Frau Meissner

The first full day in Germany. First a few words to describe Frau Meissner. She is a widow in her early 70's and was a Russian teacher before "die Wende" (reunification-- called "The Change" here) I could not have been luckier. She is full of stories and very kind. Her family came from East Prussia (now Poland) at the end of the war when it was clear that the would be hunted out of Poland. She was one of eleven kids. Her parents knew that Hitler didn't have a chance of winning the war and so the father made arrangements with her mother to rendezvous if at all possible in a town near Wittenberg after the war (they had family there). The family was not allowed to leave for Germany proper during the war,as this would be seen as an admission of Hitler's coming defeat, and so the mother smuggled the kids out one by one to relatives in Germany until there was just an older sun and the four (!) youngest children-- the youngest being 5 months old. Frau Meissner told me that the mother was miraculously able to get on a train out of Poland-- one of the last-- and road in the bitter cold in January 1945 with the little children and her mother and the baby in a boxcar back to Germany. They were bombed frequently on the way. She said that her brother remembers that they passed groups of dead German soldiers on the way to the train and their mother told them "Guck mal da, ob das dein Vater ist" (Look there for me and see if that's your father there) Luckily not and they did manage to gather all of the children and her father returned and they were able to reunify the family and get a small farm in the southern part of East Germany, I think, were they were part of an agricultural collective later. Frau Meisner had some amazing stories which I'm going to try to tape and said that overall her experience in the DDR was actually not bad at all. All eleven children were able to be educated, which they would not have had the opportunity to do in East Prussia or, for that matter, as the children of landless farmers in current West Germany.
OK- I could go on with these amazing stories-- that in itself could be a blog. Frau Meisner also has an interestin apartment full of Russian memorabilia and Handwork in an historic house (with 9 other apartments) directly across from the Post Office – right on the edge of the Altstadt-- the historic part of this small city. She is right around the corner from where Martin Luther lived and taught and minutes by foot from the University-- so much for strenuous exercise on the way to school.
We spent a long, but interesting day in school. Everything in German. Everything. Even side conversations with other American teachers are conducted in German. That ends up being actually less work than I had thought. I notice everyone making periodic mistakes and it's actually easier than switching back and forth for me. I'm having a hard time operating in Englisch now, though, and upon re-reading an e-mail to Dave, found that I had unknowingly stuck in a sentence of German. Na sowas! (OK, I meant to do that!)
Time to go to bed. I fear if there's time pressure tomorrow I may have to post without pictures. I hope my words may be interesting enough that you'll keep reading this blog anyway-- or you may just do it out of pity-- or to laugh at me-- Oh, who cares? Hope all is well at home.