Back "home"

For two years after I moved back to Massachusetts I was still homesick for Stuttgart. That was 50 years ago. Re-visiting the city today was wonderful, although we came not for nostalgia but the il Divo concert tonight.

This is the fifth time I've been back, and despite the gray and sprinkles, I showed Rick and Julia, the Neue Schloss, Alte Schloss, the gardens, my old apartment building, some of the architecture and even the telephone where I heard that John Kennedy had just been shot. (we couldn't afford a telephone back then and I called my then husband who was working and he told me.) Every one from that era remembers where they were when they heard the news just like everyone remembers now where they were on 9/11.

Of course the old booth has been replaced by something more modern. With so many cell phones I was amazed that a phone was there at all.

But there were new memories of the wonderful hotel with all its wooden carvings.

But outside the room was a pond full of koi. The owner raises them and his Koi awards are on one wall of the hotel.

One of a kind places make more than memories...the make mental treasures.