We were up and breakfasting a five, and a taxi called for us at half past to take us to the bus station for our six o'clock coach to Heathrow Terminal five. We'd anticipated crowds and long queues by taking only hand luggage for a four day stay and checking in on line. The security screening was state of the art and swift, so within a quarter an hour of arrival we were window shopping in the Departures hall, with a hour to spare before the departure gate was announced.
We'd expected additional delays not only because of the holiday crowds, but because of the American insistence in presenting only charged mobile devices and laptops, for fear that a bomb might impersonate a battery. This doesn't apply the European flights however, and the scanning of phones and laptops required no extra jumping through hoops. Maybe scanners here allow operators to tell the difference between a battery, live or dead, and a fake suspicious device or half kilo of drugs. It's bound to be different if you're flying to the USA and are obliged to stick to their rules if you want to land at all.
I noticed seating installations with charging points and wi-fi hotspots in the entrance hall. A most considerate service. Here, unsecured airport wi-fi is available for free for up to fortyfive minutes, no sign-in necessary, so very quick and easy to use and access, much to my surprise. It was very useful to be able to clear my in-box of Monday messages before leaving. Technology as it can be and rarely is in reality. I imagine that this service with little wait time has reduced complaints immensely.
Our British Airways Flight to Dusseldorf, one of three during the day, was on time and full. We were served a free coffee, and in just over an hour we were touching down, in a grey overcast Rhineland. The airport's three terminals and parking are linked by Skytrain, an overhead pilotless monorail. The deposited us at the airport station and after a brief wait we were speeding north in a very crowded double decker Deutsche Bahn train, to the Ost Westfalia town of Herford.
We had to stand for the first quarter of the journey, but after Dusiberg and Essen more got off than go on and we found seats together in a small compartment, with a woman our age sitting opposite, a retired teacher to whom we chatted in a mixure of German and English for the rest of the journey. She was a Christian, married to a Nigerian, active in her time, Minden, the train's destination, in international social encounter and cross cultural community gardening. It made the two hour train trip speed by. I was surprised to discover I had no difficulty in speaking German to her. Even though my command of language is limited, and haven't used it much in twenty years, I seem to have retained enough to make myself understood.
Connie and Udo were waiting for us in Herford station. We last met seven years ago at Connie's graduation ceremony in St David's Hall Cardiff. We've been promising to visit Herford ever since Connie returned there 23 years ago from her two years of Friedensdienst volunteer service with the unemployed in Halesowen, where I was then Team Rector. Connie stayed with us in our vast six bedroomed parsonage.
Udo, her partner since those days, is a precision engineer, who now runs his own machine component fabrication business employing half a dozen people. Sophisticated small to medium sized precision engineering manufacture has long been a strength of the German economy, now struggling against far Eastern competition, yet striving to rise to the challenge to hold its own and make quality count.
I surprised to discover that their house is several kilometres out of town in this rich and beautiful agricultural region of woodland and rolling fields of ripening grain. Udo, with the help of friends built the house himself from prefabricated units, on top of a large basement slightly submerged foundation they'd constructed - large enough to accommodate the two of them in fact - Udo's mother lived in a separate apartment above when she was alive, and it was where we stayed.
It was warm enough sit out on the garden terrace and eat supper. The variety of birdsong in a nearby coppice of trees was amazing in its diversity, likewise the species of bees butterflies busying themselves with the flowers in the surrounding garden. To crown it all, a hare ran up one side of a long lawn before disappearing into the leylanda hedge thirty feet from us. Sadly I had no camera to hand. What a memorable welcome!
Just after we arrived, my nephew Julian rang to say that brother-in-law Geoff had died earlier in the afternoon. His last year of life has been tough for him and for my sister, as he became increasingly infirm, but our memories of him will remain as a larger than life person, full of enthusiasm and interests and full of music, still playing the saxophone until well into his eighties.
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