This Weekend

We spent the weekend in the beautiful little town of Weimar for the burial of my grandmother´s ashes. Weimar had been her home until she fled to West Germany with her husband and children and she never really got over that loss. Now, she is back home and has found her final resting place next to my grandfather´s and her family´s. Although the funeral was very sad, it was also very important for me as I couldn´t really grieve for her yet. There was so much going on these weeks. One thing that is still worrying me a lot is the severe illness of a person that I´m really close to. But despite of all of this, the weekend has been a happy one all at the same time. It was so nice to see so many of my mother´s family again. So many warm-hearted people! I am always amazed at how close we feel, how connected, although most of us have only met a few years ago for the first time! As my closest family wasn´t allowed to visit East Germany before the reunification of Germany, I only knew about my relatives from what my grandmother was telling us. Now, even my family is reunited, which makes me very happy and grateful. I feel a little at home in Weimar, too. As I have always moved a lot in my life (due to my father´s career), I now found a place I feel I belong to. There are so many places connected to my family in Weimar. The old farmhouses of both my great- grandfather´s and his father´s estates, the places where my grandparents went to school, got to know each other, got married... There are memories of them to be found everywhere.