our apartment in germany

The bed you have made is too short to lie on. The blankets are too narrow to cover you. (Isaiah 28:20)

Our apartment in Germany was so small. How small was it, you ask? It was so small that we had to go out in the hall to change our minds. Ba-dum-dum. Thank you. I will be here all week.

Seriously, though, it was small, probably no bigger than our current living room, which is not very big itself.

But we were newlyweds and really didn’t care at the time. We were together, we were in a fascinating foreign country, eating interesting food (when we could afford it – a GI’s salary was not very big), seeing things we had only read about.

We had a red 1962 Volkswagen with a sun roof and drove around all the time. If we were not driving, we walked, or rode the electric streetcars or the electric trains.

It was great. I had learned some German, Ella was from a German background and looked like everybody else and we would just go out and try to blend in. Of course, I was about six inches taller than most Germans but still, we got to where we looked downright native.

But back to the apartment. It was $200 a month (almost half my salary) and was on the third floor of a doctor’s house. It had two rooms with a bathroom that almost as big as one of the other rooms. We were fortunate in that, as the rest of the people on our floor had to go down the hall to a bathroom. It had an enormous bathtub that Ella washed clothes in. She hung them up to dry on the radiator.

In the main room was a banquette table with two chairs and a L-shaped bench. That was all the seating. There was a little kitchen inside a cupboard and a cabinet for storage. In the bedroom was an odd shaped bed (longer and narrower than American beds) up against the wall with a chifferobe and a dresser. I had also an old German army footlocker at the bottom of the bed. There was about three feet of floor space to do stuff in.

It had two big windows, one in each of the rooms that had shutter things that would come down and seal in the room with no light.

Across the street was a beautiful park that was attached to a Russian university down the street. Beside the Russian university was a Russian Orthodox cathedral used by Czar Nicholas of Russia when he would come to visit the in-laws, Alexandra’s parents. It was inlaid in gold and had a gold mosaic reflecting pool in front of it. (One of the reasons the peasants revolted against the Russian aristocracy).

In front of the apartment was a small cobblestone drive. We had to park a couple of streets down as there was no parking on the street and I didn’t want to pay for parking in the garage attached to the house.

The apartment was tiny. Ella would sit in the window, as German women would do, and watch people walk by. When I came walking up from the car, I would see her, this cute little 19 year old girl, sitting in the window watching for me. She would wave, I would give back a manly wave. I would climb six flights of stairs (something I did so easily that it amazes me) and I would be home.

We were happy. It was our home, our own. And we loved each other. I miss it. It would be horrible to live in such a small space now, but it was all so new.