The Uhlenhorst reunion

A Little Slice of Heaven

We first came to Germany 17 years ago, ten days after our wedding. Jost immediately plunged into his graduate studies and tried to juggle several part-time jobs while we renovated his grandmother’s apartment where we were living and I . . . I hit rock bottom! Those first few months were so hard, adjusting to a new marriage in a new culture and a new language where I had to operate at the effectiveness of a toddler. Except that toddlers are cute, and I was just big and—well, from the looks I got—a little slow.

Conny

It was right about that time that we were introduced to a little Free Evangelical Church that met in a slightly dilapidated townhouse near the shores of the Alster, the beautiful lake in the center of Hamburg. The church was looking for someone to rent an apartment upstairs that had belonged to the former pastor, and we were looking for a church and an apartment—perfect! We went to a service to meet the pastor and we were welcomed warmly. But then the tiny organ at the back of the sanctuary began to play and something started to happen which I gradually realized was meant to be congregational singing, and my terrible homesickness reared its ugly head and I just sat in my chair and wept. It wasn’t exactly the best renter’s recommendation.

Johann

Still, they were gracious (or desperate!) and offered us the apartment nonetheless, and that began a four-year relationship that proved to be overwhelmingly supportive and nourishing for us. Those 40 or so people in that little church truly became our family for those years. When Hannes was born they adopted him as the church baby and I rarely saw him when church people were in the house. We ate and played together, celebrated and cried together. We were an odd assortment of people of all ages and life stages and backgrounds, and we definitely weren’t perfect. But we worked hard at practicing what church was supposed to be.

Astrid

In 1994 the headquarters of the Free Evangelical Church decided that they could no longer keep subsidizing our little congregation, and against our wishes the church was closed and the building where we lived was sold. For us and some others this meant a move to a new neighborhood; for all of us it meant a scattering to different churches.

Jens-Peter

One month ago, though, at the end of the Easter vacation, we all got together again, after 14 years. A few organizers had used our return to Germany as a motivation to call a reunion, and more than 40 people joined together in the fellowship hall of another church in Hamburg to touch base again.

These strange men all became fathers together in 1990.
I think they're recreating a photo of their wives at that time
lined up with their pregnant tummies.

We ate together again—Margret brought her famous Schneewittchen Kuchen—and we laughed together and told about our lives. The hordes of little kids that used to storm our apartment and hang on our legs are all grown up and starting families of their own. Hannes is taller than most of the adults who had held him and tossed him in the air. Several of the older members have died; others are dealing with cancer and its aftermath.

Manfred

But like someone said, “This has got to be a little like what heaven will be like!” Amen.

Skiing in Switzerland

Hannes is airborne!

I ski, you ski, we all ski!

Ahh, the mountains of Switzerland, lightly covered in a new dusting of Easter snow. Blue sky and sunshine. A lake high in the Alps, surrounded by snow, with a gorgeous greenish blue color so improbably Mediterranean that I can’t describe it—can it be cyan? And then—skis?! Yes, they fit into the surroundings, but on my feet?! After 25 years?

It was true. Hannes had persuaded us all (all but Jost) to give it a try. The car was in the shop, so we took the merrily tooting Post Bus from the village of Brienz around the lake and up the narrow switchbacks to the Axalp, the mountain directly across the Brienzersee from Mom and Dad’s Swiss apartment. Here the locals bring their toddlers to learn to ski—changing their diapers and searching for pacifiers between sending them off for daring sweeps down the bunny hill. We felt a little sheepish about our awkwardness as we watched them careening down the slopes—but it’s a lot farther down to those long, ungainly skis when you’re more than two feet tall!

Hannes was a patient teacher after his instruction in the Czech Republic, and I was pleased to find that it’s a bit like riding a bike—it all came back quickly to me, all except for the muscle tone and strong knees I had when I was 20! The girls could probably have benefitted from a more professional instructor—and one who wasn’t related to them—but they got a taste of skiing that Hannes hopes they’ll want to refine in the Cascades next winter.

We participate in the Berlin Half-Marathon

Lauf! Du schaffst es!

You’ll have to excuse me for feeling a bit tired these days, but we just had the Berlin Half-Marathon two weeks ago and it’s taken me awhile to recover.

There’s something incredibly exhilarating about the atmosphere of 25,000 runners from 86 countries joining together to run through these cobblestoned streets with 150,000 spectators cheering like crazy. Last September we were on hand to watch the world record set in the Berlin Marathon, and it inspired us to be part of this more accessible goal this spring.

Our youngest cheerleader: her sign says "Run"

It started out early on a cool April Sunday with the roller-bladers, followed by the handbikers and wheelchairs. Then came the amazingly divine Kenyans and Ethiopians, and then the remaining 24,000 mortals consigned to run behind the gods. Those mortals like us.

Well, more like us—except that we were standing in our pajamas with cups of cocoa in our hands, cheering them all on from our fifth-floor balcony.

Our view of the marathon

Oh, wait—you didn’t actually think we were down there on the street, sweating and cramping and heaving? Ha! Surely you know us better than that! No, no, no—our apartment was on the running route, so we participated by cheering raucously from above the trees as they all ran past our windows. We had kept our noise makers and signs from the marathon last fall, so we felt quite official.

And once again we were inspired by the determination and sacrifice and pleasure involved in something so completely foreign to us and our cocoa/coffee-drinking bodies!

Jasper the intern

Let's all hum Pomp & Circumstance, shall we?

As part of the German school system, each 10^th grader in a college-prep school is required to have a two-week internship in a company of his or her choice. Our friend Charlotte interned with the "new music" radio station in Berlin; Mo got a position in Hamburg with AFS, an organization that prepares and sends exchange students. And for the last two weeks we've had our friend Jasper living with us while he participated in a translation internship with Jost.

Each morning they sat at their desks in Jost's office (also known as our bedroom!) and talked about the day's tasks, or Jasper listened to an impromptu lecture on the finer points of translation: localization, the use of technology, and the art of networking. And then they fired up their computers and got to work. Jost had fun having a sidekick for two weeks, and we hope Jasper learned a lot. He's a good listener and was eager and willing to put it all into action. German readers can check out the blog he kept about his internship at http://jasperspraktikum.blogspot.com/.

Here are Jost and Jasper at the graduation ceremony in our living room

We loved having him here with us for fourteen days--especially Hannes, who could temporarily assuage his lifetime regret that we didn't provide him with any natural-born brothers. You're welcome to come back any time, Jasper, and bring your family with you!

Jasper and his twin brother Mo (left) with parents Jan and Ulli

We've been robbed!

Momma said there’d be days--
I mean weeks--
like this . . .

Hmmm, how to say . . . criminally crummy? lambastingly lousy? repulsively revolting? simply Scheiße?

You be the judge: we rolled back into Berlin late Sunday night after an exhausting week of traveling during Easter vacation to find my laptop computer stolen, our belongings rifled through, the kids’ wallets emptied, all our documents strewn around the office, and a toilet full of unflushed feces. It wasn’t quite the homey atmosphere we’d been anticipating.

The next day an email arrived on Jost’s computer saying that someone had found Lara’s American birth certificate on a street in East Berlin. Jost’s birth certificate remains missing, but they thankfully ignored all our German and American passports, the kids’ Social Security cards, and our other birth certificates.

My laptop, of course, was the nerve center of the family, and I’m sure we’ll never see it again. All the photos we’ve taken this year in Berlin, all my email addresses and correspondence, all my clients’ documents and the hours I still needed to bill, all our snail-mail addresses, all our banking, tax, and credit card information—gone! A good argument for backing up regularly.

BUT, we’re still okay. True, we’re a little shaken up. On Monday morning Hannes said he’d be happy to get on an airplane and fly back to America that same day, but he came home from school on Tuesday cheerful and contented again. It’s been a frustrating experience for Jost to reestablish our office and configure my new laptop—as I write on Thursday we still have no Internet connection, which is a real liability with Internet-dependent jobs like ours. But again, we’re all okay. As Anna wrote in a letter to Grandma and Grandpa, “it’s just another new experience—a city experience!”

P.S. I’d be grateful for help in rebuilding my email address book. Could you please shoot a quick email message to kzetzsche(a)internationalwriters.com? (Remove the (a) and replace it with @, please.) No need to write a note unless you’re feeling especially communicative—but I’d love that, too!