Week 4 was completely different to the first three weeks. No so happy living. There were right away some challenges…
We changed flats on Saturday. Unfortunately we left the new flat again on Monday afternoon. Disadvantages and weather conditions made our basement flat quite wet. After two nights in moist sheets and moldy cellar smell we gave up. SchwarzwaldPlus were very quick and helpful and we packed again and moved to another flat.
From that Achim caught a cold and became ill. Being ill was not in our concept of waltzing. I am afraid we have to think about that and change the concept slightly…
We did a lot that week anyway. While waiting for the new flat, we have visited the Hamburg Fish Market in Freudenstadt and have been to an arts and craft market.
And we went with a chairlift and tried to go by pedal boat and we travelled the Schwarzwaldhochstrasse. We visited a more than sixty year old miniature golf ground and explored Murgel's playhouse. We informed ourselves about the new National Parc and visited a schnapps distillery. And then we dared to mix and mingle between thousands of teddy bears and went to the tennis hall Baiersbronn. And we have been to the Hauff fairy tales museum where most of the exhibition is about the tale “The Cold Heart”. I have to read the tale again now that we are at the original places.
And then we gave the Mummelsee a second try to ride a pedal boat. It is really idyllic if you are there at the right time.
And then that…
On Friday we went to Duisburg to attend the show “photo & adventure”. On our way we wanted to deposit a few items that we do not need on our waltz. We also have already been twice to the clothes recycling skip. But then came the great shock: Our boxes were not there any more.
We have been giving away very very many things before our start. But there were some things that we liked so much that we really could not or did not want to give away. Theses things we put into some boxes and took some of the boxes with us each time we went to Germany. We put them into an empty flat to keep them until after our waltz. We put our boxes in the flat though there was much other stuff. I asked whether it makes sense to put our boxes there with the other stuff but Achim said: “No problem. You directly see that these are our boxes.” The person in charge asked with a slightly offended touch: “Do you thing I would put your belongings to the garbage?”
Well. What can I say. That is exactly what happened. Just those few items that we really wanted to keep landed in the garbage. We still don't know how this could happen. But it happened.
We were devastated. Achim spent hours before waltzing to sort our pictures and slides and negatives and only kept those that were really important to him. And some of friends and family. And there were also very old photos from his grandparents and ancestors. Plus photos from his apprenticeship and of course his journeymen's piece. Now everything is gone! For ever deleted! Achim summarized it very quickly: “Now my photographic career is extinguished!” That's how it is. There is not a single photo left. No picture, slide or negative from his career until today. Everything is gone, away and lost.
In the boxes were also about 550 music-CDs and another one hundred DVDs which we could not digitalize before waltzing. We wanted to do that afterwards and therefore put those CDs neatly in boxes. Also those are gone! And no – you cannot get this music on itunes. A lot of our CDs were special pieces, and seldom ones. Or oriental music that I collected during my dancing career. You do not get them that easy. There were also a lot of trial versions from friends and sadly enough our own recordings. Now there exists no recording from my dances and performances any more… Everything gone! Both our creative careers are gone.
If Achim should become one day a famous photographer there will be no flashback to the start of his professional career, because nothing exists any more.
It feels awkward to have no memorabilia any more. When the past is extinguished you feel yourself extinguished. People that lost everything in a fire or refugees must feel the same.
Es fühlt sich sehr merkwürdig an, wenn man keine Erinnerungsstücke mehr hat. Wenn die Vergangenheit We do not know what else has been in the boxes. Whether there were important papers like our register in the boxes we do not know right now and cannot check it. About the photos and CDs we are very sure.
I cried all night when I remembered that I won't hear this or that piece any more. Horrible!
We thought that this time we decide what we give away and what we want to keep. And by only keeping some items we could possibly moderate the strokes of fate from 2013. This year we lost a lot of things in a flood. And a very dear person has been taken away from us. On the day of the funeral our landlord advised us that we had to leave the house. So we also lost our home. The centre of our life. 2014 we lost another two dear persons. And we realized that we only took some items with us to the new house because we saved them from the flood. And somehow we imagined that we could now dictate what we will keep and what we give away and have reduced and vaporised thousands of things to a handful of boxes.
Well. Wrong thought.
We ask ourselves now what fate wants to tell us. Are we supposed to have absolutely nothing? Do we have to be completely naked like the Finn in his movie before we are allowed to own something again? We have still a few boxes left in Austria. Will they be taken from us? Or may we at least keep these memorabilia?
The fifth week starts clouded also because we are both ill now. And of course the world is still turning and – hey – we are still alive.
And here some impressions from our second week in the black forest from Achim:
