Chapter Nine: Life in Magstadt

We eventually ended up renting a house in the small town of Magstadt, just outside of Stuttgart. The capitol city of the Southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg is Stuttgart. This is a wealthy region of Germany and its Schwäbisch residents are known as frugal, “penny-pinchers.” The area around Stuttgart contains several medium to large manufacturing employers such as Smart Cars, Daimler-Chrysler, IBM, and H.P. (Hewlett Packard) among others.

Magstadt is a typical small town surrounded by fields and forests on all sides. It was small enough for us to be able to walk from our house at the eastern edge of town, to downtown in just several blocks. We walked to the bakery, bank, post office and grocery store on a regular basis. This was a wonderful situation in which to reside. We could also walk in the opposite direction, from downtown, just two short blocks and we were at the edge of town and walking along the paved walking paths in the midst of farm fields all the way to the nearby forest. Our landlord, Herr Highland, told us that a person could ride their bike on those paths through the forest all the way into Stuttgart and back without having to ride on the roads or highways at all. In fact, Herr Highland would often ride his bike into Stuttgart on Sundays and then hop a bus back late that afternoon.

The other lovely feature of Magstadt and other such small towns in Germany is that all the stores close in the afternoon on Saturday and don’t reopen till Monday morning. This was, at first, a bit of a shock to our 24-hour, convenience-shopping, American, way-of life systems, but we soon grew accustomed to it and began to enjoy this slower pace of life. Sundays are still a day of rest in Germany. People go out walking, spend time with family, friends, neighbors, read, relax and just enjoy the day and some people even go to church on Sundays. The only stores open on Sundays are a few select bakeries where people buy cakes and pastries and bread. Otherwise the entire country is closed. My Mother says this is how it used to be here in the U.S. when she was a kid growing up in Southwestern Oklahoma.

In Magstadt, we lived in a “freestanding” house which meant a single residence across the back fence from our landlords. The Heilands lived adjacent to us even though their house faced another street. This was a typical rental situation in Germany, we were told, with the landlords close by for assistance and to keep an eye on the place.

But the absolute best thing about our life in Magstadt, was our next door neighbors, the Holzapfels. Burkhard worked as a nurse at a large hospital in a neighboring town while Christiana stayed home with her two young children, Simeon and Deborah. The Holzapfel kids were six and three the year we lived next to them while my youngest two were five and two years of age. Thus, we saw them most days after Kindergarten. My kids either went to play at their house or they came to our house to play. But, it wasn’t just having the kids next door to play with that made our time there special. It was the entire family. They were warm and welcoming. Christiana constantly helped me by answering questions or translating something or explaining some custom. Burkhard’s English was a bit rusty but he still took time to speak to us as we were just learning German. They were our neighbors and our friends and we miss them more than any other part of our town of Magstadt.