A plethora of keys, individual and in sets, hung with gaping smiles as the entrance door to the apartment opened. They seemed in mocking harmony to question ‘What took you so long to arrive when we were just a click away?
Renovated for the ABNB market in a fresh contemporary style of a tsaddik each furnished sufficiently to be comfortable and provide all the essentials with a hint of personality lifting the brilliant white walls and light pine laminate or neutral stone flooring. In this case an eclectic mix of prints depicting Buddhist monks at supper, brilliant colours of Holika festivities and a triptych featuring cappuccino paraphernalia.
Now dear reader, in the old days in London pubs – and elsewhere – you would frequently hear a bloke say ‘Did you know……’ (you need to read this with a London cockney accent)….. and then provide a piece of useless but curiously interesting information. So, in order to keep this curiously interesting tradition alive……. Did you know that the word cappuccino comes from the fact that the cinnamon and nutmeg topped frothy creamy top of this coffee is a similar colour to the robes of the Capuchin friars, monks whose order was founded in Italy in the 16th century.
Levity here is to ease you into the morose and maudlin part of this blog.
It is part of the English curriculum, even today, to learn about the second World War. What is learnt cannot be unlearnt, what is seen cannot be unseen, what is fact and stands the test of time is fact or the basis of truth. Semantics can fudge the reality but however it is presented there is no palatable way to digest the ultimate horror of World War II. As a sixty something with half a century of the history of conflict embedded in my mind it was hard to escape from that knowledge of war
To visit Germany is to visit the adopted country of the Austrian born Adolph Hitler. To walk in the footsteps of people whose President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933.
As much harm as Hitler caused outside of Germany, his evil actions within Germany are the most horrendous to contemplate. How one human can treat another human in such a manner is incomprehensible.
The story of the university city of Heidelberg can be found within the Wikipedia page from which this is an extract:
….. “The non-Aryan professors were ejected in 1933, within one month of Hitler’s rise to power”
……”From 1942, the deportees who had survived internment in Gurs were deported to Eastern Europe, where most of them were murdered.”
The apartment was one of six within in a very old building. The stone steps leading up to the third floor residence were worn from centuries of footfall. The handrail of the wrought iron balustrade was exquisitely flawless having been polished to a lustre by centuries of kid skin gloves and mittens gliding up and down in the business of life of the occupants.
The glazing throughout the apartment was opaque with a fretwork of six sided transparent stars. Despite the remodelling of the rooms, the ghosts of the past seemed to seep from the stone structure of the building and questions arose. Had the occupants looked from the windows to the courtyard below?
Had they seen men of the Gestapo or the Sicherheitsdienst marching across the stone pathways and banging fists against the wooden doors. Had they witnessed individuals being ripped from their homes to be transported on trains to concentration camps to be exterminated?
Looking from the balcony at the front of the building, no amount of city student, bicycling bell tinkling sun shiny joyfulness could silence the ghostly sound of soldiers goose-stepping across the ancient cobble stones of the wide streets and what is today Bismarck Platz.
At this moment in this tourists view Heidelberg seemed to be divided into the blue sky colourful and youthful city of today and the black, white and blood red ghostly city of WWII. It was difficult to celebrate with such history present.
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Coming next……. In which we discover Frederick (Friedrich) V, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Elizabeth Stuart and love in Heidelberg
Claudia Bow 