Life is a Journey: Live it (Part 34)

The other autobiography
Frieda Schöngruber sat straight, looked around, and after that directly into my eyes. They were all seemingly tired. The walk took its toll. She asked: “Oh, please, not a serious story of yours, Sir. Let us hear something nice. Something's sweet to make us sleep well tonight.“

For a moment, I thought and came up with a great idea: “From my humble beginning. What suits you?“

„Humble beginning?“ asked Frieda Schöngruber and looked around. No objections seen. „Yes, go ahead, please.“

„Well! I was born on September 9, 1959, as the second child of Ruth Willers and Rolf Heinz Heerde. My late mother, after the divorce, changed her name back to Willers, her maiden name. Born in the early hours at half past three in the morning, my mother delivered me in the hospital Finkenau, today a residential area with a home for old people and some flats. A few days after I was born, my mother took me to our new flat in Alte Wöhr 19, first floor, seen from the street on the left side. The flat had three little rooms, a kitchen, and a bath. Two rooms had windows to the street, the third and the kitchen to the back, looking into a closed courtyard. The bath had no window. In all, the apartment had 65 sqm and was pretty normal in the olden days for four or five people, as in the first years my father would live in it too. When my father lived with us, I cannot remember anything.

At first, the room facing the courtyard was our children's room, the room without the balcony facing the street, which later became my room, was used as the master bedroom, and the balcony room facing the street as well was always the living room, later shared by my mother as her bedroom as well. The kitchen had an oven and a sink, no washing machine, no dishwasher. Around the window, we had her seating area, and in the back was a food cabinet in which my mother stored food and kitchen utilities. As washing machines in the olden days were expensive, my mother used a big metal pot, put it on the electric cooker, brought water to a boil before adding washing powder, and would stir the washings until they were cleaned before rinsing them in the bathhouse, and drying them under the roof in the attic. As tradition in those past days in Germany, on Sundays after church, German families would come together and enjoy coffee or tea and a piece of cake. My mother, during the week or on Saturdays, prepared cakes which she baked herself in the electric oven. Like in most families, in times of blessed memories, the kitchen was the centre of the household. For hours we sat around the kitchen table, eating and chatting. Most of the time we did our homework from school at that table, always covered in a plastic tablecloth to protect the table and the nice, good tablecloth for weekends.

A few meters away from our flat was the EDEKA shop of Mr Rinck, our provision shop, where we used to buy all our foodstuffs from. As EDEKA grew and self-service became the norm, Mister Rinck moved his shop to the other side of the street into bigger premises, today a very popular restaurant for locals around. While there was no self-service available at that time, we would come to Mister Rinck, his wife, and the shop assistant and ask about each item. Without using a machine, he calculated the prices with a pencil on a small slip of paper. He was very fast in giving you the total amount you had to pay, only in cash. For very good customers, Mr Rinck would give the orders on credit for you to pay when your next paycheck comes. Unlike today, all shops closed by six pm sharp, and it was not as big a problem as many might think today. We had to arrange our shopping around that time. For latecomers, he provided a vending machine installed outside his shop and filled with my heart's desire chocolate in little bars. This chocolate, which is no longer available, remains a fond memory of my childhood. This vending machine was where I spent all my pocket money. And of course, all my pocket money went for chocolate and chocolate only. I guess that is when my passion for chocolate started. As Martin Luther before the cardinals said when asked to retract from his requests for church reform `Here I stand. I can not do otherwise; by which sentence to death as a wanted man, I equally confess I cannot make it in life without chocolate. But this later in life will become a very troublesome story altogether. So, let`s stick with the past of my childhood.

These chocolate bars with milk chocolate or hazelnuts wrapped in golden paper, you would constantly find beside my bed. As my mother did not earn much money, the pocket money we got each week on Sundays for the following week, compared to our peers, was small. When inflation hit the goods we wanted to have, we would approach her and ask for an increase, which she often agreed to, raising her voice that another year must pass by before a new round of negotiations could begin.

The house I lived in for twenty-five years, the last one of us children to move out, as I had to finish my studies at Hamburg University first, was the anchor for us children, at least that is what I can say for myself. The train station Alte Wöhr was just across the road, so was our school, Fraenkelstraße, and our kindergarten Rübenkampsweg. Up the road, Alte Wöhr was the shopping street Fühlsbüttlerstraße leading to Barmbek station to the south and northbound to AK Barmbek, the well-renowned hospital in which, later, Prince Claus of the Netherlands, the Queen's husband, was treated by his friend, a highly qualified surgeon. Walking under the train bridge Alte Wöhr leads to the Stadtpark Hamburg`s City Park, where we children would often visit and play around. Left and right walking towards Stadtpark were little weekend houses with nice gardens. When apples, pears, and cherries were ripe and ready for eating, and their branches would stretch out of the gardens onto the paths open to the public, we would come with a bag and pick them. City North, in short walking distance, was our adventure playground. It was full of crumbled little houses built after WWII as housing for German migrants from Eastern Europe or used as weekend getaways. Waiting for a new development plan was the place where we children with our friends played hide and seek or cowboys and indians. As we had no electronic devices and no TV, we played to have fun. Instead of texting each other, we played with each other. We were creative due to the lack of company offers, streamlining the people. Consuming the world was not for us. We had to create the world of our dreams. To make the world a better place, creative, exciting. Not like today, where uniformity or consumption of the ideas of others is the norm in our daily life. At least for many. Not for me. I still remember my roots and how we played outside with direct interaction. To have a phone in the house was something special to us. When a landline phone in grey came, we were all over the moon. No writing of endless letters anymore, and people are just a dial of the phone away from you. What a great feeling it was. Your generation of today will hardly understand what joy we had to have our first landline phone.