City Child in Vineyard Village

There are some useful skills you learn while growing up in Berlin like nowhere else. To wait for the green traffic light for example, to watch your feet when walking the pavement to avoid the dog shit or to sleep calmly with the noise of air hammers in the street before your window. At the age of 7, I succeeded at all of that. In addition, I was part of a children music group with a wonderful teacher and I had a wonderful best friend who lived close by, went to my school class and who had a black rabbit which we let hop around on her loft bed. During these happy first years of my life I had no idea that the most legendary love parades where just happening in my city, and if I had known, I probably would have been afraid.

But then my parents decided to leave the city and to settle in a Black Forest village. This sounds maybe like a creepy place with witches, werewolves and vampires, but in fact, it wasn't. Black Forest is the name of a mountain range (it's logic!) in South West Germany and the area around it, where there are lots of villages with vergers and wine grapes on the hills around them and people making wine, schnaps and marching music and speaking a funny strange language I could not understand. The first days in class where somewhat difficult because of that, but one day I heard my teacher saying: "Ha lupf amoal dei Federmäppli" and got that she wanted me to lift my pencil case, and that probably showed that the process of integration was rolling.

Climbing cherry trees and stacks of hay

For a city child like me, there were several reasons to appreciate growing up in the village. Wandering through waist-high meadows with violet and yellow flowers for hours while imagining adventures, plucking herbs, snitching strawberries from the fields and climbing trees without anyone around to stop you is one of them. Or, during winter, sliding down the hill of the verger right behind the house with a sleigh together with the neighbours kids and building big snow men there with masses of fresh clean snow.

After having played the recorder for several years I joined, together with some class mates, the village's brass orchestra and chose a new instrument. I wanted to play the clarinet, but it seemed that was what everyone wanted and they did not have enough clarinets, so I picked something else. I did not completely know what it was but the name had a nice sound to it. That is how I ended up carrying a case with me up the hill which was too heavy and playing offbeat bass rhythms while everyone else was playing melodies... I was playing a trombone.

I have lots of memories with the orchestra. Marching through the village in November and February and trying to play offbeat basses with hands and feet freezing in the cold within minutes, my fellow musicians getting more and more drunk and our music getting worse and worse. Sometimes getting so frustrated during practice at home that I started to beat myself with my fists. However, our conductor was a passionate genius who jumped up and down while conducting and he manged to get this village orchestra on stage playing brass arrangements of the Lion King, The Lord of the Dance and Eric Clapton (much to the dismay of some old people at the drums who liked a lot to play marching music). I took something with me from these rehearsals, a taste / feeling for orchestral rhythm, for the sound of saxophone and trumpets playing melodies, which none of the music I got involved with later could possibly have taught me.

Last but not least... there was the annual cabin week. And the hay barn weekend. These trips I loved a lot, and I dearly looked forward to them through almost all the year. Each year it was once a cabin somewhere in the woods where the orchestra went for one week, and once a weekend at a farm further up the hills from our village. Part of these trips were long hikes or a trip to a piscinery (which always was a highlight for me. I loved to jump into the water and to float in the blurry blue space like a mermaid, to explore the big basins underwater and to search for treasures on the ground like, in one case, an earring someone was missing, an awesome quest!).

There were some rehearsals, too. We had breakfast together and in the evening we played Yenga (the shaking tower) and Set (a card game where you try to recognize sets of three among the symbols on the table). Then we went to the girls sleeping room where we could tell each other secrets and fool around until we fell asleep.

At the farm weekend our sleeping place was the barn, so we young girls climbed up the highest hay stacks with our sleeping bags to have the best sleeping place.

One of the reasons that I enjoyed these times so much was probably that there was a guy in the orchestra who I liked a lot. He was some years older than me and played the clarinet. He also happened to be the son of my class teacher and of course she (and everyone else) found out at a point, hehe. Funny memories coming up while thinking back ^^

I remember one day a guy from my class called me on the street.

"Hey Sophie! We found your love letters to your crush at your friend's place!"

"That's not mine", I responded confidently.

"Yes it is! It's your writing!"

"Ha, that's not possible!", I called over the street happily. "…because I wrote in block letters!"

And with a triumphant grin I ran off, just seeing him, from the corner of my eye, making a face palm… probably because he was stupid. My logic was unbeatable.

Some years passed and I needed to switch to a higher school in town (which happened to be the same school as my cr... I mean, because my brother was there. That's how it was).

For years we were taking the same bus early in the morning, then walking the same way from the bus stop to school when it was still dark. I don't know how often I walked behind him, struggling to find some confidence. And how often I disappointed myself.

Then, one day, I did it. Shortly before we reached the school and I would miss the chance again, I called him. He stopped and looked at me. How nice it was to talk to him... I think we never had really talked before. Mostly because I had been Ginny Weasley whenever he had been around, just too nervous to manage more than a timid glance and a giggle... So with very shaky knees I told him. That I had a crush on him.

He just kept looking at me, then he said without any emotion in his nice dialect:

"Wie wärsch wenn du dir jemand in deinem Alder suchsch?" (Meaning: How about finding someone in your age?)

This may have been the last time we talked. My friends reacted surprised to hear that I told him, which felt strange to me. Telling him seemed to be the most natural thing to do. Even if - seen from afterwards - it was maybe not the most efficient strategy, as I had to realize... what a pain that you needed to make a strategy for something that felt just beautiful and natural.

I guess that, at last, I found better adventures than to search for him during the lunch break and to hide in embarrassment when I found him. Other interesting stuff started to happen.

***

Message into the past

Hey Sophie,

it's me, your future self :) Just need to tell you, don't quit the orchestra and the dancing! Even if it sucks sometimes and school starts to take a lot of energy... you can't know this at this point of your life, but these are experiences you can't make in front of your computer. Which teach you things that you can't put on a list, but which you will miss when you lack them. You have all the time to do various things in your life, there's no need to cut down everything for the sake of shining with one single activity, or to be young / early with that... you can shine in various ways by just living a life and caring for others :) It will make your life more colourful and provide balance in difficult times (which are about to come)...

How about trying another instrument if you can't really connect with the trombone? You're always quick to learn something new... and you like f.e. the saxophone, don't you?

And for the dancing - if you don't connect with the other girls, how about trying in another group before quitting? Could be nice to have a change.

Just pause it for a while... and re-think it with some distance :)

Wishing you to have a good life!

Sophie