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Cake, cream coffee, hot strawberries and lots of beer

Eve Hall,
c/o 4b Theododende Str.
8 Munich 90
Tony Hall
c/o Oxfam
PO Box 40680
Nairobi Kenya

My Darling,

Today all going well, you’ll be going to Nairobi. I wonder how you have coped, my love, and what you have done with all our dependants, like our Bushy [our bushbaby, Ed.] ? I’m longing for a letter from you to hear about it, you must be panting still.
Did Rosita deliver the letter and sweater? Did you get my express letter? By the time you get this one we’ll be off to the Austrian Alps and all. I don’t know the address, and we’ll only be there for 12 days, so just keep writing to Munich, love, and hopefully a nice big heap of letters will be there to greet me. Actually, I’m dying for a letter from you, it’s a week since the kids brought the last one. But I know how wildly busy you must have been, love and I guess that in any case, you’ve been going out quite a bit to do the farewell thing.
Here we’ve been fairly busy too – during the week, we’ve been visiting relatives and things – Heini and Erna, and Tanta Lisl, my Mom’s youngest Aunt, who’s only 7 years older than she is. – quite amazing to see her again, she looks exactly like my gran but she’s much livelier. At Tante Lisl’s place was my Mom’s American uncle, George, and his son Irwin, who’s a bit older than me, speaks far less German than I do and is very sweet. He works as an accountant in Pittsburgh, quite fun to meet him after all we had heard about each other. They’re both, (George and Irwin) pro Nixon, ugh, ugh. Apart from Heini, my whole damn family’s madly reactionary.
I’ve yet to meet Ruth and Renate – Tante Lisl’s daughters, with whom I got on very well 16 years ago. Neither of them have kids, neither want kids. I seem to be the only one in the family, on both sides, who’s done my bit towards the younger generation.! Ruth and Renate and their husbands are in Austria. I’m really looking forward to seeing them, I must say. Recaptured youth, and all that.
Talking of recaptured youth, yesterday we went to Kitzbuhel! Needless to say I didn’t recognise it at all., though I made all the appropriate noises as my parents pointed things out to me. We had the most gigantic lunch there. Phil excelled himself by sharing a second main course with my dad!
Before that we’d driven through Innsbruck, stopping very briefly to have huge pieces of cake and coffee with masses of whipped cream floating on top of each cup. We’d left the flat at 6am and so by 9 we were feeling pretty peckish. Everyone seemed to have dropsy, and when we left the café we left puddles of whipped cream under the table, and trailed footprints of cream all the way down the stairs while the very correct Viennese style waiter watched our departure in horrified. We left our footprints in the cream in Innsbruck.
When we got to Kitzbuhel, the boys and I climbed halfway up a very small mountain while my parents snoozed below. The walk lead straight to a drop (the boys managed to avoid it but lead me into it). Then they yelled, “Just jump, Mom.”, which I did, too heartily). We made it to the wood where we saw a fleeting deer – v. romantic. At the edge of the forest the slope was steep, and Andy ran so fast he literally took off and ended up flipping over for a couple of yards, coming up again, looking startled. His expression made me laugh so much I wet my pants.
The drive back was very crowded, the autobahn was like Independence Avenue, on Saturday. Yesterday, on Sunday, we drove first to the Ammarsee, we spent the whole morning swimming in the bloody cold lake. You get used to the cold though, it was glorious, even with oozy mud slipping through your toes and crowds of people everywhere. Chris got stung by a horsefly. Who says Europe doesn’t have its perils.
A little later on, we went for lunch nearby, and then onto Landsburg where there are huge strawberry plantations. The idea is that you pick them yourself, and pay half the price you would in the shops. It was boiling hot, Love, as hot as anything in Dar. And for an hour and a half we toiled there, eating and picking, there is nothing like the taste of strawberries, hot from the sun and slightly gritty! Really gorgeous.
My Dad, like Thurber’s Aunt Doris (Was it?) got mad because he was hot and uncomfortable and spoilt the game for everyone, but apart from that, we had a great time, and we came home again quite exhausted, to eat a heap of strawberries. We picked 21 pounds – and I have a feeling that by the end of the week, we will all be heartily sick of strawberries.
Oh, I forgot – on the way home we were all so thirsty that we stopped at a beer hall in Munich, v. Bavarian, with hefty women carrying 8 glasses (glasses? Jugs!) of beer at a time and a band and lots of fat people sitting with beer shiny faces eating fatty, hot sausages. A scene that I though was fun, but that my father hated, and it put him into an even filthier mood.
My Mom had a litre of beer, which we helped her polish off and half a litre each of a drink called Spezi – mixed coke and lemonade, rather nice, but my Dad was a pain in the neck, both he and my mom are getting old and I think getting to the stage, rather early, when they don’t like to be disturbed too much, so in some ways it’s all a bit of a strain. My Dad, I sometimes think, is not entirely normal. No, I mean it, I think he has some kind of neurosis which he should have taken to a doctor years ago.
I think he is, in a strange way, scared of people or something, anyway, he just doesn’t react normally to situations. He is being utterly sweet to me, but he’s critical of the boys, and I am getting madder than a snake. But let it ride.
The boys have toddled off to town this morning, all alone, I feel a bit nervous about it, but basically, I think it safer than their toddling around the suburbs where there are thousands of nasty little corners to cross and hundreds of undisciplined German drivers to negotiate.

Lots of love, darling,. Write soon and tell me all about it.
I love you tons,

Your Evil

P.S. Going to the doctor with Andy tomorrow morning

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