Lünenburger Heide

When I was sixteen, I desperately wanted to work on my Uncle Dan’s wheat farm in Montana. My brothers had done it and I wanted a piece of the action. But my aunt and uncle wouldn’t hire me.

My mom suggested I ask their friend, who frequently worked in Germany, to find a German family that I could help out for the summer: a nanny of sorts. I’d studied German for three years in school with the formidable Frau Disbrow.

I paid my own airfare and lived with the Bauer family in a tiny village, Nierswalde, part of a slightly larger town, Goch, near Nijmegen, Netherlands. As an experienced mother, I now recognize that I was more of a burden than help: my German parents basically added a moody teenager to their family of three active boys.

For me, it is still the trip of a lifetime. Being immersed in German, I became Frau Disbrow's star student that following fall of my senior year. (I had been afraid of her up to this point, and I'm pretty sure she didn't like me.)

My German parents took me on trips to see a Roman amphitheater and the nearby castle at Kleve.

We also drove on the Autobahn to the Lünenburger Heide (Heath), stopping at the medieval city of Celle (established by 985 C.E.). In the Heide we visited some farmer friends. They invited us to their cherry orchard, where we spent several hours picking  from ladders, then sat around a huge bowl of cherries and ate as evening fell.

I have never eaten my fill of cherries since. We sat and talked until dark, a magical day during a wondrous summer.


Jim and I are on a Rick Steves “Best of Germany” 13-day tour. We flew into Hamburg on Saturday. Monday morning, I discovered that we would be travelling through the Lünenburger Heide. In fact, our prima tour guide, Caroline, had arranged for us to visit a working dairy farm, Hemme Milch. As we drove through the countryside I reveled in my return to the Germany of my youth. Northern Germany is not usually a tourist destination for Americans, but it won my heart long ago.

Tonight we’re sleeping in the medieval town of Bacharach on the Rhine River after touring the Cologne Cathedral. Cologne was the farthest south I got in 1973 and the cathedral was the most magnificent building I had ever seen (and I grew up just 25 miles from Manhattan). I was a little apprehensive that it had grown too large in my imagination, but the vaulted ceiling still hung impossibly high above me, a marvel of stone in air.