vagabonds and children

today we went out to great-granny's grave near Stuttgart. We go out every November and it's a bit of a family event. This year the grandparents were able to come along, so we were quite a large Swiss delegation. We take her two old best friends out for lunch, along with the lady who cleaned for her and helped her through her last years of life. This year we were lucky enough to have the company of Cousin Walter too, he's the only cousin my father in law has and is his only known living relative apart from us lot in Swissland. Even though we're not all related, we're a real family now and have our little traditions. Firstly, we have to drive past Oma's old house and tell the children where she used to sit and wait for us to arrive and how her face would like up and she'd get her stick and hobble over to open the gate for us. How she'd tell us we were too thin and pinch the children's cheeks...then we have to check that her quince tree is still there (it is) and then we have to hum the tune she always played for us on the mouth organ. And then we go up to her favourite restaurant, the one we used to go to when she got too old to cook for us. And there we meet up with the rest of the ragbag family we've created. We exchange a year's worth of news. I always check that the old lady with the windmill is still alive (she is and has just had her 102nd birthday! the windmill is made out of a luftwaffe plane that crashed in the village during the war.) And, stuffed full of German food (schnitzel and chips and salad for me today, very elegant :-) we toddle off to the graveyard and place our little basket of flowers and candles on her grave, tidy away the leaves, answer the children's questions about which husband is in the grave with her (her first, the real Opa died in Siberia after being captured by the Russians in the war, his son never met him) and we explain again that it's the second Opa in the grave and then have to tell the story of how he hung himself back in the 70s because he was so traumatised by what he had experienced in Siberia. And then we talk about how bad war is. Today we tried to get into the chapel again so we could see real Opa's name on the roll of honour of soldiers who died in the war, but it was locked, even though we'd requested that it would be left open for us. It was a bit of a shame.
This picture is of Mr. Spitzimixi and Cousin Walter chatting as we left the graveyard (me and the girls were still busy admiring the pretty grave flowers and nice headstones and crying at the children's graves, which is also part of the tradition). Cousin Walter is important to our family as he was the first stranger than our Flea ever trusted. At Oma's 90th birthday party she was only about two, she went up to him, sat on his lap and then fell asleep on him for an hour and he just sat there cuddling her and looking happy, he has no children himself. Flea had never really acknowledged the presence of people she didn't know (or some that she did!) and so the whole situation was both shocking and lovely for us all!
After the visit to the grave we go to the ex-cleaning lady's house and have coffee and cake. This year the spread of cakes was ENORMOUS, all homemade and oozing cream and chocolates. The children, apart from the littlest who thankfully ate nothing all day, stuffed themselves, as did the men. Us ladies made nice conversation and carried on with the important gossip about everyone and everything. And about 3ish we got loaded with food parcels contain leftover cakes and enough sweets to feed an army (there's no food in Switzerland see) and headed off back towards the border.
Driving was great, I love driving in Germany and today the roads were empty and dry. I put my foot down and aired the turbo a bit while everyone slept off their excess calories. If one wants to play with the big boys on the German autobahn one has to be 100% awake, concentrated and never take ones eyes away from the rear-mirror-wing-mirror-windscreen round. Then you will never be surprised by a porsche or audi coming up behind you doing 200kmph and can pootle along at a smooth 180....great stuff. I was glad to cross the border though, after 4 hours driving and too much food I was starting to get tired and was happy to drive the dark bit in Switzerland when I know how fast people are approaching from behind me!
Er, you did want a full report of my day, didn't you?
Today's title courtesy of New Model Army, who I was listening to whilst driving.