These weeks I had time to live in our house again.
Here we have lived as a tiny family: father, mother son - for 19 years. Longest time of my life in one place.
Our house was built in 1902. It lies in one of the best residential areas in Hildesheim: a little (half-) island, surrounded on one side by the river 'Innerste' and the 'Kalenberger Graben' on the other side. We have streets that are called "Great Venice" and 'Little Venice' - which says all.
The whole street was the result of an architectural contest - and shows some of the very few buildings that survived the war.
Six years after we had bought it, the complete street was put under "protection of historical buildings and monuments" - which was not always a joy for us, because I had a lot of 'interesting discussions' with the curator of monuments - an out-and-outer for others (in his house of the 17th century he pulled inside down every wall - but at this point, dear reader, Husband would roll his eyes and say: "Have you to keep on and on?" Eh - YES ).
On the photo below the left one is our house: around the windows in the shade you might guess the yellow sandstone I was not allowed either to let paint or sandblast(!). Three floors, every room about 4m high, stucco and beautiful carved doors: one big flat on knee-high ground-floor (175 qm where we lived, now let), 4 little flats (Hans' library-and working-flat is on the first floor, 3 others are let). The four streets of rows of houses form a square full of gardens.
These are houses around us (to be honest: I'm not a big fan of wooden framework) :
On the other side lives the Lord Mayor of Hildesheim:
Son went to study Law at the University in Freiburg. Hans and I went first to Hamburg, then moved to Berlin - he always working at the University of Hildesheim, commuting, me working in Hamburg, and now trying to skive off to free-lancing translation and writing in Berlin.
I think I found an answer to: Why did we leave?
(to be continued :-)
