Before I left my parental home to stand on my own two still-mid-teenage feet, first as "Lohnbuchhalter" for a construction company that built Germany's famous "Autobahn", and then to seek my fame and fortune in Australia, I had to pass this pre-internet chat room every time I left home and every time I came home.
And not just pass but pass muster because that woman who was always leaning out the window by the entrance to the house wanted to know where I was going when I left, and where I had been when I came back. It's now almost sixty-five years ago, but I still remember her name, Frau Stache, although I never saw more of her than her top half as I can't remember ever seeing her anywhere else but leaning out that window.
I was easy prey to her investigative skills, but even the grown-ups could not escape her, which meant that she always knew where everyone was going and where they had been when they came back, which she would relate to everyone else who was leaving or coming home. She was the
Incidentally, the above photograph is not of Frau Stache who had looked far more forbidding. In more recent years, I had asked my very first girlfriend in my old hometown to take photos of the house where I had tried to grow up. Of course, Frau Stache's window was no longer open nor was there still a Frau Stache, but her memories live on with me.
The yellow cross on the second floor indicates our kitchen window. On the ground floor below was that era's version of Windows, Frau Stache's window.
My very first girlfriend who took those photographs - click here - passed away in 2022, which not only made me feel very sad but also suddenly old. You know you're very old when your first girlfriend dies before you.
