wife.  This was a day about family, three generations worth, and I was sharing in their moment, observing, playing games with dice, watching them open presents, wandering around the room looking at old figurines and German wine glasses displayed on the ornate wooden shrunk, and of sepia pictures of a veiled bride and a young groom, their children, my friends, Berthold and Regina in their youth, and the grandchildren.

It was three generations of family bound by love and devotion, and I felt it… everywhere.  

     Christmas Eve opah sat quietly enjoying every morsel of his daughter's rolled up beef (Rouladen) dish, a knoedel (potatodumpling) covered with the rich brown sauce, and the fresh rosenkohl (brussel sprouts.)  For a few days the empty rooms of his home were filled with his family. When the children presented him a handmade calendar with pictures from their recent holiday, opah wept. I was moved.

     It is a German custom to exchange presents Christmas Eve.  The tree is put up and decorated the day before.  Christmas day is just a quiet day set aside for family to enjoy the tree and decorations. 

    

     It was very special sitting around the fire in the living room with my German friends, all of us sated from a meal of roasted wild pig, spaetzel (noodles), a special leafy salad,

red hibiscus champagne and grandma’s homemade fruitcake.

     For you lovers of foreign cuisine I am including the Christmas Eve Rouladen recipe as well as Regina’s yummy German potato salad which was part of our Christmas Eve lunch. 

   

XXX

   

       “We don’t always have a choice how we get to know one another.  Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly—as if out of the sky, or as if  there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth—the same sudden way we lose people who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.”

A quote from John Irving’s novel-- last night in twisted river.

~~

~Let me go back a few years to 1996~.

        

      John and I were visiting the island of Raiatea in the South Pacific. We were guests at the bungalows of Madame Marie Isabel, a French ex-patriot, arrogant in manner but experienced in the art of dining etiquette and French cuisine.  Seated outside in a tropical surround at the large, round table set for six, we awaited the arrival of the other four guests.  A young couple casually dressed, accompanied by an older man and woman, neat in appearance, arrived at seven and took their seats. We exchanged greetings in English, the couples' accents a dead give away to their German origin. Since we were the only guests at Madame Isabel’s, in an atmosphere conducive to intimacy, we began talking over dinner like long lost friends. Berthold, and Eike, German chemists, were traveling with Eike’s parents, Klaus, a retired physician, and his lovely, blue-eyed wife, Friederike.  Like us, they were touring the islands of the South Pacific, making a three-day visit to the island of Raiatea.

       Four strangers “fell into our lives” that year, for what was to be the beginning of a lasting friendship, one that has brought all six of us endless pleasure, a mountain of memories, and the sharing of families, to include Regina and Matthias who are Berthold’s sister and brother-in-law.

~Moving forward~

    

     When Eike phoned to ask if I would come to be with her and Berthold for my birthday (or better still, add to our scrapbook of memories) I willing abandoned the idea of spending it in Prague--the Czech Republic’s real-life Disneyland—agreeing to travel by train (here we go with another of my train comedies) to her small village in the northwest part of Germany close in proximity to the Dutch and Belgian borders.

~

     It was 6:30 in the morning, still dark, bitterly cold and drizzling with rain when Regina drove me to the train.  We did not get off to a good start when we found that the station, cast in darkness with a "closed on Saturday" sign was a preview of a plan about to go  awry. Since we were already there, though, why not walk around to the side of the station and see if the trains were running. To our mutual relief, the lights were on and a few passengers were pacing up and down in the cold. Once we located the outdoor ticket machine Regina tried to purchase my ticket but the machine (maybe too cold like us) refused to cooperate. Then, to make matters worse, she realized we were on the wrong side of the tracks and needed to cross to the other side. I looked at the “black hulk” with dread. Up the flight of stairs I went, one painful step at a time.  Regina offered to carry it. “You won’t be there to help me later, I’ll do it,” I stubbornly insisted. At the rate I was doing the "bump" with the "hulk" I’d be lucky to make the noon train!  “Okay,” I capitulated.  She scooped it up like it was an overnight bag and moved quickly up the long flight of stairs.                  

     On the other side we stood shivering in the bone-chilling cold. “We’ll try to buy the ticket on the train” Regina said, trying to add a pinch of optimism to our frustrating situation. But the trains leave within two minutes of stopping and as I well knew, close the door on you, inside or out! This, too, proposed a problem if Regina intended to board with me.  How then would I alone explain to the German conductor in English my reason for boarding the train without a ticket? My 24 euro fare could end up costing 64 Euros after the fine!  Regina seemed to be scanning her mind for ideas when she spotted a woman coming up the flight of stairs we’d just navigated.  “Wait here,” she said.  Five minutes later she appeared jubilant and waving a ticket in her hand, just minutes away from the arrival of the 7:03 to Monchengladbach.    

       That early in the morning the train was virtually empty except for the verbose, plump-cheeked man wearing the Bavarian-style hat and suspendered trousers that road high on his oversized belly, and his female companion who continued to ply him with food and patted him affectionately on the rump when he left to go to the restroom in the next car.

      Scenes of the Rhine occupied my window. Barges seemed to move in slow motion. Settlements appeared like ghosts from the misty banks. Skeletal remains of medieval castles sat on lonely hilltops. The Rhine, muddy and swollen from the repeated rain had swallowed up the tree trunks, the remaining tree tops resembling the naked spokes of an umbrella. Before every stop a prerecorded voice would announce “nachste station” (next station) as the train whined to a stop and let in an interesting array of passengers during that two-hour ride. Two punk-rockers with skull caps and low-riding Jeans boarded with a beer in hand. The same type I thought that skulk in the darkness with their cans of spray paint, defacing the walls facing the tracks with their initials and bold graffiti. I felt a pinch of apprehension. Even two seats away the smell of cigarettes and the previous night’s excesses drifted in the close air. At the other end of the spectrum, a thin man, impecably dressed sat stick straight, his knees pressed tightly together balancing a manual that held his attention while he nibbled away on his homemade sandwich, taking care not to lose a morsel. I paid particular attention to his odd-looking, silver metal suitcase, my imagination in flight--terrorist in disguise or scientist? And then there was me, still bundled up in my long, black wool coat, my “black hulk” taking up an extra seat, threatening to take off down the aisle at every curve in the tracks or stop. How might the passengers have regarded me? The suitcase was certainly large enough to hold a body!  

     "Nachste station, Monchengladback. Auf wiedersehen," the recording announced---my stop. I exited the train and began to walk my burden-on-wheels down the long flight of stairs, grim with determination but struggling with each step.  Two large women stopped abruptly and pointed to the elevator above. “No,” I replied.  They hesitated, looking at me dumbfounded, but wasted no time grabbing the extra handles on the case and sweeping me down the stairs into the station tunnel. One more time I was saved by German persistence of the female type.  For a moment I was alone, then, I heard Berthold’s voice in the distance calling out my name.

~~

       It was January 8, my birthday, a day shared by the likes of the late Elvis Presley and David Bowie. Berthold and Eike had spent the day preparing the Greek meal, washing the champagne glasses, and setting the table for the dinner party. Later, she stood next to the dining table, rubbing my arm affectionately, proudly pointing out the silver and white felt stars neatly placed in a semicircle around my plate. “You will sit there, Nanine.”she said to her queen for a day. As the day wore on I felt like a little girl anxiously awaiting the others to arrive so we could eat cake and play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

     At 7pm the guests stood in the doorway, those old friends from

visits gone by, smiling faces with gifts in hand. We stood around the fireplace raising our glasses in unison. “Prost!  Happy Birthday, Nanine.” We ate Berthold's Greek spiced veal with vegetables  and a Greek salad and chatted over glasses of champagne, looked at photos and did what people with history do…reminisced and revisited our memories. There was a sad moment as we felt the loss of an old friend who had passed a week prior. 

I capped the evening with a Skype call to John.  The ladies huddled together around the notebook telling him "you haven't changed" and everyone telling me that the evening was not quite complete without him.  For a moment I visited that empty place within. 

     I was a year older, another chapter was finished. These treasured friends that fell into our lives all those years ago were on page eight of this new chapter of my life. I felt blessed.

     “Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--the same sudden way we lose them when it seemed they would always be part of our lives.” Sadly, Klaus, passed just weeks before I arrived in Germany. He is gone, but never forgotten for I will always remember that kind-faced man seated opposite me at Madam Marie Isabel’s table.  Nor will I forget his wife, Friederike’s, soft gently hands on my face saying to the new friend that had fallen into her life, “I love you.”   

      This is my fourth, but decidedly not my last visit here. I  realize how much I have missed this part of Germany where the scenes are as varied as the moods of the seasons.  Look at its  Roman  ruins.

Its golden fields,.

Its fourteenth century  barns and inns.

The densely wooded forests that resonate with the pure sound of nature.

       

     This cold winter in January I walk the narrow roads and forest lanes where Mother Nature's creatures lie dormant beneath a blanket of orange rotting leaves, the smell of horse and cattle farms scent the air, and the morning frost glistens on the grassy fields. 

Out here where nature moves at its own pace I watch the gaenze (geese) bathe in a small pond, flapping their wings on top of the water, dunking their heads beneath the surface then lifting them to stretch their long graceful necks over their backs, orange beaks preening and pulling at the feathers. Then, in one final and frantic act they flutter their wings and jump out of the pond spanning them full and flapping like unfurled sails rippling in the wind, sending a spray of water into the air.  Rituals complete, these little feathered soldiers with the orange webbed feet march in a string back to the warmth of the little wooden gaense house.

      

FROM THE KITCHEN OF REGINA

ROULADEN

      

    
Regina does not cook from a recipe so she says you must use ingredients to your own taste.  The pickle and the mustard really are the flavor givers in this recipe! 

Strips of beef cut or beaten to approximately 1/8” and approximately 8” long and 5” wide.

1 Dill pickle.

Spicy Mustard

Salt and pepper

1 sliced medium onion

Paprika

Lay the beef out and spread with the mustard (don’t be stingy.) Add the other ingredients (not quite to the edges of the beef) with the pickle at the top edge and sprinkle with the salt, pepper and paprika.  Roll the beef to the end holding tightly to the edges and tucking in pieces creeping out the side.  Secure the roll with wire picks or tie with string.  Brown the rolls on all sides, then cover with beef broth or a bullion cube dissolved in water.  Simmer until tender. 

Thicken the juices from the meat.  You can season the gravy but if you use the right amount of the above, they do they job!

My suggestion: Serve with spaetzel or regular noodles and red cabbage.  If you want to get creative, add some shredded carrots to the stuffing.

IF YOU WANT THE RED CABBAGE RECIPE LET ME KNOW.

REGINA’S GERMAN POTATO SALAD

Potatoes boiled in salted water with skins on.

1 onion

Hard boiled eggs

Bacon

Dill or sweet pickles

Juice from the pickles

Salt and pepper

1 tart green apple cut in pieces

Cook potatoes.  When done, drain them then put back on stove (burner off) to remove the excess water.  Set aside and let the potatoes cool. 

Peel potatoes and cut into eights. 

Fry the bacon crispy and break into pieces.

In a large bowl add the potatoes, chopped egg, bacon, pickle and the diced apple.  Add the juice from the pickles and some salt and pepper.  Stir well.  If it’s dry you can add some apple cider vinegar.  Some use some oil, too.  Regina doesn’t.

ENJOY!

WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU.  ARE YOU ENJOYING YOUR JOURNEY?

  

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