Germany

#WDYS — The Reunion

Fandango14 Comments

I thought I’d never see her again after the war started twelve years ago. We were in Germany on a two week vacation visiting my family when tensions between the two sides seriously escalated. Ida, concerned about our children back in the states, immediately left for America while I stayed behind in Germany to make arrangements to bring my elderly parents back to America with me. But within a few days of Ida’s leaving, virtually all borders were closed.

I contacted the American Embassy, but I was told that they were overwhelmed with people wanting to get back to the States and mine was not a hardship case. And then the war started and any chance of getting back home to America with my parents, much less alone, was gone.

At first, Ida and I were able to communicate via telephone, emails, and text message, but as the war wore on, most forms of communication across borders was halted. Even old fashioned letters via mail ceased to be delivered.

The situation in the small village in Germany where my parents lived had deteriorated. Most things we take for granted, like plentiful food, clothing, and sundries, were in short supply. I worried about our ability to survive as the war dragged on and on. And worse, being totally cut off from Ida and my kids for so long made my life close to intolerable.

In the eighth year of the war, first my father and then my mother, passed. I constructed makeshift coffins for them and buried them in their small home’s backyard. With no end to the war in sight, I was feeling overwhelmed by loneliness and the fear that I would not survive to ever see my wife and children.

At one point I was close to starvation and was contemplating ending my life, but then word started spreading that the war was finally over and peace was at hand. I decided to travel to the American embassy in Berlin to see if they could get me on an expedited list to travel back to the States.

As soon as I arrived in Berlin, I went to the embassy, but as I approached the building I heard someone call my name. I looked in the direction of the woman’s voice and my heart nearly stopped. It was my Ida. We ran toward each other and embraced for what must have been five minutes. I was crying and whispered in her ear, “Ida, I’ve been praying for this day for twelve long years.”

Ida looked at me, smiled, and said, “You look like shit.” Then she kissed me hard one more time, grabbed my hand, and said, “Come with me, my love. Our children are at the hotel and are eager to get reacquainted with their long lost father.”

Written for Sadje’s What Do You See? prompt. Photo credit: Gennaro Leonardi @ Pixabay.

SoCS — Monster-in-Law

Fandango9 Comments

For this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt, Linda G. Hill has asked us to “take the title of the last movie you watched (just the title, not the premise of the movie), and base your post on that title.”

It so happens that the other night my wife was so sick and tired of all the political bullshit that is swirling all around us that she insisted we turn off the news and watch a lightweight romantic comedy. I handed her the remote control and said go for it. She searched the on-demand movies and found “Monster-in-Law,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda. So I guess I have to write a post based upon the title of that movie. Yikes.

Frank’s young bride, Elsa, was feeling very anxious about finally meeting her new husband’s mother. She never really understood why Frank had refused to invite his own mother to the wedding. She assumed it was because his mother wouldn’t approve of their marriage. But Frank denied that, and kept coming up with different excuses for not introducing Elsa to his mother.

Elsa finally insisted that she meet Frank’s mother. “She’s my mother-in-law, Frank,” Elsa said to him, “and when we have children, she’ll be their grandmother.”

Frank finally acquiesced to his wife’s demands and made arrangements for them to fly to Germany, where his family was from, to visit his mother. When the day came for them to leave, both Frank and Elsa were nervous, but for different reasons.

Their plane arrived in Zurich and they then took a three and a half hour train ride from there to the middle of Germany’s Black Forest region. Frank had arranged for a car to drive them from the train station to the home where Frank’s mother lived.

When they arrived at his mother’s home an hour later, Frank’s mother opened the door to greet them, but the sight of the woman caused Elsa to let out an involuntary gasp.47600272-1448-4D70-82CB-2D4F282EE517 “Mother, this is my wife, Elsa,” Frank said. Then turning toward Elsa, he said, “Elsa, this is my mother.”

Frank’s mother, apparently used to such reactions when people met her for the first time, smiled, reached out and hugged Elsa. Then she stepped back and said to Elsa, “It’s such a pleasure, my dear, to finally meet the bride of Frank N. Stein.”

50 Word Thursday — Always in a Hurry

Fandango12 Comments

B9C54A9B-38A6-4AE0-B344-11B1062D3FB6“Have you ever been to the Island of Rügen on the Baltic Sea before?” the old woman with a heavy German accent asked us.

“This is our first time,” I responded. “It’s beautiful.”

“Would you like to rent a Umkleide?” she asked.

“A what?” I asked.

“You change into your swimming suits. It’s a, what do you call it in English, a dressing room,” she explained. Then she pointed to what looked like a gypsy wagon on wooden wagon wheels.

“Ah,” I said. “No, danke schoen. We’ll be leaving in a little while.”

“Oh, that is too bad,” she said. “Rügen has one of the finest beaches Germany has to offer.”

“I can see that,” I said, “but we really must be going. We have other places we need to see. We never stop anywhere very long.”

“Americans,” the old lady muttered as she walked away. Always in a hurry.”

(150 words)

Written for this week’s 50 Word Thursday prompt from Teresa at The Haunted Wordsmith. The idea is to find our muse within the photo above (from cocoparisienne at Pixabay) and the line, “We never stop anywhere very long” (from Darren Shan, A Living Nightmare), and write a story or poem between 50 and 250 words, in 50 word increments.

Another Stats Anomaly?

Fandango24 Comments

You may remember that almost a week ago I wrote this post in which I noted that there was an unusually high number of views on my blog when I first woke up that morning. By the end of that day, my blog had received 935 views, almost twice the number of daily views my blog normally gets. I figured it was some glitch in the WordPress stats counter, especially since the next day my views were back in my normal range.

Well damned if it didn’t happen again yesterday.8C596E21-68D4-4680-AAD5-2691454BE143By the end of the day yesterday, my blog had received 1,556 views, or more than three times my average number of views.

I decided to do some digging to find out what might be behind these unusual spikes in my blog’s views. I noticed a strange anomaly deep within my stats. I saw that on May 5th, the day my views spiked to 935, almost half — 456 of them — came from Germany. And of my 1,556 views yesterday, more than 60% — 952 — were from Germany. Huh?

I went back and checked my stats for the first four months of this year and saw that from January through April, my blog had received a total of 440 views from Germany. And for the entire year of 2018, there were just 722 views from Germany.

But so far this month, my blog has had 1,453 views from Germany, 1,408 of which were on just two days, May 5th and yesterday.

So my blog has gotten 1,013 more views from Germany in just ten days in May than in the previous four full months. And more than double the number of German views during all of 2018!

What the hell is going on? Why Germany? I don’t know anyone who lives in Germany or who is even, to the best of my knowledge, visiting Germany.

This is just weird.