My dad enjoyed every season but winter was the best for hats really and he had quite a collection of head gear to protect him from the cold. As a rather sporty, outdoorsy type, he didn’t let the cold stop him from enjoying the outdoors through the winter months as long as he had his hat. We got dragged out of the house every weekend rain or shine, or snow. He’d be like, ‘right, los (German for ‘come on’), get your sweater on and bundle up!’
He always pronounced sweater as ‘sweather’. In his over 40 years in Canada, he never lost his German accent. Growing up, we found it hilarious and teased him a bit. He’d just laugh. Didn’t care. The ‘sweather’ mispronunciation always sticks in my mind and my sister reminded me the other day that he also had trouble with squirrel, which he pronounced as ‘swirl’.
Most weekends in winter it was little treks along the coast but, if there was snow, there were other options. Halifax often got snow in winter and it could be several feet high but the Gulf Stream kept the climate fairly mild and wet so the snow usually melted quickly. There are some hills in Nova Scotia but no mountains so no proper downhill skiing really and it was mostly tobogganing and skating. We did do some cross country skiing with him though in nearby parks. It was always a bit gruelling having to wade through the heavy wet snow but he made it fun.
I don’t know when my father first learned to ski; perhaps as a child in the Harz mountains or maybe when he lived for a year in Sweden before moving to Canada. He did ski a lot in the years he lived in Vancouver before I was born. They were in Vancouver for about 7 years before I came along and according to my mum, he took Wednesday afternoons off through the winter to go skiing in the Rockies. Whistler I think.
He loved to ski; was originally a mountain man. He was born in and spent the first two years of his life in an orphanage in Wolkenstein, in the Erzgebirge near the Czech border. Literally, the stone in the clouds! He obviously didn’t remember any of that period but I think the mountains left a mark on his soul. When he moved to live with his grandparents in Hildesheim, they weren’t far from the Harz mountains. We always made a little trip into the Harz mountains on visits with Omi. She had a client who lived there and owned a little hotel where we always stayed. I loved it. It was usually summer, so no snow or skiing; just long walks along woodland trails. It’s where he taught us to make little fairy houses in the roots of the trees.
He always stocked up on his favourite cheese, Harze Käse, when we went. Traditionally, Harze Käse is little rounds of hard, white cheese dusted with caraway seeds. You can’t really eat it while it’s still white. The longer it sits in the fridge the more translucent it gets, the more it starts to run and melt over the plate, and the more it starts to stink! It really really stinks but tastes so good!
His grandfather, Henry, was originally from Goslar, a short distance from Hildesheim in the foothills of the Harz mountains. They often visited family there when my dad was growing up and I think the tradition of family jaunts into the Harz mountains was a regular thing throughout his childhood. Henry came from a family who were all in the printing business but he became a shoemaker. At the age of 23, Henry married Anna and they settled in Hildesheim where he opened his shoemaking business.
Anna was not from Goslar or Hildesheim but from Wolkenstein - where my dad was born. When her daughter, my Omi, got pregnant, Anna sent her to her family in Wolkenstein to have my dad there. When Omi left to take up a job in the north I guess nobody in the family could take him so he ended up in an orphanage. But how did a shoemaker from Goslar meet a girl from Wolkenstein? Sadly, there are no family stories about this or anyone still alive to ask but I have a hypothesis. Anna worked in a tannery, curing leather, and my guess is that Henry travelled there, across the Harz and the Erzgebirge mountains, regularly to buy leather for his shoemaking and fell in love with the pretty, petite, shy girl with the sweet smile working in the factory. She was almost a year older than him but clearly that didn’t matter. They had seven children together and their first son arrived the year they were married. Wedding and birth dates suggest she was with child when she married, so perhaps he got her pregnant on one of his buying trips and then did the right thing.
Wolkenstein is in the former East Germany. I don’t know if my dad ever went back but I visited once. The summer after the Berlin wall came down, in 1990, I took a little trip through Saxony with some friends in Heidelberg that had spent a year in Canada with me on our MA programme. We toodled about; visiting Weimar and the home of Goethe, Leipzig, Chemnitz where my Omi’s sister had lived, and Dresden, staying in old hotels, funny little countryside cottages, and farms. We even joined a wedding in one farm village and perhaps it was something in the fire water but we had a riotous time dancing the night away with the wedding party. The people and countryside were lovely but the cities, full of rusty old trabis, had clearly been neglected for decades. Everything was crumbling and a bit sad but probably much improved in the decades since. We also stopped at Buchenwald, one of the Nazi concentration camps. To be honest, I and one of my three friends couldn’t bring ourselves to go in. The whole atmosphere around the site was so heavy with sadness. We sat quietly outside, reflecting, mourning.
It was a relatively short drive from Chemnitz up the mountain to Wolkenstein. Remote and isolated on the top of the mountain, it was a tiny place really and not hard to find the house where one of the last of my Omi’s cousins lived. I rang the bell and waited, listening to the light, shuffling steps approaching the door on the other side. It opened and there was a teeny tiny gnome of a woman with sparkling dark eyes and the sweetest of smiles. She had long white hair which hung braided down the sides of her rosy cheeked face under a brightly coloured wool beanie. She wore an oversized wool jumper and a full skirt that almost reached the floor but not enough to hide her colourful wool slipper socks. I explained who I was and she invited me warmly in for a cup of tea. As we sat and chatted about family, sipping our tea, she continued chopping the raw onion on the wooden board in front of her, explaining with a little chuckle that it was medicine for her heart. I don’t remember her words so much as the impression of her, so like how I imagined Anna must have been. I can see why Anna held such a special place in my dad’s heart. Sweetness personified!
I’m really happy to have been able to visit my dad’s birthplace, even though he was only there for a short while, and also the place where my great-grandmother and her family were from. My roots. A place connected with my DNA, my identity, I guess.
Anyway, I seem to have meandered off piste… the skiing theme… and probably enough for today. Just to say, to round it all off, skiing was never something which I enjoyed. The cross country version is too damn hard and the one time I attempted downhill skiing on a school trip, I ended up sliding down the gravel on the side of the bunny trail badly bruising my leg. But, I can see how it appealed to my dad; the connection with nature, the breathtaking views, the risk, the thrill, the exhilaration, the sheer physical athleticism of it - strength, speed, power, agility, balance, coordination, and endurance. In some ways, it’s how he lived his life. Never afraid really to leave the tried and tested path and go off piste.
Thanks for joining me on this little trip down memory lane and travels with my dad. If you liked this, there are more stories in the Memoir section of my Notes from Sardinia Substack.
As always, it would be lovely to hear from you dear reader so drop me a line in the comments and feel free to share some of your own dad tales!
Take care!
F ox
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