Month: July 2026

We have been in our apartment (Wohnung) for almost two weeks now and it is really starting to feel like home. We have even had some of Andreas‘s friends visit. The first were Horst and Ester from an area near Bonn. Horst is one of Andreas‘s boyhood friends. Horst and Ester have invited us to stay with them several times now and we have had wonderful dinners together in their delightful garden. We will be going to visit them again in August and it is one of the highlights of our southern bicycle excursions. The first year we visited my German was at best rudimentary and despite considerable challenges they made me feel so welcome. They fully understood when my „German ears“ quit working! We spent a delightful afternoon showing off Rietberg and catching up on news. The second visitors were Siggy and Ingrid. Siggy is one of Andreas’s engineering college friends and I met them for the first time on one of our first bicycle excursions to North Holland. They had rented a holiday apartment that was big enough for us to stay for a couple of days. Ingrid is actively learning English and so we were able to get to know each other using a mishmash of English and German. I learned my first German funny childhood story on that trip:

Hier ist der klassische Breitmaulfrosch-Witz:
Ein Breitmaulfrosch geht zum Arzt und fragt: „Lieber Doktor, wie kann ich mein Maul kleiner machen?“ Der Arzt rät ihm, jeden Tag mehrmals das Wort „Konfitüre“ zu sagen. Nach einer Woche kommt der Frosch völlig verzweifelt zurück – sein Maul ist noch größer geworden. Der Arzt fragt entsetzt: „Aber Herr Frosch, was haben Sie denn gesagt?“ Darauf der Frosch: „Maaarmelade!“ [1]

So now the in-house breakfast joke, with hyper mouth exaggeration is „confiture“ or „Maaarmaalade“. We managed a delightful bicycle round trip to Rheda-Wiedenbruch and returned home to home made soup and appetizers. I’m spending time to tell you these stories to set the scene that explains how fortunate I feel. Meeting Andreas just over four years ago now, changed the direction of my life. I’m now spending summers in Europe, struggling, but making progress learning German and delighting in getting back to my European roots. While I was raised in the semi urban/rural outskirts of London, it was still a time when children could roam free and bicycles were an important form of transportation. Small farms and small factories were embedded into the village/town culture. Yes there was plenty of commuting too, but trains and buses were more important than cars. Spending three months in Europe without a car is both liberating and eye opening. We are no road bikers so the pace of our cycling is moderate and we have plenty of time to „stop and smell the roses“ or in our case, sample the local bakery offerings or the local wines if the timing is right. If we stop for long enough for me to get the sketch book out, more often than not, someone will come by to watch, make a comment, smile….make contact. Most of the time I’m able to offer them a copy as a souvenir of their visit. The cell phone camera and email make that so easy.

So …. Back to Rietberg. Our apartment is on the Main Street (Rathaus Straße-Townhall street) The Rathaus is a truely magnificent building: The zig zag element on the building facade is the stair well. Building an external staircase as an architectural feature rather than a back-door afterthought really makes a statement!

Across the street from the Rathaus is a beautiful half timbered (Fachwerkhaus) house that has been in the process of renovation for two of the four years I have been visiting. It is now a prestigious café with an outdoor garden area too. The small blue door at the bottom left is a regular door entry. It gives you a sense of the dimensions of this huge home built in 1653, a few years after the 30 year war that devastated this part of Europe. The yellow building behind houses an art gallery that features work by Angelo Monitillo who welds metal „scrap“ into magnificent sculptures. Pegasus is outside!

The old town of Rietberg is surrounded by a modest moat based on the River Ems. There‘s a delightful treed allée that we walk in the evenings to top up our step count if necessary. At one point there is a striking view of the Kloster St Katherina steeple. In the 1800‘s and possibly before, the place where. Iowa’s standing was a meadow where people bleached their sheets in the sun.

Ein Blick auf den Kirchturm über den Wassergraben hinweg; im 19. Jahrhundert bleichte man auf dieser Seite des grabens die Bettlaken.

Last but not least, this last sketch celebrates many of the wonderful concrete sculptures made by a Mother/daughter pair that are found all over this area. The sculptures are larger than life and represent people in everyday activities. In this case, Andreas and I had stopped for an ice cream and I could sketch the rounded young man sitting on the bench. As I started, an older man rode up on his bicycle, sat next to the sculpture, smoked a cigarette and left. The poignant part of this story was the following day when we brought Siggy and Ingrid to the same ice cream place, the same man came and sat in the same place, smoked another cigarette and left.