Posted by BDMHistorian

Chapter 7
A Jungmaedel Garden and a Flower Village

One morning, there was a poster on the door of the youth hostel. Shorty had seen it first, and then all Jungmaedel stood to read what was written on it. There was a big red arrow at the top, pointing toward the village. Below that stood in nice printed handwriting:

"If you think you're the only Jungmaedel in Heidersdorf, you're wrong. We're here, too. But you have to come look for us. This afternoon, starting at five o'clock, you must follow the red arrows. Then you'll find us. The Jungmaedel of the village."

Awesome! That was a real invitation. Excitedly, everyone spent the early afternoon getting ready for the visit. Each Jungmaedel put on a fresh, clean blouse and brushed her skirt again. No insignia or sleeve triangle with the text "Ost Berlin" was missing from anyone. The Jungmaedel of the village should see that the Berliners knew what was proper!

Then, the hunt was on. The red arrows were found easily enough. They were stuck to fences, building walls, and trees; and pointed into the village, past the church, and back out the other end. But now what? They didn't see anything for a long time. Kathrin wanted to turn around already because she thought they'd gotten lost, when a small girl in a white blouse and blue skirt popped from the ditch at the side of the road and started running down the road in front of them like a little weasel: "C'mon, they're all down there!"

"Well, at least we're going in the right direction," Kathrin laughed. They'd just reached a low picket fence that surrounded a small garden when things started to get very lively on the other side and a whole row of laughing Jungmaedel faces appeared. "We welcome the Berlin Jungmaedel to our summer home," they chorused. Then the garden gate was opened and the Jungmaedel from Berlin were let in festively. "Our Garden," Hanne, the leader of the village girls, said proudly.

The Jungmaedel from the city were amazed. It was wonderful what the Heidersdorf girls had created. The path from the gate led to a large seating circle that took up the entire center of the garden. It was overgrown with moss. The rest of the garden was covered in flowers - field flowers and garden flowers, but also beans and peas and even potatoes. "We find they have nice flowers, too, and they're free," Hanne said.

The Berliners were excited. "And this garden belongs to you? You've planted all of this yourself?" - "Of course," the others said with an air of superiority. "It was a lot of work, too, you know. At first, it was really hard to get the seeds and plants, and especially the fertilizer. After all, nothing will grow from nothing - you probably know that, too, even though you're from the city."

The girls from the camp listened eagerly. Particularly those whose parents had a garden plot were understanding. "But now, things are much better," Hanne continued. "The whole village is starting to enjoy our garden. Everyone brings us seeds, plants, and offshoots, and the people at the manor have even donated a whole wagon load of fertilizer. But the work's still down to us. But for that, we have the prettiest meeting place you could imagine."

Everyone nodded in agreement. It really was beautiful here. Only Elli wondered, "But what happens if it rains?" - "A little rain won't hurt us," said Hanne. "We're not going to melt. And if it's too bad, we'll meet at the schoolhouse just like we do in winter. But we don't like it as much. We've tried to build a roof from shelter halves but it wasn't enough. The rain got through all the nooks and crannies."

Meanwhile, everyone had found a place to sit in the circle, partially down on the moss and partially along the "wall" along the edge. It was as if they had always known each other when Kathrin pulled out her accordion and played the song about the "red, red poppies", and everyone joined in as if they'd always sang together. There were many songs they all knew, but some that only the Berliners or only the Heidersdorfers knew; but it was lots of fun to learn from each other.

Only one girl sat a bit away from the rest of the group. She joined in when they sang songs, but when everyone was chatting with each other, she sat quietly and watched the clouds pass by. She was also the only one of the girls who wasn't wearing the proper uniform, but who was wearing a brown skirt with her white blouse.

"Who is that?" Irm asked quietly of the girl sitting next to her. "That? Oh, that's Eva from the housing settlement down the road. She hasn't been with us long, and she's not really good for anything. She always keeps to herself. I think, she's also really poor."

Strange - Irm didn't know whether there were any Jungmaedel in her group who were "poor" because they didn't talk about such things. Irm looked back over to the girl in the brown skirt again. But it felt like it wasn't quite right to do so, even though she didn't know why.

Hanne had now gotten up and pulled a white piece of paper from her pocket. "We've invited you today because today is a special day," she said. "Because we just got a letter from Berte. That's our last leader. She now goes to university in the city and wants to become a doctor. She is on vacation right now and traveling to Norway. The letter is so great, we thought, we should read it to you. But for that, you had to come to our garden, or it just wouldn't have been right."

Then Hanne went to read the letter that Berte had sent to her Jungmaedel: "Dear Jungmaedel, I experienced something great today and it reminded me of you and our garden. At first, things started off quite boring. "Six hours layover", said the second mate at first when we'd anchored on the little island in the Vesteraalen. But that's what it's like when you're traveling aboard a freight ship to Norway. Wherever it's beautiful, we only stay a short time, and on the most boring fishing villages, we spend lots of time to take on freight: mountains of reeking fish that we didn't want to see ever again after the first couple of times they were loaded.

A little upset, we were walking aimlessly along the beach. Everywhere there's grey rock with sparse bits of grass, the grey sheds of the fishing companies, and four or five reddish-brown fishermen's houses. And that's all there's to see. We found some flat, smooth stones and skipped them across the water. But that's not really anything to do for long period of time.

Finally I suggested we should hike inland a little bit, but the others weren't so sure about that. Nothing would look any different there, either. But the captain said we just needed to walk in the right direction. "Down the road and then take the first path on the right. After about an hour, we'd get to the flower village." - "A flower village?" - "Yup - well, that's what we call it, because it's the only village here that has flowers. Very nice ones and a lot of them, too."

Of course, now we had to see for ourselves. The road went on through brownish heather and bilberry plants. Then the footpath led through a small forest, across a brook, and then it was uphill, more and more uphill.

"Just watch," one girl said, "now we'll get to a pass and behind that, we'll get to the village." We were getting more and more anxious with anticipation. Then we finally stood at the top and looked down into the valley on the other side. About three hundred meters below us was a small blue lake, surrounded by lush green fields. And there was the village, too. Brownish-red wooden houses, like everywhere in Norway, and the white stone church and on a hill, a little outside the village, a larger building - probably the school. Without planning to do so, we started to run, and ran down the small path until we reached the first few buildings.

The flower village. - There we stood on the wide village road, and saw before us the windows of the small houses, each of which had a flower pot or several small colorful flower pots on a blue, red, or yellow painted windowsill. Fuchsias grow here, geraniums and hanging carnations, almost like at home. Except the colors were even more vivid. Slowly, we walked along the empty village road. The people must've all gone to bed already. They were used to the bright light summer nights, after all.

Finally, we stood on the small hill where the only larger building of the village, the school, lay. There, we stopped in surprise. The entire hill was one big colorful bouquet of flowers. One row of flowers grew next to the other, even up the building walls. All the garden flowers we have in summer were blooming together.

For a long time, we stood before this like before a miracle. Then one girl finally said, "But that can't be real, we must be dreaming." Then we hear a quiet, clear laugh behind us. Behind a large amount of flowers, a form stood up slowly - an old woman in a grey dress. The strange thing about her dress was the belt. On small ribbons, many little bags were sewn to her belt. Each bag had a little symbol embroidered on it.

"Why are you standing out there?" the woman said in German. "Come inside if you like my garden. I'm Miss Senta, the teacher."

With a great old-fashioned key she unlocked the gate. "Just don't laugh at my gardening dress," she said, pointing to the bags. "I'm collecting seeds at the moment. It's just the right time for that Tomorrow, when she sun's shining again, they'll be falling. And we need the seeds. We can't spend a lot of money on growing new plants."

A few minutes later, we sat around a small round garden table amidst the flowers. We could not hide our surprise that the beach was so empty while things were so different here, and immediately started to talk about that.

The old woman nodded toward us. "I know," she said. "The landscape along the beach always looks the same. It was that way when I got here forty years ago. I came from the blessed green countryside at the foot of mountains, and when I saw the place where I was to spend my whole future life, I nearly despaired. This village looked like everywhere else - heather, bilberry, and bitch trees. Nothing else."

"You'll get used to it," the pastor told me. "You get used to everything. It's just that way here, and you'll have to adapt." But I didn't want to adapt. I was young. I needed beauty and joy. How was I supposed to live and work in this? It was a bad time back then." - Miss Senta looked into the evening for a bit. Then she continued: "My mother wrote that I should come back, there would certainly be another post for me somewhere. But I didn't want to. I felt it was cowardly, like fleeing from my problems.

My father could understand me better. One day, he sent me a packet with seeds. They were for flowers that need very little and grow almost everywhere. I put the seeds out and, which nobody had expected, they grew. They grew wonderfully. It might be because the village is situated in such a protected valley, or because of the fruitful moor ground that has never been tilled before, I don't know. But after two years, my garden had grown so much that the fisher women stopped to look whenever they passed, and the girls asked me for flowers when they got ready for the village dances. Then I started trying more difficult things. Three times, I worked at a nursery during vacation. Then I started to build my own green house and my own fertilizer beds. The whole village started to get interested in my hobby. So it was easy for me to get help. Then I added tending to flowers to my curriculum. You should've seen the boys and girls, how they cared for their flower beds in the school garden and how proud they were when they could carry their flowers home in self-made flowerpots for their homes' windows! -

But that's a long time ago now. The little boys and girls are now the fishermen and women of the village. There are some among them who've almost forgotten how to read and write again. But what they've learned in my garden, they remember. And that's how our village became the "flower village"..."

I couldn't help myself after that. I had to tell her about Heidersdorf and our Jungmaedel garden. Miss Senta listened intently and I could tell that she was excited for us. "People who like flowers always get along," she said.

And now comes the best of all. When we were ready to leave, Miss Senta held me back and put a small parcel in my hand. "For your Jungmaedel," she said. It was a whole box full of seeds. I'm sending it along with this letter. When I come visit during fall break, we can start to plant a lot of it. I'm really looking forward to it. Berte."

"There are the seeds," said Hanne and pointed to cigar box that was divided in many different compartments. Each compartment was labeled neatly with the name of the plant. With a bit of awe, the girls looked at the seeds that had traveled such a long way. They felt almost jealous of the Heidersdorf garden. But maybe the Berlin meeting places could be used to grow flowers as well, on the windowsills, in flower pots. Why not?