Im Advent Our End-of-Year Letter - unser Weihnachtsbrief This is now our tenth Christmas in the United States, and I guess we have to do in English what we used to do in German: write a Christmas letter to our friends. A Christmas letter is meant to keep contact with our dear friends and to tell them a little bit about our life during the past year. Heidi wrote most of the German letter. She mentioned that this year the real Christmas atmosphere doesn't seem to embrace us because we still have high temperature and it didn’t really snow. In this context, we have become true Wisconsonites and need the snow of the cold season after the intensive summer months. Winter in IXTAPA The entire family and Oma Lona in Ixtapa Christmas 1997 was calm for us because the children spent their Christmas on their own. We enjoyed the presence of Heidi's 84-year-old mother, who brought with her a pace of contemplation. On Christmas eve, in fact, the outside totally metamorphosed into a soft, smooth, cotton-type experience from very light snow that started to fall at about 3:00 in the afternoon. It was so wonderful, calm, and cozy outside with no traces of hectic civilization that we took a series of pictures, one of which we include at the end of this letter. Heidi's mother actually followed us to more of a mundane type of environment after Christmas when all members of our American Wittmann family joined at Houston airport to continue travel to Ixtapa at the Pacific Coast of Mexico. All of a sudden everything was bright. There was sun. It was hot like summer. The seas were dark blue, competing with the color of the sky, and clouds were not visible. Huge sand beaches made it inviting to swim in the clear waters of the ever-moving Pacific. And, additionally, fisher-boats took us out not only for the experience of tuna fishing, but also brought us to little islands where the freshly caught fish was grilled for a wonderful meal. Snorkeling and other watersports activity completed the program. Mark, Lisa, and Fritzi, and Anna and Barrett had a very good time and Heidi and myself were very thankful that we could spend the time with the entire family, including her mother. After this summerly intermezzo, we/noel-trees/2001-tree.jpg returned and experienced a relatively mild winter for our taste, probably a rough winter for other people. For Marcus, who just came that summer from California to help me with my work, it was a rough winter with lots of snow. Nevertheless, we shortened the cold periods with trips to meetings in Sanibel, Florida and Phoenix, Arizona. The cactus woods around Tucson, Arizona form a fascinating background of the desert landscape -- grotesque, yet grandiose. Driving through Arizona on the other end taught us that the desert is not the ideal environment for our retirement. Our travelling in 1998 was not as global and was more family-driven. Lisa had completed her residency in Denver and Mark has finished his research years, and so they moved to Baltimore where he continues his residency at Johns Hopkins. Lisa went into her first adventure with private practice as a pediatrician. Mark is extremely happy in his new position. Moving there, however, was more of a hazard, because Lisa had decided that she wanted to have her pediatric residency elective at the Children's Hospital of Hamburg Altona in May, and so the whole family including Fritzi, were in Europe while they were moving the 1,685 miles from Denver to Baltimore. Sure enough, their parents and little sister Anna and Barrett were kind enough to go for the house closing, supervise the movers, unloading the furniture and hous/noel-trees/2001-tree.jpge goods into a wonderful property at Pinehurst, in Baltimore. We must acknowledge, however, that Mark had organized everything so well that the whole thing was a smooth ride, which we enjoyed. Before they finally moved into their house in Baltimore during the end of June, Heidi went to Baltimore to assist in building their nest. Needless to say that the whole thing was successful. The Milwaukee weather this summer offered quite an exaggeration as just when Dietmar was driving home from the hospital at 5:00 PM it poured 30 cm of rain within 2 hours. Driveways became rough waters and streets turned out to be dangerous rivers. Dietmar's car died from inundation as he was trying to drive through a flooded crossing. His van, although quite high, filled quickly with a couple of inches of rainwater and he had to walk home. He was happy that he was able to swim. The only ones who seemed to have taken advantage of this kind of weather were zillions of mosquitoes that bothered us persistently for the rest of the summer. One nice experience for Heidi and Dietmar was their trip to England to attend the meeting of the Surgical Infection Society in London. But the SIS-E meeting was not the highlight of our trip. That was the time we spent with dear old friends Mary and Alan in Scarborough, Yorkshire. The beauty of this part of the world was so wonderfully framed out of Alan's living room window. We were really thankful to have been invited to this wonderful place, to have experienced his ranch life with many cattle and sheep and to have been able to live in an old train station that had been transformed in a cozy inn at the mountainous north sea shore of Yorkshire. We will never forget the steam engine-driven train ride with Mary and Alan and meeting Englishmen at Mary's peculiar house. The second highlight of our England trip was meeting some members of Heidi's British family. It was a wonderful experience to meet Rita and Andrew in London and chat about the mutual adventures of the two parts of the family. Rita and Andrew had spent quite some time in Southeast Asia and, as you can imagine, there were many topics to share. Another highlight of this year was a short vacation to Las Vegas with Dietmar's cousin Uschi and her husband Walter, who came for a visit to our house at the Buckingham Place. Our goal was the Grand Canyon, with its ----- I don't think I will make an attempt to capture the splendor of this landscape in words. But we were, however, frankly surprised and stunned by Las Vegas' jaw-dropping gigantism. Similarly astonished were we by when the admiration faded away within a few days. In terms of politics, I have to make a comment about the everything-overshadowing Clinton-Lewinsky affair. The whole process evokes only disgust in us as well as in the majority of the Americans. There are ambivalent feelings. In Europe things like this, and even worse matters, are usually covered up. Not here in the U.S.! That may be a hope for the strength of this democracy. Even if it is only a bad political game, the fact that such a thing can surface is reassuring. This fall, we celebrated Mark's 30th birthday in Baltimore, where they are settled now. Fritzi becomes a person and she visits the Waldorf school kindergarten. She knows German quite well and has opportunity to talk to other German kids in a Saturday German school in downtown Baltimore. Barrett finished his law studies, passed the bar for the states of Maryland and Washington, D.C. and is sworn in as a lawyer these days. He does, however, take on another study: that of a teacher. He enjoys it very much and he thinks that teachers are much better people than lawyers. We are looking forward to seeing how he is going to combine the two. Annemarei is interviewing for residency in Neurology. She is looking at places in Charleston, North Carolina, Charlottesville, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Oregon, Seattle, and Stanford University. While she was interviewing in the West Coast, Dietmar spent a couple of wonderful days with her travelling through Napa Valley wine country down Highway 1 to Monterey and Carmel. California is still beautiful but disappointingly crowded. Traffic is a nightmare. 1998 brought us a number of changes and I am sure the same will be true with 1999. If you are interested, you may want to visit our first attempt to produce a web page at www.colonna.net. We will keep you informed and wish you a Merry Christmas and a good 1999 Heidi & Dietmar "Buckingham Place am Weihnachtsabend 1997" Copyright: Wittmann Family 1991-2041
Christmas 1997 was calm for us because the children spent their Christmas on their own. We enjoyed the presence of Heidi's 84-year-old mother, who brought with her a pace of contemplation. On Christmas eve, in fact, the outside totally metamorphosed into a soft, smooth, cotton-type experience from very light snow that started to fall at about 3:00 in the afternoon. It was so wonderful, calm, and cozy outside with no traces of hectic civilization that we took a series of pictures, one of which we include at the end of this letter. Heidi's mother actually followed us to more of a mundane type of environment after Christmas when all members of our American Wittmann family joined at Houston airport to continue travel to Ixtapa at the Pacific Coast of Mexico. All of a sudden everything was bright. There was sun. It was hot like summer. The seas were dark blue, competing with the color of the sky, and clouds were not visible. Huge sand beaches made it inviting to swim in the clear waters of the ever-moving Pacific. And, additionally, fisher-boats took us out not only for the experience of tuna fishing, but also brought us to little islands where the freshly caught fish was grilled for a wonderful meal. Snorkeling and other watersports activity completed the program. Mark, Lisa, and Fritzi, and Anna and Barrett had a very good time and Heidi and myself were very thankful that we could spend the time with the entire family, including her mother. After this summerly intermezzo, we/noel-trees/2001-tree.jpg returned and experienced a relatively mild winter for our taste, probably a rough winter for other people. For Marcus, who just came that summer from California to help me with my work, it was a rough winter with lots of snow. Nevertheless, we shortened the cold periods with trips to meetings in Sanibel, Florida and Phoenix, Arizona. The cactus woods around Tucson, Arizona form a fascinating background of the desert landscape -- grotesque, yet grandiose. Driving through Arizona on the other end taught us that the desert is not the ideal environment for our retirement. Our travelling in 1998 was not as global and was more family-driven. Lisa had completed her residency in Denver and Mark has finished his research years, and so they moved to Baltimore where he continues his residency at Johns Hopkins. Lisa went into her first adventure with private practice as a pediatrician. Mark is extremely happy in his new position. Moving there, however, was more of a hazard, because Lisa had decided that she wanted to have her pediatric residency elective at the Children's Hospital of Hamburg Altona in May, and so the whole family including Fritzi, were in Europe while they were moving the 1,685 miles from Denver to Baltimore. Sure enough, their parents and little sister Anna and Barrett were kind enough to go for the house closing, supervise the movers, unloading the furniture and hous/noel-trees/2001-tree.jpge goods into a wonderful property at Pinehurst, in Baltimore. We must acknowledge, however, that Mark had organized everything so well that the whole thing was a smooth ride, which we enjoyed. Before they finally moved into their house in Baltimore during the end of June, Heidi went to Baltimore to assist in building their nest. Needless to say that the whole thing was successful. The Milwaukee weather this summer offered quite an exaggeration as just when Dietmar was driving home from the hospital at 5:00 PM it poured 30 cm of rain within 2 hours. Driveways became rough waters and streets turned out to be dangerous rivers. Dietmar's car died from inundation as he was trying to drive through a flooded crossing. His van, although quite high, filled quickly with a couple of inches of rainwater and he had to walk home. He was happy that he was able to swim. The only ones who seemed to have taken advantage of this kind of weather were zillions of mosquitoes that bothered us persistently for the rest of the summer. One nice experience for Heidi and Dietmar was their trip to England to attend the meeting of the Surgical Infection Society in London. But the SIS-E meeting was not the highlight of our trip. That was the time we spent with dear old friends Mary and Alan in Scarborough, Yorkshire. The beauty of this part of the world was so wonderfully framed out of Alan's living room window. We were really thankful to have been invited to this wonderful place, to have experienced his ranch life with many cattle and sheep and to have been able to live in an old train station that had been transformed in a cozy inn at the mountainous north sea shore of Yorkshire. We will never forget the steam engine-driven train ride with Mary and Alan and meeting Englishmen at Mary's peculiar house. The second highlight of our England trip was meeting some members of Heidi's British family. It was a wonderful experience to meet Rita and Andrew in London and chat about the mutual adventures of the two parts of the family. Rita and Andrew had spent quite some time in Southeast Asia and, as you can imagine, there were many topics to share. Another highlight of this year was a short vacation to Las Vegas with Dietmar's cousin Uschi and her husband Walter, who came for a visit to our house at the Buckingham Place. Our goal was the Grand Canyon, with its ----- I don't think I will make an attempt to capture the splendor of this landscape in words. But we were, however, frankly surprised and stunned by Las Vegas' jaw-dropping gigantism. Similarly astonished were we by when the admiration faded away within a few days. In terms of politics, I have to make a comment about the everything-overshadowing Clinton-Lewinsky affair. The whole process evokes only disgust in us as well as in the majority of the Americans. There are ambivalent feelings. In Europe things like this, and even worse matters, are usually covered up. Not here in the U.S.! That may be a hope for the strength of this democracy. Even if it is only a bad political game, the fact that such a thing can surface is reassuring. This fall, we celebrated Mark's 30th birthday in Baltimore, where they are settled now. Fritzi becomes a person and she visits the Waldorf school kindergarten. She knows German quite well and has opportunity to talk to other German kids in a Saturday German school in downtown Baltimore. Barrett finished his law studies, passed the bar for the states of Maryland and Washington, D.C. and is sworn in as a lawyer these days. He does, however, take on another study: that of a teacher. He enjoys it very much and he thinks that teachers are much better people than lawyers. We are looking forward to seeing how he is going to combine the two. Annemarei is interviewing for residency in Neurology. She is looking at places in Charleston, North Carolina, Charlottesville, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Oregon, Seattle, and Stanford University. While she was interviewing in the West Coast, Dietmar spent a couple of wonderful days with her travelling through Napa Valley wine country down Highway 1 to Monterey and Carmel. California is still beautiful but disappointingly crowded. Traffic is a nightmare. 1998 brought us a number of changes and I am sure the same will be true with 1999. If you are interested, you may want to visit our first attempt to produce a web page at www.colonna.net. We will keep you informed and wish you a Merry Christmas and a good 1999 Heidi & Dietmar "Buckingham Place am Weihnachtsabend 1997" Copyright: Wittmann Family 1991-2041
