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Wanderung 5

Happy Haus for Holt’s in Hamburg.

February - April 2004

February 27 - First Day in Hamburg

After breakfast (but my body was really thinking that this could be lunch, or dinner even) we made our first trip to Aunt Size’s house. On that trip we moved in our luggage and some other things Heinke had set out for our visit like bed linens. Given that this was initially an unfurnished house, we cheerfully accepted all donations! While in Reinbek we also took our first walk with Heinke and Gustl through a small forest preserve, past a nearby horse farm, and along the Bille, a small winding river that seemed to be everywhere in Reinbek. Exercising like this seemed to help us reset our body clocks, but I was certainly happy that Gustl was our "pathfinder" rather than having to figure it out for ourselves!

We returned to Barmbek for our last night at Heinke and Gustl’s condominium, and over dinner Gustl told us a story about a friend who had the bright idea of riding a bicycle across the Grossglockner pass. That is a really high pass in Austria with wickedly narrow twisty roads leading up to it on both sides—I had trouble driving up and down it on my motorcycle in 1973 so I know it well. Anyway, Gustl said his friend pushed his bicycle laboriously all the way up the roads on one side of the pass. Then he reached the top, looked down, and decided that he really couldn’t ride his bicycle down, either! So he ended up pushing the bicycle all the way back down the pass! Can you imagine how tired and frustrated he would have been at the end of a long day of pushing a bicycle up and down a mountain? The great thing about Gustl telling a story was that altho my facility in German had not returned yet and I was still suffering from jet lag, I could easily understand every word he said. He has a slow, almost laconic, pace for telling a story combined with perfect enunciation, pronunciation, and inflection. I think that slow, careful style of speaking is unusual in any language, but it makes it so much easier to comprehend! On past visits I have often thought wistfully that I should tape record this man speaking German and send those tapes to U.S. High School German classes. I’m not kidding about that—I had to listen to tapes of native German speakers in my German classes, and Gustl was as good or better than the best of them.

Copyright 2004 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

February 2004
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March 2004
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April 2004
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