Your Dad tended to look on the bright side of things, so he wrote from Germany that it was going to be an unbelievably wondrous experience. Heck, the currency exchange was more than 3 marks, nearly 4, to every dollar. We would be living like kings! Kings!
Unfortunately, he neglected to mention that he meant kings from the 13th century. Because when we got to our little apartment in Vohringen after traveling over 30 hours, we had no heat, no hot water, no this, no that. However, we had traveled by car, rather than carriage. Improvement, no? Although said car had much in common with travel of yesteryear. We had no floor in the ancient VW, no muffler, no heat. We had to keep the windows open(did I mention it was Dec. 9th?)so as to not die of fumes. Year round we ended up doing this, with you in the back seat. However did you survive these novice parents?
Things balanced out however, perhaps somewhat by the free entertainment we enjoyed as we lived on the third floor of a very small building. The only other apartment on our floor was rented by Turks(the imported low echelon workers of German society), the second floor by, how shall I say, "working women" on one hand, and Heidi and Cleve on the other(more to come on this). And the entire first floor was a teen age discotheque. Wow! How could you not have fun?
Our new home was not without its charm however. If you consider that I had to boil pots of water on the stove for us to bathe, and for me to wash out your cloth diapers in the tub. In a matter of months Pampers made their debut, and I knew the age of miracles was not dead. Even living in the age of "kings" as we were.
As excited as I was to see your Dad again, it took only minutes for me to start crying to go "home" again. But we were home, tears and all, and home we stayed.
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