Life is a Journey Live it (Part 127)

The other autobiography
While we volunteers lived in the makeshift building, once the Club room for the local community, adding one layer of concrete stone over the next to complete the structure,e I was with my comrades and shared their activities. After work, we sat together playing games, chatting along or enjoying grilled sausages and vegetables. On weekends, we went to Saint-Malo and Le Mont-Saint-Michel or Paris for the entire day. Years later, I would take my car all the way from Hamburg to Paris for the night before heading towards Saint-Étienne-en-Cogles the following Monday. Staying in a cheap hotel close to the Arc de Triomphe, I walked up and down the streets of Paris along the River Seine. Fast, I realised citizens of Paris do not see cars as something of great value, driving around the city like mad people, ready to bump into any car crossing their path. While in London, one-way streets and traffic jams make driving difficult. In Paris, reckless driving by citizens ends the fun of driving a car around the city. Paris Metro is definitely a reliable alternative to reach the various places of interest. Soon after I had set foot on French soil, I felt that French culture was certainly something for me to respect and honour, but nothing to fall in love with. Cambridge in the UK is my love affair and very different from French culture. French, as a language, to me, is the symbol of the upper class, which is why at school I chose Spanish as a second language.

The Cafés in Saint-Malo are exceptional; they really are. French pastry is outstanding. Good English pastries, on the other hand, is largly only available in High Streets, not in any common English bakery. France deserves true credit for that. French baguette for me in the mornings in France is a must, while English breakfast I regularly skip and ask for a Continental Breakfast.

Brittany, close to the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea, has a long coastline which is used by fisher folks to harvest oysters, fish and seafood. On Saturdays in Fougéres the central market is filled with sellers offering aubergines and austers among seasonal products. Snails from vineyards are a delicacy for the locals. Neither auster nor snells are products of the country I fancied to taste at all. I constantly train my brain to be tolerant towards people who love to eat these things. Instead of seeing more of these things, I turned my attention to the well-selected wine shops where I would spend hours with no end. Not necessarily to buy much, but to see what was on offer and to enjoy the variety, especially red wine. Outside the Keltic Museum of Fougéres anything made from honey was on offer. It was the first time I tasted honey wine Met and as much as it was interesting, it was not a delight to be repeated. In the city of Fougéres the garden architecture of France was very present. It was an interesting setting, yet I prefer the gardens of the UK more.

In between the two camps, while the old volunteers left for home and the new batch had not arrived, I took my bike to ride around the French countryside. The night before sitting with the previous batch of young Germans around the campfire, I must have eaten something very strange to my stomach. All I can recall is that while riding my bike, I had to get off and rest in the high grass along a narrow road with no traffic. Nature was truly my toilet that afternoon.

With the second batch of volunteers, we completed the structure and plastered it. Thinking back to those days, I am still amazed at what a person like me, when challenged, can achieve. I was a brick layer and a plasterer, convinced that when having to build my own house, I could do it, not as perfectly as a professional but good enough to still stand until my days on earth were over. In the evenings, I dined often with Christian and Monique and Gäelle and Yves. Together, we went to church on Sundays, as he was on the board of the parish as the local doctor. Walking from end to end in the town, everyone seeing him greeted him nicely and friendly. It was not greeting him by force, as he was their doctor; rather, they loved him genuinely. Dr Christian Rousseau was a typical small French man with a funny nose. When speaking to him in English, he was eager to find the right words. The moment Monique found the missing word saying it, he felt somehow ashamed and frustrated not to have been the one to speak it out first. More than anything, he wanted to speak English well. His French accent gave his pronunciation the typical sweet French twist.

Years later, while we kept in touch by exchanging emails, they decided to visit me in Hamburg on their tour to visit friends in Germany and cities in the northern part of my country. While staying in a hotel in Wedel for two days, I took them around Hamburg to see sights of interest. At that time, I used to own a Saab 9000 CD turbo, and when taking it to Ratzeburg on our way back, I drove 240 km/h on the Hamburg-Berlin Autobahn towards Eiffestraße. While I enjoyed the ride, Christian Rousseau, sitting next to me, asked me whether I could slow down. I smiled at him and reduced the speed. His young children started to complain, having enjoyed the speed, but for their parents, a maximum speed of 130 km/h was in their comfort zone. They enjoyed seeing Hamburg from Köhlbrand Bridge, crossing Hamburg Port, a bridge I constantly try to avoid due to fear of height. Looking down from the Hamburg TV Tower at Sternschanze is not a pleasure for me, while others freely walk around the rotating platform. We had a stroll around the city of Lübeck, which they enjoyed greatly, especially eating cake in Niederegger Cafe at the Market. The next day, they continued their journey towards the east of Germany to see, after the Berlin Wall collapse, how the GDR had left their part of Germany behind for West Germany to take over.

The last time I saw the family in person was when I visited them with my ex-wife Emma Heerde for Christmas. We took our car and drove through Holland and Belgium into France, taking the fast routes for which we had to pay. Being the only one holding a driving licence, I stopped at a parking lot along the motorway, ready to sleep in the car. Emma Heerde, meanwhile, complained about the situation forcing me with no mercy nor understanding to start the engine again and slowly in one go make it to the hometown of Monique and Christian in Saint Etienne-en-Cogles, where we arrived in the early morning hours. We stayed for one week in the guest room on the first floor next to the empty rooms of Gäelle and Yves, who had moved out months before. Gäelle had moved to her boyfriend and later husband Laurent and Yves to Rennes and hour and a half away from his parents. For Christmas, Monique and Christian served us goose foie gras. While they took pride in serving us this dish, I tasted it, decided not to eat a second bite and saw Emma Heerde willing to finish my portion. On our way home, we had a stopover at Lucy Ouma's and Roy Ket's house near Maastricht for a weekend, meeting Roy Ket's children while having dinner in a posh restaurant, the next day eating French Fries and Belgian hot waffles with cherries and whipped cream and buying pralines at Leonidas before it was time for us to return to Hamburg.

For over forty years, we have remained in touch and exchanged emails regularly.

Susanne Fröhlich ended my presentation saying: “What a lovely story. I wish one day I would say the same. Friendship is worth more than gold or silver. It is precious and priceless.

„I agree,“ said Hans Wilder, seeing the rest of the group knotting along.

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