My late mother, when she got old, liked to travel to the old country (Germany), to look around, pester our relatives, and do research on our family’s history.
One day she was looking through tour books and decided that on her upcoming trip, she’d take a bus tour of the Harz mountains, and visit the Broken, or Brochen, the highest peak there.
The tour lady was very nice- “And what day do you choose for your tour?”
“Oh, May first will be fine”
“May first? Are you sure?”
“Why, yes”
“Are you positive? Absolutely positive? Very well, May first it is”.
A week after the tour she talked to my brother on the phone. “Oh the mountains are very beautiful, but the people there! All the women on the bus were dressed in black, and they were chanting and singing. They kept calling me ‘schwester’. I came back down on the next bus, they were so rowdy”.
She also accidently sneaked into the secret East German U-boat construction yard in Griefswald, but that is another story.
