This story is dedicated to Julia, one of my many beautiful friends.
Julia,
who finds me on Facebook and asks if I know Fred Ohnemus?
Yes, he’s my husband!

Apparently her father is an old friend of Fred’s.
Actually,
I have met her father, Rudolf, on one of our trips to Germany.
Nice man.

That’s it.
We never speak again. Julia and I.
Different counties, cultures, continents, lives.
There’s probably not that much to say to each other anyway.

A while later Fred dies,
and Rudolf is the only English speaking German,
who kind-heartedly helps me sort out Fred’s German estate.
He really becomes my German Angel!
Sorting out the krambamboulie of a mess of the estate.
His help proves to be invaluable!

Then Julia informs me,
out of the blue,
that her and her dad (Rudolf) are planning a trip to visit me in South Africa,
for two weeks,
to drop off some papers.

I restructure my life in a way that frees me up to entertain them
for two weeks.

I am looking forward to meeting her and seeing him again,
but I wonder what on earth are we were going to talk about,
for two whole weeks?
Even just in the short trip from the airport to my house…

And then they arrive.
And we hit it off and don’t stop laughing for two solid weeks!
We become instant ‘sisters in soul’.

The ‘language barrier’ is just good enough for us to understand each other.
But also just bad enough
for us to really have a lot of fun with our misunderstandings.

For instance,
I offer her some chocolate and ask:
‘do you eat dark chocolate?’
And the priceless look of horror on her face as she asks:
‘ What?!!
You eat dog chocolate here in South Africa?’

At some point we are in a restaurant in Franschhoek,
and the waiter informs us that the speciality of the day is:
‘The Potato of the day’.
Not the normal ‘Vegetable of the day’, as in most other places.

A Potato.
We start joking about this potato…wondering what it looks like.
Imagining one potato with a crown on its head in the kitchen…
What did he do to deserve that crown?
And only one potato for all the people in the restaurant?

Anyway,
the waiter doesn’t see the humour,
and we eventually forget about the potato.

We have such fun everywhere we go.
Our humour is very compatible and contagious.
We just fly from the one joke to the next.
All three of us.
Egging each other on.

Back home,
after our Franschhoek outing,
I ask the IT specialist to please come and help me sort out my computer.
I’ve been trying to get the problem sorted for two solid weeks,
before their arrival from Germany.
Without any luck.

He sits in the lounge and does his thing on my laptop.
I’m busy in the kitchen making dinner.
Julia is on a couch, sending pictures of the day to her
friends and family in Germany.

Rudolf is somewhere else in the lounge doing his thing.
It’s all one big open-plan room, the kitchen and lounge and dining room.

Suddenly my cell beeps.
It’s from Julia,
sending me a picture from her side of the room…
of my IT man sitting on the couch in my lounge,
finally fixing my laptop problems….
with the caption:
‘Your Potato of the day!”

I’ve forgotten about the potato,
but that revived it!
And from then on, every best photo became the
‘Potato of the Day’ photo!

*
At a later stage during the holiday we’re on Boys Drive and
I stop for them to take photos of
the whales.

We get back in the car,
Rudolf next to me in the passenger seat,
and Julia in the back.

I hear Rudolf speaking to Julia in German,
but I’m not paying attention.
I am focusing on getting the car off the pavement and back onto the road, safely.
It’s a narrow and dangerous, curvy, coastal road and there are a lot of cars.
I need to focus now.
I zone out and all I hear in the background is the German accent,
no content.

But at some point,
I hear Rudolf becoming louder and louder next to me,
and I wonder briefly ‘why is he shouting at Julia in the back?’

Then I realise he’s not speaking German, but English!

And I realise that he’s not talking to Julia,
but to me!

He is shouting:
‘you left Djoolia behind!’
OMG!
He has been speaking to me all this time!

I look in my rear-view mirror and see her running after the car,
hands in the air, frantically waving.

Ach du scheisse!

I can’t believe my eyes.
Of course I stop the car in order for her to get in
and I crack up laughing.
I think we were both in shock!
And of course,
I don’t hear the end of this for the rest of the holiday!
And Boys Drive becomes ‘Julia’s Road.’
Where she was running ‘in the behind’ of the car.

*
She teaches me funny untranslatable German words,
that has become part of my daily English vocab.
For instance…
One day she says to me:
‘Alette, du bist ein Warmdouche’.
(It sounds like Vahmdooshe)

A what?
What on earth is a Warmdoucher?
In my world that sounds like a swear word, like a ‘douche bag’.
But she explains it with a smile and a kind voice,
nothing derogatory…
It’s untranslatable, but let me try…
Warm is hot. Douche is a shower. So it’s like a hot shower.
Du bist a Warmdoucher.
Meaning: you are like a warm shower. You can’t take the cold water.
You’re a real old softie!
I still have fun with that word.
You Warmdoucher.
It’s become a legitimate English word in my world.
Everything that doesn’t measure up becomes a Warmdoucher.

And so,
over the two weeks,
many perfect German words and expressions
get bastardised by me,
with much laughter and joy!

*

She comes back with her father and son on another trip,
which turns out to be another humdinger of note.

And then we enjoy the most blissful holiday ever for a few weeks,
just the two of us,
celebrating my 60th, about 6 months before Covid.

We take so many funny pictures seeing how ghastly we can pull our faces.
It becomes a competition to see how bad and ugly we can look.
Amazingly liberating and refreshing fun!

And then we have another solo holiday.
Just the two of us
In October 2023
After Covid.
Perfecting our Funny pictures!
Not one moment of boredom or stress.
A true ‘sister in soul’.
A light breeze of joy in an otherwise serious world.

*

How much of zis funnie Ienglish lengwiedge that we ienvented doo yoo understand?
For mennie yeers, everie whiekend we wuld brake awai und wreit to ietsh usser laik sis, delibiratlie misspellieng ietsh würd.

But she was verie striekt wif sis sat we wer not alouwd to do iet in se whiek.
Bekos she has to würk
and wuld bekum konfjoosd wif her Ienglish
zat she had to joose wif her kleijints.

Whe hed shutsh fun over se whiekends wif sis
sat iet has bekum a bit laaik an addiektjun.
Iet ienstantlie maiks us bof fiel heppie
and as ief ahl ien se würld ies reelie gouieng to be ooohl raait sumhow,
ien se end.

She kalls me her Efriken Snow Speshalist,
bekos we did a whoul adventjur ien Djürmanie ien se snow wun yeer,
ven ei visited her and she was hour toor gaid,
for her fasir, Rudolf, end her sun, Lienus, and me.
And she got lost ien se snow!

I started getting vishuns of sem feindineg our boddies 20 yeers latir,
buried sumwher undir se snow.
At first ei vos so ien luv wif se snoiw
but aftir getting lost I started fieling ei hev hed anuf of snow
for a veri loooong teim.
And of kors she nevir ownd up to beeieng lost!

Iet djust bekaim anusser djoke end ei bekaim se Efrican Snow Speshalist!
Leik she alsou sumteims kalls me her Efrican Aingil!
Oh wha?
She luvs iet when ei send her a photo of the Pengwin bitch in Seimon’s Toun. Espeshally my faivourit wan wif se liddil bensh.
And of kors whenevir she kan she kalls me a Vaamdooshe!
We kan djust go ohn for evir talking absoluutlie krep leik sis.

But luckily on WhatssApp,
so it never becomes a long story like sis one.

Ei djust hed a bit of fun wif iet now.
Fohr yor saik!