Page 33 - My Story

Meanwhile, the new building had its problems. I was horrified one afternoon to see water welling
up in the toilet bowl and overflowing all over my bathroom floor and starting to seep along the corridor
where I had books piled up on the floor awaiting the arrival of shelves. I flew down to Fraulein
Balkenbourg and, not having the vocabulary to explain what was happening dragged her up to our
bathroom and pointed. She ordered the plumber who arrived very quickly and ordered me to go to each
apartment and tell people not to flush – “nicht ziehen”. The plumber did his job which, I gathered
consisted of taking a large quantity of cement out of the lowest pipes and departed. Fraulein B. and I
heaved a big sigh of relief and went about our lives. It was about seven o’clock that evening that the
upstairs neighbour came to our door, looking quite pale and drawn and asking whether it was now safe
to flush! Of course, I had quite forgotten to make the rounds and inform people that the emergency was
over!

The apartment came without appliances and Peter and I had made it a priority to go out and order
a stove, refrigerator and washing machine – no dryer and no dishwasher in those days. I think it was ten
years later we acquired these luxuries. The stove arrived. I had asked them to supply the directions in
English and they did –

“Set thermostat control knob then slide in and work with oven door closed”.

“Temperatures for baking tarts bottoms and wind bags”.

Peter and I fell about, laughing.

Hilary in 1965

We were finally unpacked and in a kind of routine. Hilary and I would walk the girls to
Kindergarten in the morning. It was pretty close and there were no roads to cross. Our walk took us past
a plumbing supplies store and Susan, seeing the toilets in the window, invariably wanted to stop and use
one! Another mother who lived across the Hagsche Strasse from us asked whether our children could
walk home together – they were Ulrich and Katinka Wiegand. Ulrich was a little older than Helen and we
both felt that our eldest children were responsible enough to do this. We mothers would walk our
children to Kindergarten so that we could be sure they had arrived and then at lunchtime we would wait
out in the street to see them walk up the hill. Frau Wiegand then had to see her two across the street.
We called each Frau Wiegand and Frau Lanzer for forty years until we were just exchanging letters at
Christmas and birthdays and then I suggested that, as we had known each other as long as we had, it was

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