The One With The Baby Picture

Since my other posts about blasts from the past start after elementary school, I just want to provide you a baby picture of me. And hey, don't judge me by my clothes. My Mom assures that these colors were absolutly cool back in 1977. Who is she kidding? Ok, let's assume she's right.

Some words about my first years. I've already said I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a small village on the top of a mountain in the Black Forest. And I lived there until I was 23. On one hand it was a great place to grow up. We rode the bike and there was no real danger caused by cars since there were about 10 cars in an hour. We played in the forest, we had beautiful creeks where we played a lot. We played outside in fresh, unpolluted air during the summer. In warm summer nights we had BBQ, we looked at the sky and saw gazillions of bright stars, and often falling stars. The clean air was scented with the smell of meadows, flowers and trees. The water that came out of the faucet was fresh and clean, without any chemistry, our village had its own wellspring.

And we went sledding in the winter. We had snow up to the hips, we had snowball fights and snowmen.

This picture shows one of our meadows that starts right behind our house. It was taken in my parents backyard. It's also the view I had from my window. I love this place.


On the other hand it became a problem when I got older. There was no club or anything else. All we had was a bank (where only one person worked), a bakery (run by a family), a restaurant (run by a family) and a auxiliary fire department (where I spend some years as a young firefighter).

And hey, we're not farmers. There was only one farmer in our village. It may sound like an episode of The Waltons, but my parents had regular jobs in a city nearby. We had electrictity and cars, color TV and phones. You know, same living standard compared to townsfolk, but we had more space, better air, and an easygoing childhood. Nevertheless, I was a country bumpkin and it took a little time to get along in the city after I've moved.