We camped far in the south of Bulgaria in a sea bay near the Turkish-Greek border.
Every morning a fast elegant hydrofoil cruised over the waves towards the Bosporus. According to our information, the boat took tourists who possessed a passport on a day trip to the nearby Asian-European metropolis of millions.
Like all GDR citizens, we had no passport, only a multi-page identity card with a visa stitched in, valid for Bulgaria. A trip to Istanbul was therefore out of the question. Annoying, but we had mainly gone to the Black Sea to soak up sun and fresh air, and there was plenty of it.
Andreas and I consoled ourselves with surfing in a constant stiff breeze on the open sea. Chris took it easy with sunshine and water temperatures like in a bathtub. Only Kerstin was happy when we started the journey home tanned.
So much sun was not her thing, she would have preferred the Thuringian Forest or the Harz Mountains. On the way back, we didn’t want to put the good old Lada through the hardships of the ‘Road of Communism’ again but drove north along the Făgăraş Mountains via Braşov (Kronstadt). Two days later we were back home.
Little Julia grew up, a pretty, happy child with a particularly strong affection for her aunt Christiane and also for me. As she grew older, her attachment to us became stronger and stronger, which her mother did not like.
Her hidden jealousy reminds me of a fatal incident: we were sitting together at lunch, and Julia was babbling in a childishly naive tone about what she had experienced at kindergarten.
Obviously, the kindergarten teachers had been talking about the fathers of their children, because Julia looked at me and suddenly said, ‘I have my man-dad, too!’ Immediately the little girl was rebuked in a harsh, almost vicious tone by her mother: ‘That’s not your father!’
After this rebuke, which was completely incomprehensible to the child, the meal ended in awkward silence. This embarrassing incident marked the beginning of a creeping estrangement from our niece, although we had cared for Julia for many years as if she were our own child.
Four children grew up in the house: Christian and Sophia, our neighbors’ children, Toni, the curly-headed boy with Algerian roots who lived with his grandparents, and our Julie. All the children went to kindergarten during the day, but in the afternoon, they naturally wanted to play outside.
The narrow yard was not particularly child-friendly, so a remedy had to be found. The house included a large garden overgrown with old fruit trees, which the old tenant from the first floor had quietly appropriated and used out of common law.
Because he was not willing to give up a piece of the garden for the children, my father-in-law and I resorted to self-help. Without further ado, we moved the fence a few meters, and the children now owned a piece of meadow in addition to the paved yard.
The clamor of the unlawful user died away unheard because the garden actually belonged to the entire household. I closed the entrance to the property with a self-made gate, and Chris repaired the pillars and the wrought-iron fence in the front yard with her brother Ralph.
Now the kids couldn’t escape into the street unsupervised. An old acquaintance who worked as an excavator operator in the open pit mine built a large round paddling pool for the children out of discarded conveyor belts. On sunny days, the bathing fun of the stark naked, lively rangers put any dolphin show in the shade. 𝓣𝓸 𝓑𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮𝓭…
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