storytime #4 Dead trees!!!???

The dull weather plus the cold today reminds me of my first days in Germany. The first encounter with winter. Just the thought makes me shiver! Boy, was it cold! But besides the cold and the snow, there were other winter encounters that left me with an open gazed mouth and a mind filled with 'wth?' questions.

My Au-pair family lived in a national park. Ok, ok, ok....let me first clarify that! National parks in Germany are a little different from national parks in Kenya. For one; there are no all those gigantic animals that you are thinking about. No elephants,  no lions, no Leopards, no Giraffes...no etc.

The Müritz-national park is a beautiful national park at the northern part of Germany in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. You might wonder: whats a national park without animals? Well, the fact that there no big animals does not mean that there are no animals at all. A morning we would wake up and find a wild pig (Wildschwein) in the compound, or meet a cervine (Hirsch) while jogging at dusk, or the uncountable encounters with a deer crossing the road with the only intention to delay you from getting the kids to school in time.


The problem was that at the time; i was not well informed about this tiny difference between the national parks in Kenya and in Germany.

My Au-pair family had informed me that they live in the national park alright, so there was no shock-like experience from my side, as we drove into the deep forest of the Müritz national park. I must admit though that i was quite scared the moment i read it from the get-to-know letters we had exchanged. I mean the Kenyan national parks are the only parks i had know then. And we all know what goes up over there, don´t we!? One has to stay in the safari-jeep all the way. You get out and you are declared suicidal (Lebensmüde)! And for goodness sake that´s the place i´m supposed to live? The only comforting thought was the fact that it was winter, and the animals must be holding some kind of winter dormancy (Winterschlaf), i assumed...or better hoped.

To my surprise, as we drove into the cutest village ever~Speck,(i´m not kidding the village was called Speck (Bacon)... which is a great coincident since i love meat :-)), i did not care about the dangerous animals anymore. My attention was all fixed on the dead trees.

What the hell happened here? I asked.

What do you mean? My six year old Au-pair boy asked back-

I mean the trees, what happened to the trees? i reformulated my question.

What about them? he wondered still not getting what i meant...

Was it a disease breakout, or some locust attack?

Why? more confused that ever...

They are all dead, aren't they?

Aha..you think the trees are dead? There followed a five minutes laughter...which to me felt like hours...

No nonono.... they are not dead they just don´t have the leaves anymore!  In spring they will be green again.

Ping*** And there lit a light in my head and i remembered learning about trees shedding their leaves in winter at school. Only i didn´t ever think they would look so dead. But really dead, dead, dead...they looked like firewood :-)


Oh poor Rose, you most definitely have LOTS to learn! i thought to myself.

Sending out my love to all of you, and 1000 thanks for stopping by.

Lots of luv
ItsRose_Beth