Two days before we left home another daughter had flown to Brussels to connect with a flight to Portugal from there or Paris. She wasn’t sure which she could get. We hadn’t heard from her since. I was getting worried. On our third day at the Nazi she-witch hotel, the old Frau cornered me at a rousing breakfast of boiled beef and cabbage to tell me that my daughter had called the night before.

Relieved to hear this I naturally thought she-witch would then hand me a telephone slip with a number where I could reach my daughter. Now, whatever made me think that?

She-witch: “Eet vas zo late zat I told her, ‘Your mozzer needs her zleep. And zat music vhere you are is zo loud. You cannot talk to her now.” Then she hung up on my daughter as any professional hotel operator would.

“Have you tried zee schtew mit lingonberry dressing und zee ssshocoladde pastry mit schllagggg? Eesse gut to haf a rrrousing brrreakfasse in zee mountainzs.”

This menu suggests a hint at what’s responsible for Frau She-Witch’s triple EEE boob size.

I was left to wonder if my daughter was calling from a) a hospital, b) a jail c) a frat house in Brussels, Paris or Lisbon. I was too agitated to partake in the rousing breakfast and went off to locate Strong With A Spear. Maybe he could manage to pry some information out of the telephone records.

But let’s move on. To the Relatives.

And start with names.

Having not seen any of these people for the past ten years, the boy nephews I remember have turned into young men and have either married or moved in with young women. The younger brother of my husband has divorced and moved in with a middle-aged women. The older brother of my husband is still living with the woman he married the first and only time. The names of these women are, for practical purposes, all the same. Here is a list:

SiegLinda
DietLinda
DerLinda
DeLinda
SerLinda
and finally the dog, DreiLinda

If you think a family outing at a long table with this group of names makes for easy, flowing conversation, think again. First of all, most of them speak a kind of English that is taught by people who have never spoken any kind of English. Example:

Lauwrrrah, shoen ist gut cocacola?

Anything with cocacola at the end means they are speaking English. Also the words, Beeg Mack pass for bilinguality with the Austrian relatives, all of whom are over six feet (women included) and supercharged with energy for hiking, the favorite pastime in this Alpine vunderlandt. We hiked EVERYWHERE. In the rain, in the fog, in the cold, at night, early in the morning, after lunch, before supper, after breakfast and when we had nothing else to do since it was raining all the time. Here’s how a typical conversation went:

I am at one end of the table, DietLinda at the other.

“Hey there, DietLinda, when did you get your degree in architecture?”

Five female heads turn in my direction all saying, “Lauwrrrah, shoen ist gut cocacola und BeegMack.”

I ladle out more freetatensuppe and pile on the boiled beef you’ll remember from BREAKFAST and call the conversation game a lost cause.