The Old Bastard and His Dear Wife: Niederlauken, Germany

The first stop in Germay was in the tiniest of tiny towns where I used to live with my parents when I was 18. Our landlords then, a couple in their 60’s, lived in the same “Hof” or courtyard as us. Not only were they extremely gracious and welcoming to us but they were great for us, newly in Germany, to get a sight into rural German culture.

The man, Helmut, was Czech and moved to Germany with his parents when he was very young, maybe 3 or 4, after the war. They were forced to move due to the war. I don’t fully understand this but I think they were kind of like refugees. He is a very dear man who is passionate about everything, and truth be told is actually a racist old bastard. But you will almost always find Helmut with a huge grin from ear to ear and often pared with a kiss received on both cheeks. He got limes disease when he was a boy from a tic and he struggles constantly with his health, but he is a brut with a barrel chest and an ego big enough to move a house with his bare hands. He works in the Hof every day-all day and has most of his life. He is a farmer more or less. He grew up working in the fields and he will die working in the fields and he is happy, genuinely happy.

His wife, Waldraut, yes that is her name, Waldraut. If you think that sounds like a bad name, you should hear it pronounced properly in German; it’s bad! My feelings of fondness for Waldraut run deep. She is dear. She is a giver. That is what makes her happy. She will give everything she has got for Helmut. She will simultaneously feel in debt to him. I think they are really in love. They are the kind of people that when one dies, the other will follow shortly thereafter from a broken heart. I don’t envy their relationship however. It is incredibly old fashioned and I think you have to grow up with certain hardships and unquestioned inequalities to be able to feel happy in the kind of relationship they have, but I have a lot of respect for them. I remember when I first lived there when I was 18, I would sometimes go out and help them pit buckets of plums from their trees. I was sitting on their steps in front of their house with Helmut and he was telling me the story of how he met Waldraut. He was telling me how they would go dancing together and how she was not pretty but she was sweet, oh she was sweet. Then Waldraut pops her head out of the window from her kitchen, which is directly above where we were sitting, and pitches in, “Oh no, not pretty. But sweet!” with this huge smile and cackle of a laugh following the comment. Oh if you could hear her make that laugh you would fall in love with her too.

These two provide entertainment constantly with their antics and dynamic. They own the whole Hof, which is where Waldraut grew up. Her father had built it before the war. They both grew up on the land and that is their life. They are not educated past what the rural school of the few town kids of that time required and don’t speak a lick of English. The place used to be set up for cows and a hay barn and the whole old German farm set up complete with the old German wood work buildings. It now has mostly rental units which they rent out but much of the farm set up and wood work remains. One of their renters is somewhat of a large, antisocial computer guy. He is a bit strange and kind of a downer, and Waldraut and Helmut love to dislike him. They call him The Fat One “Der Dicke”. During our dinner of sausage, with sausage, and bratwursts and cheese, Waldraut lurches her head toward the window, her perch, and spies The Fat One. She announces in excitement, here comes The Fat One, Ochh Yeah, here he comes. Then Helmut starts imitating a fat guy walking up the stairs by putting his hands in fists in front of him with his elbows bent as if he were imitating driving a car and then starts rocking his torso right to left with his fists going up and down in sync with his torso. He has a huge grin on his face because he is totally cracking himself up and he adds sound effects to the imitation, “Hemminy Hemminy Hemminy Ha” in a gruff voice. He and Waldraut then bust up laughing and Helmut does it again. Helmut has decided that this is a genius new thing and he would do it every time The Fat One comes home from work. He expected a laugh from Jessi and I every time he did it. We gave him one, and he didn’t seem to notice if it was slightly less full hearted each time.

They own the most land out of all of the 400 some inhabitants of this town and they feel very proud about it. They built up their life all on their own. Everything they have, they worked for. They have bees, apple trees, plum trees, potato fields, cabbage fields, squash, vegetables, various crop fields, ect. They make their own liqueur and apple juice and sell it. They harvest and can all their crops for the winter for their sustenance. Waldraut collects stuff, in an extreme way, and does flea markets on the weekends. I think she is one of those vendors that always seems to do a little bit better than everyone else, sells a little bit more. I don’t know what it is but she has a knack for people and for sales. She makes money doing it. She also has a change jar that every time she sees a coin on the ground or finds a bottle that can be returned for money, she collects it and puts the money in the jar. At the end of the year she will sometimes end up with 100 euros. On her way home she will stop at various random places that she has at some time in the past found abandoned bottles and checks to see if there are any more, just like a bear with food. She will collect them if she sees them walking in town or at the train station, or anywhere, her radar is always on. This is money, she says every time with enthusiasm and a knowing look on her face, as she holds up a bottle she has just found.

I love hearing her tell stories from her life. She is a very old fashioned person but can be strangely open minded at times. I was telling her how I am not very interested in getting married at the moment or maybe ever, which is often a shock for the older generation, but she doesn’t skip a beat. She starts telling me that if you don’t want a man then you don’t have to have one now days. She says times are different for women now; women can wear pants. She doesn’t mean control, she means as opposed to skirts. She then launches into this story about how she remembers the first time she saw pants for women in a catalog. They were bright teal and they were beautiful. She and her friend decide to order a pair for themselves. Once they arrive they put them on and decide to go out for a constitution to show them off by the church. The church was where everyone would hang out and socialize. It is still the only thing the town really has besides houses and a firehouse. They were the first women in the town to ever wear pants and she said they were young and they looked good. As they walked by the church there were cat calls and cheers and general approval. She said they used a word that is old fashioned and not used anymore but basically means, “that’s sick!” or “that’s Phat” or something to the effect. Now Waldraut’s dad, who she said was always very dear to her in contrast to her mother, who was very mean and awful, was in the crowd and piped up, “that’s my girl”. I did not understand the full meaning and implication of this comment from her dad, but Waldraut was very impressed by it and it was either a comment out of pride, or a comment that said, cut it out and give respect boys cause that’s my girl. Either way she told this story with charm and her eyes were light up as if she was right back in those pants for the first time in the town’s history. I love to imagine her wearing those teal pants walking by everyone, shocking them with modernity.

She has lots of stories about the war, when she was only 3 or 4. Apperantly there was a Hilter hide out just behind the town in the woods during WW2. I have seen this place on many occasions while going on walks or rides through the woods. It is incredibly creepy and still has the barb wire up and the guard dogs, because the place is still in use as a bullet factory, or something. So the Americans came to the tiny town of Niederlauken and were occupying it for a time. She said when they first arrived they got all of the inhabitants of the town and made them come out and line up in front of the church in front of a cannon and soldiers with guns. She said she was terrified and didn’t know what was going to happen next. They had also raided the houses for food, I guess, and she noticed that the soldiers were eating her mom’s canned food with their dishes and silverware, which she still has and which I ate my food off of during my visit. She said at one point they shot up the whole village and their house had holes in the roof and she remembers her dad saying, look you can see the stars through the ceiling. She said the house was rebuilt after that because the whole roof was shot out. She told me lots of stories about this time.

We spent about a week here with Waldruat and Helmut eating their good old fashioned German food and listening to their stories and laughing at their antics. The town Niederlauken is tucked away in the Taunus Mountains (actually just rolling hills) in Hessen about an hour north of Frankfurt. Their house is old and adorned with strange collections, like smurf figurines, old irons, tea and sugar containers, stamps, hunting gear and stuffed animals. Every square inch of the walls are covered. He is a jagger (hunter) and he also plays the horn, a traditional hunting type horn. He plays with a group of men every week and gets dressed up in German attire and a robin hood like hat and will play at festivals and stuff; very traditional and very proud. The room Jessi and I stayed in is drab and has all his hunting stuff in it and lots of stuffed creatures on the walls, just like the rest of the house. Our bed was covered with a huge fur hide which we slept warmly under every night, and when we got out of bed we stepped onto a fur rug, with the eyes and snout still on it.

Helmut and Waldraut were incredibly gracious and hospitable to us during our visit and were just pleased to have us as guests. One of the things that both Helmut and Waldraut excitedly offered to us separately was to look through the window. I thought this was hilarious. That was like a special pleasure for them. They love to look out the window and see what the neighbors are up to and what is going on. It’s their perch. And naturally that kind of pleasure you should offer to your guests. Anyway, we ate a lot of very German food, went on walks in the woods, relaxed a lot, checked out the country side, went to the a flea market with Waldraut, ate at my favorite restaurant, Zur Linde, and had my favorite dessert of Heiss und Ice (it is just ice cream with heated up raspberries served on the side that you pour over it, but it’s so perfect), we visited the town Marburg where I studied for a semester in college, and met up with one of my best friends from that time, but mostly during our stay we ate a lot of sausage. Yup, breakfast lunch and dinner. I just tried to avoid the blood sausage and liverwurst.