Au Weh! Au WEH!!!!

oh.my.gawwd... Jessica.

Peter called and told me she had been in Gamlitz today, and said she'd been there for the second time today, came in with a mess of doctors, and 'interfered'. Or did an intervention. And I thought 'Wha???' And I said, 'You must have been DREAMING, Peter.'

He insisted she had been and not for the first time. That is when I thought, Au, WEH!

She HATES hospitals.

Ok, slamming on the brakes here, screech, and backing up.

Jessica isn't her name. She was my old boss and ran the hotel during my day for nearly thirty years during my time. I hadn't been there long, and the old series SOAP becan running on Austrian tee-vee, and there was a character of that name. Peter had been watching it as well, and one day I said, 'Doesn't our boss remind you of Jessica on that show?' And he gleefully said, 'YES!'

The character on the show was scatterbrained, and chattered on about things, and if you didn't know the background, you were clueless. And that was sort of what my boss was like fifty thousand things in mind, a family, four children, the hotel to run, business to take care of, and once in a while we would look at one another and say, 'WHAA?'

She's always been a good woman at heart. And sort of a mother hen. But she remained 'Jessica' for a long time.

So when Peter told me that, I was non-plussed, but uncertain.

I 'thought' maybe someone from the HO-tel had said something, so was uncertain.

So I called her. A call that was long overdue, she did some very nice things for me, and you don't sit thirty years next to one another without knowing who the other person is, and the first thing was, 'Oh Gawwd, are you in trouble?' With great concern in her voice...

And I said, 'No but I have an odd question... were you in Gamlitz today?'

'No.... let me see, I was in Gamlitz a week ago, with my family, and we went to have Sturm in a Buschenschank... Sturm is a fresh wine with an immense amount of sugar, and she LURVS it. Let me tell you, if you want a headache to end all headaches, it's toxic... )
'Today I was in the restaurant, and boy are they in trouble....'

And then we had this circular conversation, and she wanted to know what is wrong, while telling me all the stuff she does to stay fit. She had a stroke two weeks before Peter did.

What came across was the caring, so I caught her up to date, and she didn't like it. At all, but is doing well, and berated me for smoking still.

We were always at loggerheads, she being more or less a freeper, and me freshly minted Sozi, but there were so many other things, and respect.

I MISS that. I mentioned something about Peter, and she said, 'Oh, HIM. How are YOU doing?'

Guess she liked me.

I have to add something, because it ties in to a couple of posts below. WWII

My boss was brought up in the so-called 'Sudetenland'. It was a mixture of Czechs and Germans in the west of what later became Tschechoslovakia. HER earliest memories were being thrown out of the country at the end of the war, and taking what they could carry on foot, in this case to Austria, and she was very young, and many people died.

It must have been terrifying for her. And am sure it never left her memory.

Am not saying it wasn't worse that what the Germans did, sending concentration camp victims who were so weak on a 'Death March'. That was worse. MUCH worse.

But over the years, and just talking with people, isn't it always the weakest and most vulnerable who get the most harm?

I don't even WANT to think about what went on in Iraq and Afghanistan in the past ten years, to the general population, and isn't THAT a cynical term?

But I DO think that what is happening now over there happened then.

It's all sort of 'odd'. No one seems to want to LEARN much of anything...