April 9 - Good Friday Meal at Heinkes

The morning radio program featured interviews with women about an billboard ad campaign that featured 6 normal-to-plump bodied women posing in nothing but plain, stark white underwear. I had seen these ads but couldn’t figure out what was going on and it wasn’t worth asking Monika, so I had just chalked it up to the “Eternal Mysteries of Germany That Bob Will Never Understand.” That category included not a few other ads such as the one screaming touting Hamburg’s “Erotik Messe” as if that were a good thing. As it turned out, this particular ad campaign was for a manufacturer of women’s underwear; the ad was supposed to publicize their line of underwear but also emphasize the fact that most women’s bodies were not proportioned like the stick-thin super models typically shown on TV. The women interviewed on the radio, rather than being scandalized, quite to the contrary approved of an ad showing normally shaped bodies—they had some pointed words about those super models and the ridiculously frilly underwear often advertised in stores.

We packed up our old plain underwear plus our new Coolmax versions along with the other wash into an old wicker basket and drove over to Heinke and Gustl’s condo fairly early so we could do two loads of wash during our visit. Good Friday is a legal holiday in Germany, as is Easter Monday, and the streets were nearly deserted, which was very unusual for Germany. In fact, since this is always a legal 4-day weekend, many Germans seem to treat the Easter weekend as a time for family gatherings and dinners much as American’s treat the Thanksgiving weekend. We were participating in this tradition by having a family dinner at Heinke and Gustl’s place together with their son Detlef and his wife Susanne.

But first we used their Internet connection to check our email, where we found out that Lois had arrived safely back in Wisconsin, and to look at the pictures of the house Judson and Sarah had just purchased. We particularly enjoyed Sarah’s comments about the room furnishings and some really odd-looking wallpaper. Both Detlef and Gustl read and understand English well enough that they could translate Sarah’s descriptions for the rest of us, and so we all enjoyed the virtual tour of the house. I was happy to see all those extra bedrooms with the potential for all those grandchildren! But short of excavating part of the hill on which the house was situated, I didn’t see any way to easily accommodate our camping trailer in the driveway. Oh well, I guess we will fall back on pitching a tent in the front or back yard when necessary.

After putting in a second load of laundry, we all went for a 1-hour walk around the Bramfelder Lake and that was as fun as always. Heinke and I had our digital cameras ready and she took nice pictures of a family of ducks. I tried to take pictures of the herons that nest on the island while in flight, always a tricky thing to get right. It was sunny for a change and a lot of families were out enjoying the hiker-biker trail around the lake, so there was a lot to look at as we ambled along.

We worked up an appetite during the walk, and afterwards Heinke served us a wonderful family dinner on her fancy dinnerware—very pretty stuff. We had a great time chatting about everything that was happening in the family and joking about some of the occasions in the past such as the time Gustl carefully divided a bottle of champagne equally into 8 glasses at a family gathering. Afterwards Gustl politely asked if anyone wanted any more, but Susanne was new to the family at that time and didn’t dare say anything because she was worried that he was really asking something like, “Is anyone here an alcoholic?” We also joked about my low-fat diet and discussed the Atkins diet craze that is also becoming popular in Germany. I think that type of high-fat diet will ultimately help kill thousands of people by heart attacks and strokes, but that’s just my opinion.

We drove home later that afternoon, hung the wash up to dry (slowly) in the basement, and had a light supper. Then we settled in for a relaxing evening with Monika crocheting a hooded cape for “Louisa Luebeck”, the new doll she had bought at the second-hand store during our visit in Luebeck while I worked on the journal. The evening weather report (broadcast from 7:50 to 8:00 p.m. every night) featured a picture of the Brocken, the highest peak in the Harz Mountains. We had considered driving down there and climbing that exact mountain over the Easter weekend, but the picture showed a snow-covered parking lot with huge drifts up against the weather station building. They reported a meter and a half of snow on the ground (about 5 feet!) with another 3 centimeters expected overnight. That put an end to our plan to drive down and climb the mountain; we decided to stay up in the (relatively) warm and (relatively) dry northern neck of Germany and enjoy some of the Volksmarches scheduled over the Easter weekend