19-VI-1990.
Her uncle drove us all the way to their village around Stuttgart, where we stayed for the rest of our time there. He was still working, as some kind of manager or consultant, in his old enterprise where he used to be the manager, even though he could have retired.
We stopped for lunch in some dark forest, and there we discovered the beauty of bock beer - 17% extract, with proportionally much alcohol. Very good.
The house is in a village, but there's no visible agriculture anywhere, so it's no different from a suburb. Stock townhouses would be blocking the view if this weren't in a valley, surrounded by thick forest. It's not completely urbanized, though, there's still the little shop on the corner, streets meeting at odd angles, and some lineup of small shops on the main street, what with old-style façades with visible timber painted dark chocolate and the walls between stark white.
They have a dog, a largish one, chestnut color, who's given free access to the terrace and living room, and a lot of Inge's time goes to grooming her - combing, pulling out ticks.
There's a little creek crossing the yard, nice. The yard is mostly shaped so it can be machine mowed (which I also did one of these days).
A couple of times we walked the dog with the aunt, into the forest. Rather dark and cold there, even in this high summer. You just feel the difference when you return.
She was put to work... sewing this and that pretty much all the time. A few dresses for the aunt, perhaps a piece for her other daughter.
We bought fountain pens for the girls, pink plastic with transparent caps. After a while they noticed water droplets on the inside of the caps. I guessed, loudly, that the ink is always exposed in that capilary crack leading to the tip, and that some evaporation is taking place. Being in closed space, the vapor has nowhere to go and condenses on the walls. When they asked how can they prevent that, I stipulated that keeping pens in a cold space (i.e. not leaving them out in the sun) would slow down the evaporation, perhaps sufficiently). Day later we found the pens in the fridge.
One day we made a trip to Stuttgart, mostly to the zoo. It was interesting, what with the laid-back atmosphere of a slow stroll and look around. And the animals were well kept. Well, depending on the animal, there were various meanings of "well".
On the way to the parking, the uncle stepped right onto the pedestrian crossing, while I held back - and turned out I was right, the guy in the beemer just whizzed by, not waiting for us. Uncle said "how did you know?" "I saw his tags - S-KJ, that's yugoslav communist party, can't trust those guys".
On other days I was mostly bored, having nothing much to do. Took a bicycle and went to a computer shop in the next village and bought two packs of 3,5" floppies. Was given the dog to take it for a walk, which turned to be an interesting sociological experiment: all of a sudden people had a reason to stop and have a chat with me; my Hiawatha german was no obstacle. Guess with a dog on a proper leash I became one of them, despite wearing sandals, the chinese wall T-shirt, long hair and beard.
One day we walked to the swimming pool, about halfway to that other village. The walk back was much longer, guess we got really tired.
On another day we were taken on a scenic route through the surrounding hills, made a stop at some vantage point (with a proper parking, benches etc), then went to Ulm for some shopping. Got me a set of Gedore ratchet and a digital multimeter; girls bought who'd remember what; she got some feathers and other little things she may make jewelry of. Saw a band of students on a city square making a concert on jars. The jars were tuned by having the exact level of water in them, and then the rain started. We left before they lost the tuning.
Mentions: Inge tanti, in serbian