time travel

Back from Germany and finding the re-entry to be rather bumpy. The visit to Germany was golden and sunny and autumn-leaf filled, but one of the high points was a visit to S's bachelor uncle H in a miniscule village in the rolling fields of Thuringia. This time S promised me I'd be able to explore the wonder of a house more than our last brief visit- it's a huge pile of stones, a home from another century, and has been lived in by the same family for most of its time.

We pulled through the always-open heavy wooden doors into the cobbled courtyard mid-day and passed through one of the barn gateways into the back garden, where the blood from a recent sheep slaughter still pooled in the earth. Off to one side, S's cousin was playing with her young son, a pink-cheeked, solemn young fellow. She told us that H was awaiting our visit eagerly and had even put on new trousers just for the occasion. So, back through the courtyard we went and through the wide farmhouse door to the flagstoned entry hall. This room alone is fascinating, with the massive staircase leading up and the myriad of doors going everywhichwhere, ornate of hinge and door handle. H came out, followed by his enthusiastic and massive Ridgeback, Nelson. We'd brought treats for Nelson and he found them immediately despite my attempts to hide behind my back. No matter.

We then all piled into H's farm scented land rover, and off to lunch we went. He'd chosen a place that was surrounded by a sort of petting zoo, occupied by deer from India, potbellied pigs, shetland ponies, and all manner of curious piebald geese. Inside the decor of the restaurant was equally inspired, with a Tiki bar hung about with cowboy boots and crowned by a stuffed peacock. The food was the best Germany can offer though, plentiful, delicious, and comforting. Afterwards, H took us on a tour of this slice of the land, showing us his winter wheat fields, sown and ready for the frosts to come. He showed us the wide view over the water that provided the area with the power that fueled the once-booming leather manufacturing. It's crumbled now, and as we went through the main town, it was quite evident- rambling, massive villas from the turn of the century are now crumbling into the ground in fascinating disarray. Some have been preserved and rise in fanciful shapes against the woody hills, but the place definitely had the feel of having passed its era of grandeur.

We visited the elementary school where both H and S went, a yellow confectionary from 1911, all wide windows and delicious turrets, set atop a hill and surround by lovely sloping lawns. After a final stop to view the glory of the 19th century train viaduct, we went back to the farmhouse for the moment I'd been anticipating since I first saw the farmhouse back in 2008- the attic visit. I knew that such a house must have an amazing attic, and S had told me stories of playing up there as a child, so I'd asked him if this visit could possibly include a trip up there. H happily agreed and soon we were up there among the massive beams and many layers of dust.

Of course there was an old rocking horse, and a large old dollhouse that would have housed a massive doll-family once upon a time, along with ancient farm scales and plenty of heavy old bits of furniture. H pressed through to the end-room where a row of windows trimmed with stained glass looked over the eaves of the outbuildings beyond. There, he went to a dusty cupboard, saying "here's where the real good stuff is". Inside, the shelves were crammed with papers, albums, and cigar boxes. He pulled the top one out, full of stiffly posed 19th century portraits, the baby ones with that fuzzy blur they always had when the baby-wriggle was faster than the shutter speed of the era. Beneath it was another, a postcard album from a little girl who'd lived at the farm around 1900. There were postcards of the sights around Europe at the time, greetings on the first day of school, Christmas cards, birthday cards, new-years cards, all as crisply colored and bright as if they'd been sent yesterday. Page upon page of German history stretching through the first world war, and a second album chronicling the years after.

I dug into the lower shelves, full of dress pattern catalogs from the 50s, farm logbooks from the 40s that tallied the bushels of rye, wheat, potatoes for every month. I found illustrated newspapers from the 1920s, cigarboxes full of all kinds of odds and ends. One contained needles and lengths of hemp for sewing sacks, another contained some forgotten buttons, a third contained a large chunk of rock and a rolled newspaper clipping. None of us could determine what had been so important about that particular bit of rock but to someone it must have been significant.

By then the sun was starting to fade and the attic was growing cold, so we went downstairs to join the others for coffee and cakes. Such cakes! There was plum cake and crumble cake and so many types of cookies, all eaten around a massive table and surrounded by furniture that was at least a hundred years old and probably hadn't moved from its location during most of that time. In one corner a lovely Art Nouveau grandfather clock kept us company, as the view of the little church across the street faded in the dusk. After coffee, S and I went downstairs to H's cozy living room where he lit the fire and Nelson curled up in his huge basket right in front of it. I finally had a chance to marvel at the wonders in this room, including a fascinating 19th century men's smoking table, covered in stamped tin and including matching covered ash tray. I then noticed the row of leather volumes on the bookshelf, so H explained his love for old maps and atlases. I pulled the first one off the shelf and was immediately lost in the 16th century maps of Europe inside. So many of the towns I've visited were already there, albeit with a different idea of their locations relative to each other.

When the fascination of the map book was exhausted, I turned to the next volume on the shelf, an illustrated history of Germany, published in the 1890s. It was certainly a thrilling tome and liberally sprinkled with dramatic engravings of the high points of a thousand years of time, mostly considered to be battles. By then it was drawing onto dinnertime, so over a glasses of delicious German red wine, we finished off the evening with thick slices of sourdough spread with all manner of delicious toppings. We left soon after that for the two-hour drive south, back from 100 years ago and into 2011 again.