When I began my blog, I thought about some basic principles. I didn’t want to compromise anyone’s privacy so I generally don’t post photographs of people. It’s so important to respect everyone’s private space too, so I rarely post pictures of personal places either and this gives me a small problem today. We spent the day with family friends whom we’ve known for most of our lives; people with whom we have grown up and have a considerable shared history. For a variety of reasons, we haven’t seen them in a while, and so today there was a lot of catching up to do. I took quite a few photographs throughout the day, but…
All but five pictures I took have someone in them.
I posted the photograph of Johanna’s beautiful table decoration on my 365 page, so there remain just the four pictures to illustrate the happy time we spent today.
All are of food!
To begin with, here is Johanna’s delicious pumpkin soup. Having collected Birgit from her home in the city, we drove out in fine sunshine through the glorious Autumn colours of the Bavarian countryside to her brother and sister-in-law’s home. Bernd and Johanna live in a small village, overlooking open fields. We have known them all forever, it seems, and though of course, we are all older, none of us have changed at all.
Except we have more memories to share. We also have families of our own to talk about and in Bernd and Johanna’s case, the company of their son and daughters to enjoy, because in the last few years their family has blossomed.
(the photograph above is of the most yummy cheesecake with a meringue topping by the way…another of Johanna’s masterpieces)
No room for a slice of her carrot cake at tea time, sadly, because we’d enjoyed an enormous lunch and if there’s one thing better than a meal eaten in a German restaurant, it’s a meal eaten in a German home, especially when cooked by one of our clever friends. We loved the chance to spend time around this particular table, to share a memory or two and to tease one another when one recalled a slightly embarrassing moment. No matter. We were amongst friends – family, almost, and in such company, such things are fine.
From time to time we asked ourselves, where did those years go? How can it be that we have known each other for more than 40 years and yet, in our minds, we are still the same age? Finding room for a piece of Donauwellen cake and remembering Irmgard, their late mother (another great cook and someone whose Knödel still count amongst my hero’s all time favourites) we settled into one of those happy afternoons when the conversation continues uninterrupted.
A phone call meant that Karin wasn’t left out, either. For a few short minutes we were all together again and of course, we promised not to let another ten years go by without meeting up again.
As an elderly lady wrote in my childhood autograph book in the most marvellous handwriting:
“Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver, the other gold.”
