Tomorrow is the 21st of February, the birthday of Les. One year ago, my age was 89 and five months, and Les turned 86. Les and I had last year nine months of wonderful togetherness. Then this most lovely heart of Les stopped beating, just like that. The last three months without Les have been very lonely for me.
Tag: memories
Memories about our Dutch Friends
I want to write about our friends Nick Tap and Nell Tap. They were both of Dutch origin. Nell died in January 2013. I have no idea what happened to Nick. He had major health problems. There were widespread family members, including three sons.
Nick and Nell were both born ln 1933. They suffered a lot under the German occupation in World War Two. The food that the Dutch people did grow ended up on German tables. For the Dutch population there was hardly anything to eat. The children suffered severe starvation.
As I said in the previous post Peter and I liked to visit the Taps. I remember how they told us about the scarcity of food. Once a German soldier very secretly had given Nick a piece of bread. This soldier could have been severely punished for this!
My Brother Peter Uwe
Our landline phone was out of order
Peter took this picture on the morning of Sunday, the 7th of September 2014. This was Fathers Day in Australia. There were blue irises as well as a bottle of Peter’s favourite port-wine. The cake made with ground almonds was for the afternoon. Monika arrived in the afternoon with sons and daughters as well as two year old grandson Lucas. Monika brought gifts along for her Papa: A lovely bottle of wine, chocolates, scratchies and a card.
Son Martin rang from Melbourne at night-time. This call was diverted to our interim mobile phone that Telstra had sent us to use while our landline phone was out of order. This mobile phone had no ringing sound. Instead a computerised female voice always announced to us when we had a phone call.
Caroline and Matthew had been going away for a few days to attend the wedding of their friends. They are back now and we are going to see them on Sunday. They probably made a lot of pictures and are going to tell us a lot about their trip.
Peter thought he had a lovely Fathers Day last Sunday. We are looking forward to seeing Caroline and Matthew very soon.
A missed Cruise, but still some beautiful Birthday Celebrations
Nearly two months ago was my 90th birthday. It was not celebrated the way it had been planned. Come to think of it, the changes were not all that bad. I tell myself, I am still a lucky person. I am grateful for being alive and able to enjoy life a lot. Here is what I published before:
All this about September 2024 I published one month ago in October. Here is a reply to that post from dear Linda (Rangewriter) and my reply to it:
- rangewriter What a bitter disappointment.
auntyuta Yes, Linda, It took hours and hours before it was esablished that Monika could not receive her new passport soon enough for us to be able to board the ship before its departure. Finally, we had to find a way back home at our own cost. What a horrible day! However, my sweet daughter Caroline drove me all the way home to Dapto late in the afternoon. When she heard of our plight that we were not allowed to board the ship, she left her work early and retrieved her car to where it was parked in Sydney to take me home to Dapto. We had a bit to eat at my place and at about 10pm Caroline drove back to her place in Sydney.
https://auntyuta.com/2024/10/13/remembering-september-2024-continued/
As you know, on Wednesday, September 18th, the ship left without us. My daughter Caroline drove me back home on that day.
Three days later was Friday, and this was my 90th birthday. On that day I had a good time staying overnight in a nearby hotel with my friend Les. Naturally we spent the following weekend together too.
Thursday September 27 was the day that the Carneval returned to Sydney, and our luggage was there to be collected. I had borrowed from Les a big suittcase for the cruise! The suitcase had done the trip to Vanuatu and back without me. My family picked it up for me and I was happy that I got it returned in a good condition.
On the following Sunday, the 30th of September, we had as planned a family gathering to celebrate my turning ninety as well as great-grandson Alexander turning ten on the 27th of September just a few days after my birthday!
We had a nice birthday lunch as well as afternoon cafe and birthday cake at the neraby German Club. About ten people were present, including the birthday boy of course. Unfortunately some people could not join us on that day because of illness.
I feel sorry for Monika and Natasha that they had to miss out on a cruise that had cost them so much money. All that money is lost now. But they still hope eventuallyto be able to go onto another cruise. I made up my mind now: I do not want to book another cruise again. I prefer to stay close to my home.
Vater, Mutter, Kind; that is ‘Father, Mother, and Child’.
Some Childhood memories
Ja, this goes back to some early childhood memories of mine!
Playing with the children that lived in our street:
I spent lots of time playing with all the children in our street, Bozener Straße. One of our games was playing ‘Vater, Mutter, Kind’. It was understood, that the father had to be a boy. Luckily, there were usually a couple of boys, who did not mind acting as the fathers. If the girls outnumbered the boys, it did not matter. They could all be mothers. Each girl was allowed to bring one doll along. This doll then was a Kind, so that each girl would be a mother with one child. And all tghe dolls would be shared with the boys. We would be very proud, to see the boys showing affection to our dolls, that were our children!
I think, a game like this would probably have lasted for only a few minutes! We would quickly have gone to play any of our other games. We could play all these games in our very small street, that was hidden away from any traffic. Not that there was much traffic yet at this point in time. I am talking of the end of the 1930s and early 1940s, and Bozener Str. is pretty much in the Centre of Berlin.
We loved to play ball games, or hide and seek, or singing and dancing games. I only went up to our apartment for meals. Mum would let me know, when it was time to come up for a meal by calling down to me from our balcony. From that balcony she could practically survey the whole of Bozener Straße!
The house, that I grew up, in is still standing. It survived all the bombings during the war. It just had to undergo some renovations in the post-war period.
Our Overseas Visits
https://wordpress.com/post/auntyuta.com/761
Today I wanted to write about our overseas travels. So I checked what, I had written about it before. Luckily, I was able to find quite a bit of information under the title ‘Memories from August 2010’. (There is a link at the top of this post!)
Anyone who goes to this post from 2010 is going to find out that even by 2010 we had done already quite a bit of overseas travelling. In the meantime we travelled overseas two more times, namely in 2012 and then in 2016.
Living in Australia and having some family in Germany makes us want to travel overseas as often as possible. So far we had the good fortune of being able to use all this airline travel. On top of it, Airlines do still offer low price airfares!
At least a few people must be aware by now, that air travel is extremely bad for the environment. But how many people do actually try to avoid air travel these days as much as possible?
In 1990 we did do a trip around the world. I wrote about it here:
https://auntyuta.com/2014/02/05/our-trip-around-the-world/
Our first trip overseas was in 1977. Caroline was born in December 1978. We travelled with Caroline to Berlin in November 1980 and then again in March 1986 when Caroline was seven.
In 1977 Peter and I visited my cousin Renate and her family in Munich. From Munich we did a day trip to visit my uncle Edmund and his wife Flora in Augsburg. Among other things we visited with them the Augsburg Fuggerei. For lunch they invited us to the close by FUGGEREI STUBE.
In 1977 we travelled a bit around Western Germany staying with family and friends. But most of the time in 1977 we spent visiting our family in Berlin.
The 21st of December 2018
Before we went to the cinema, we had a few snacks and coffee. We saw ‘The old man and the Gun’ with Robert Redford. It was quite hilarious how the bank-robber (Robert Redford) smiled at his victims and behaved like a ‘gentleman’. It is said this is Redford’s last movie.
The second movie we saw was ‘Colette’. I found it very interesting how Colette did become a famous author!
On the 21st of December 1956, that is 62 years ago, we saw in Berlin the following two movies together with Peter’s sister Ilse and brother-ilaw Klaus:
The Lady and the Tramp – Susi und Strolch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_(1956_film)
Berlin in 26 Days from the 4th to the 30th of June 2016
This Berlin visit was a true family event for Peter and me. I would like to tell about the 26 days in Berlin in three different parts. First there were 8 days with Martin, Caroline and Matthew, then 9 days spent just with Martin and the last 9 days in Berlin we saw a lot of Monika and her family who came to visit Berlin from the 21st to the 30th of June.
When we arrived in Berlin on Saturday, the 4th of June, we were five adults from Australia, and we were renting a three bedroom apartment in Rubensstrasse, Berlin-Friedenau. Our rented apartment was just great, very spacious and well equipped.
The other family group from Australia had booked an apartment in Prenzlauer Berg which is a bit North-East from the centre of Berlin, whereas Friedenau is South of Berlin’s centre. Monika’s group stayed in Berlin for 9 days after already having visited London, Paris and Zuerich. On Thursday, the 30th of June, they travelled back to London to stay there for another four nights and then to fly back to Sydney, Australia.
Thursday, the 9th of June was my brother Bodo’s 78th birthday. Peter, Martin, Matthew and Caroline went on that day to Kreuzberg (Cross-Mountain). Peter wanted to show them the place where he had grown up. My brother Peter Uwe came to go with me to visit Bodo.
Bodo is being looked after in a home for the Aged.
We walked along here to get to the home where Bodo lives.
Below a few pictures I took one morning in our apartment. Matthew is in the background, Martin is on the left, and Caroline and Peter on the right.
Memories: A Job at last
I started my first job on the 2nd of January 1953. I very much dreaded the upcoming exams at Commercial College (Höhere Wirtschaftsschule). This is why I was overjoyed when I managed to land a job. It gave me the opportunity to leave school without having to do any exams. I wrote about it in November 2009 and copy it here:
AuntyUta 