IM BUCHWALD

It seems that Stephanie has discovered that the “treasure” is a house in Stuttgart, Germany. And she asks, “What is that house?” To which I reply…

Loosely translated to German the name of my blog is Im Buchwald.
That name is significant to me because I lived im Buchwald. More specifically, I lived im Buchwald at Waldmeisterweg 30. That house is Waldmeisterweg 30.

To give you a perspective of where it is situated, on the aerial photograph you will find things marked as staffel. A staffel is stair-stepped trail. The Ginsterstaffel, the one we used most frequently, leads up through the gardens and weinberg to Im Buchwald a small village-like area above the larger village-like area of Gablenberg. I was assigned to work there twice. First as a German-speaking missionary and then months later as an Italian-speaking missionary. It was the second time in Gablenberg that we rented the room im Buchwald.
The house at Waldmeisterweg 30 sits on a hillside facing north. Our room in the daylight basement looked out over the garden at the back of the house. In the autumn it was comfortable almost to the point of being enjoyable. But in winter it became very nearly unbearable – obviously something we had not anticipated. It was an un-insulated space with walls of stone and concrete. And although the interior walls were finished nicely they conducted heat and cold much too efficiently.

I started to think about that basement room overlooking the garden as I huddled under my federdecke earlier this month. It was chilly in our bedroom at home but nothing like the chill my companion and I woke up to each morning in our ‘garden apartment’ there on Waldmeisterweg. Our room was heated by a single ceramic-tiled coal stove. We took turns getting up a bit early to make the fire each morning. And with only $75.00 each a month - $75.00 for rent, food, clothing, transportation, and whatever else was needed – we didn’t feel it wise to heat the room when we weren’t there and tried to make coal last longer. So we burned one or maybe two bricks a day. One in the morning and maybe one in the evening if we hadn’t adjusted the draft right in the morning to keep it burning slowly all day. Think winter scenes in Doctor Zhivago.

We weren’t the only people heating with coal. It was pretty much the norm – everybody burned coal. In fact so much was being burned in Gablenberg that as we went down the Ginsterstaffel each morning, we could just see the tip of the steeple on the Lutheran Church peeking out above a sea of brown coal smoke. The air was full of soot. I always wondered why we were able to breathe that air. In fact the air was so bad that we wore scarves more to keep our collars clean than our necks warm.

Water for the morning wash-up was heated in a pot on a one burner hot plate. One of us would study while the other washed. (Real bathing was done once a week at the public bathhouse in a small room with a timer on the door.) Our water source was a faucet resembling a gas spigot with stepped sides and was located in the unfinished area toward the front of the house by the coal bin.. If I turned it too far, the outer portion would fall off. As you can imagine getting it back on would mean a thorough soaking. Not at all pleasant on an arctic morning. Or any other time for that matter.
Breakfast was cooked on the hot plate after we had dressed and studied. Our breakfast diet was simple and consisted mainly of some variation or combination of milk, yoghurt, bread, cheese, jam, and oatmeal. Germany is where I became an oatmeal gourmet. There were many kinds and I knew them all. What was best for cooked cereal and what made the best Muesli. I have since become more accepting of poorer brands and varieties. But when one is forced into a situation of limited choices, optimization of what remains feels like a real luxury.
This is about the time we learned to make bread pudding because Sister Fetzer, the mission mother, told us we needed to have more variety in our meals. Pasta salads/casseroles were also added about this time. The great variation being whether we added cheese or tuna. We ate or drank a lot of soup as well. I never thought of it as excessive but we must have answered “Soup” to the question “What did you have for supper?” once too often. One of the families we were teaching commented on it frequently by offering dinner invitations. The mission rule was not to eat with members or friends. Although our diet must have given some the impression of being monotonous or inadequate, we thrived. And it really wasn’t one of the important things.

Still to come is:
Stammtisch, Frauenkopf, Fernsehturm, and Evening walks under the Beeches.
And still later more numbers.