I met my oldest friend in 1951 in Bonn (Germany) when we were 8 years old. She lived next door and was very interesting for me because she had a baby sister of 2 and a new born baby brother ! She was very happy when I asked her mother if I could walk little baby sister, that way she was free and could play with the others and I was proud to push the pram.
I always played with her at her place and never at mine, because her parents were very warm hearted and friendly people and with 3 children in the little flat there was always a cosy chaos, not like in our flat, where my mother was busy with cleaning 24 h per day and no room for children to play.
When both our fathers were sent to Brussels to work for the Commun Market (today the European Union) we were neighbours again. She lived two houses down the street from ours. We both went to the German school although not in the same class. When she had finished school, she went back to Germany for her studies. I remained in Brussels, but we always kept contact. We married, had children, at least she had 3 I only one, but also this did not harm our friendship, at least once a year we called each other or we wrote letters.
Meanwhile she is a proud Grandma of 4 grandsons, the eldest one is already 22 ! How time flies by. On tuesday we talked together on the phone and she asked me to come over, she was in Holland in their holiday home and this is only 150 km (93 miles) away from Waterloo. It's a beautiful area at the sea. Next day I jumped in my car and arrived in Kamperland at 11.30 where she and her husband just had a brunch. I joined in and we chatted and chatted and chatted, the hubby tried to place a word, gave up after a while and suggested a walk in the sunshine along the beach. That's what we did, but we continued with our tongue gymnastic and talked and talked and talked. Finally he asked us to drop him off at home because he wanted to place a cable and my friend wanted to show me a little pictoresque town nearby.
In the evening we shared so many souvenirs and laughed and laughed when we remembered that once we walked her little brother in his pram and he was snoring so much. Two neighbour boys (older than us) told us to close his nose and mouth then he would stop snoring, and we did !!! poor baby almost suffocated ! and then later we were teenagers and had the first boys standing in range.
We never ran out of subjects and when I left the next day we still hadn't talked enough ! But there soon will be another occasion.
My friend Gisela and I
and so we looked in 1954, listening to music
and in 1956 when we went to Austria together with our parents
