one year {september 16, 2022}

On my last birthday, I wanted something to do to document the year leading up to year 65. No big plans, no rhyme nor reason, just stories about events, memories, thoughts, and "stuff." And here we are, one year later, 365 daily posts, and it's been lots of fun. There hasn't been much method to my madness. It truly has been a day-to-day write about something, which just goes to show that  no matter how big or small, there is always something that one can share. You just have to notice.

Seven years ago it was time to clean my mom's house to put on the market (she was in memory care). 65 years ago my dad had a military assignment at the 98th General Hospital in Neubrucke, Germany. While sorting through all sorts of keepsakes, I found a box full of letters from my parents' time there. Letters addressed to their house in Birkenfeld, my first home. Seeing these letters planted the seed to visit this little town where I spent the first year of my life.

In September 2019, my brother, and sister-in-law, T and I took a European vacation. We each chose a spot we wanted to see and planned our vacation around those places. T wanted to go to Normandy and see the D-Day beaches, my brother wanted to hit the Oktoberfest in Munich, my sister-in-law wanted to see Salzburg, Austria and an alpine village, I wanted to go to Strasbourg, France, tour some Alsatian vineyards, and make a side trip to nearby Neubrucke, Germany, where I was born. What a trip that was! We saw what we wanted to see plus more, and the memories...oh, the memories! 

Found the street!

This is my house ~ 

We lived on the upper floor

Down the road a few miles away in Neubrucke was the 98th General Army Hospital where I made my grand entrance into the world. The hospital was decommissioned  and is now a campus for environmental studies.

Stolperstein (translation: stumbling stone). In 1992 a German artist began laying these 4x4 brass cubes to commemorate the names and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution. Holocaust memorials focus on the scale and political culpability of this time in history; the Stolpersteine focus on its individual tragedies. Today there are over 70,000 of these memorial blocks placed around cities and towns across Europe and Russia. 

I found a stolperstein in my little town. Otto Pick lived in Birkenfeld. He was part of a union resistance and escaped to a Monastery in Kilchzimmer, Switzerland.