Year 2024
Now that we are compiling this page, the year 2025 is coming to an end. Time to recap what we have been working on for a year.
The (almost) past year was undeniably dominated by the move from Southeast Frisia (NL) to East Frisia (D). But looking at the photos again, we did quite a bit besides driving up and down between the old and new house. Some parts, especially the trips, have already found a place on our website. Those are indicated by a link on this page.
The house we had decided on in late 2023 was withdrawn by the seller - for emotional reasons - the day before we were due to sign at the notary. So in January, we were again deep in the process of finding a suitable house. Here are two houses (out of many) that didn't make it.
While Sylvia had the final project meeting at the Open Air Museum in Arnhem, Ernst visited the flea theatre that is part of the winter circus organised there.
Ernst attended almost monthly lectures in Oldenburg as part of the Leo Trepp Lehrhaus On the way back at the end of January, a stone went through the van's windscreen. Fortunately, replacement could take place by Autotaalglas in Assen the very next day.
We finalised the translation and correction work started last year for the Curt Bloch website.
We were also invited to the launch of the website and the opening of the accompanying exhibition at the Jüdisches Museum in Berlin.
See: https://sittig.us/index.php?page=2024-berlin
This is the house we finally decided upon. It is on a dead-end street, with the only neighbours being a kindergarten, pleasantly lively in the morning, from 3 PM onwards and at weekends dead quiet. This photo was taken from the garden.
The house has three garage boxes on the street side, currently used as storage. Next to them is a large room that was used as a hairdressing salon until recently.
Behind the garden runs a 97 km (60 mi) long hiking trail, the route of a former regional railway.
In early March, Ernst took the van to The Hague for a reunion of the grammar school where he graduated in 1968.
When the Mitsubishi suddenly started making awful noises, we just pulled it over. It turned out that the brake pads of one wheel were completely worn out. They hadn't noticed this during the service a short while before...
Fortunately, fitting new pads in the driveway was a piece of cake.
For Passover, the HEMA, like every year, had Israeli matzes and kosher wine in its product range. Reason enough to go shopping in Groningen on Sunday afternoon.
In Borger, we visited the Hunebedcentrum, in addition to a ‘real’ hunebed (dolmen) a fascinating museum on prehistoric culture .
This way we are still trying to get as much as possible out of our museum annual pass.
Another attempt to combat the after-effects of the 2019 shingles infection: using gamma rays, the surgeons and nurses in Tilburg are trying to cut through the nerve that conveys the intense itching and shooting pain. For exact positioning, this crown is anchored to the skull with screws.
The next day, I was allowed to drive again.
Unfortunately, it has turned out afterwards that the treatment was of no avail.
Some time ago, we had ordered a new sliding door. The existing one, wooden, was at the end of its technical lifetime. On April 22nd, the Belisol company delivered and installed it.
A few days later, our estate agent formally put our house up for sale, with a nice prospectus and publication on the website for those looking for a house.
True to tradition, we went to the motorhome self-builders' meeting in Bodenheim in early May. Always nice to meet old friends and acquaintances.
To be able to spend the night in Hesel at the time of the physical move, we bought these two (very low) beds. When stacked, they are a (slightly less low) single bed or a sofa.
The estate agent did his job well. At lightning speed, the house was sold.
So we had to roll up our sleeves to prepare the move. Among other things, the antennas had to be taken down.
The house in Hesel has a pond with fish (ides AKA orfes) in all kinds of colours) and a swimming pool.
As there was obvious overcrowding, Wilhelm from the next village came several times, and caught about half the fish, and released them at his home in his - much larger - pond.
As for the pool, we haven't had time (yet) in 2024.
In Haulerwijk, the cabinet wall from our office is ready for the truck.
Surely a basic necessity of modern life is a working internet connection! On this point, Germany still appears to be lagging behind, at least compared to the Netherlands. We decide not to wait for the announced fibre optic and not to use the relatively slow DSL, with a two-year contract, but instead to choose an equally fast and about as expensive connection via low-orbit satellite. But terminable on a monthly basis.
Here the Starlink antenna is set up on trial in the garden.
Activating the internet connection took only a few minutes! And then the television could be tuned to what we want to see. For German stations the existing Astra-1 satellite dish, for Dutch and Israeli channels streaming services via the web.
Conclusion: for 4K TV, you don't need optical fibre!
And then came the movers. 2½ hours in the morning to pack what we had prepared, 1½ hours in the afternoon to unpack and put everything in its provisional place.
Besides our own 20 trips with each about six cubic meters of small and/or fragile items in our trailer.
This is what our living room looks like now, seen from the fireplace site, with the all-glass wall overlooking the garden on the left.
Our office, the former hairdressing salon, is also up and running again. What a space, compared to what we were used to!
After the movers' drive and a final cleanup: goodbye Haulerwijk!
We joined a working group investigating Jewish life in East Frisia. In Aurich, the German-language website is being launched, to which we also contributed a little.
A cross-border move calls for new license plates.... For our two vehicles this was arranged - administratively - superfast.
Our activities in late summer are already listed on a number of web pages:
https://sittig.us/index.php?page=after-the-move
https://sittig.us/index.php?page=sylvia-70
https://sittig.us/index.php?page=wolfgang-60
https://sittig.us/index.php?page=rosbach-wolves
Among wolves, we are struck by how much the arctic white wolves resemble a white shepherd.
This little visitor occasionally scurries through our garden. If there is a bowl of hedgehog food, he (or she?) comes to have a quick nibble every evening.
My callsign as a radio amateur also had to change. Thanks to CEPT (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations) regulations, PA0EWS became DL1EWS without any problems.
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All the goodies found a place in my new shack.
October began with two commemorations of the attacks in Israel by Hamas on October 7th, 2023. In Oldenburg, a few hundred people were gathered at Julius Mosenplatz. There were many speeches including one of Oldenburg's mayors expressing support for the Jewish community.
The next day we were in Leer at the memorial site where the synagogue stood until 1938. A much more subdued commemoration, where holocaust survivor Albrecht Weinberg (in wheelchair, 99 years old) said the Kaddish.
Work at home also continued. The outdated kitchen cabinets in the utility room next to the hairdressing salon were torn down and replaced with new ones from Ikea. We have made a passageway so that the new fridge could be easily accessed from the kitchen and we moved a door so that the pantry can be closed off from our office. With help from Koos and family, the fridge was put in its final place. They also helped raising antennas for HF and UHF.
On a stormy Sunday afternoon, we drove to Dornumersiel for some couleur locale: the annual straw bale rolling for women's and men's teams.
On the way back, we visited the Jewish museum in Esens.
Elisabeth invited us to the sukkah in Emden.
Sylvia signed up to a knitting course at a shop just around the corner. The weekly meetings have already produced their first results.
The month ended with a concert by chazzan Yoed Sorek at the PFL Oldenburg. We met him a few years ago and were looking forward to seeing him again.
Our Ukrainian language student came to see us for a weekend. On the way there, she got a ride from our former neighbours who came for a cup of coffee. We took her back to Haulerwijk via Leer's old town.
We were familiar with the festival of St.Martin on November 11th. In the evangelical church, however, it is celebrated with a lantern parade on November 10th. Fortunately, the children of the kindergarten walked a few days earlier, as we were not at home on November 10th.
On that date Kristallnacht is commemorated in Oldenburg. Traditionally, we attended the Kaddish at the monument, where the synagogue stood until November 9th, 1938. This time by our ‘new’ rabbi: Levi Israel Ufferfilge.
A week later, granddaughter Yetta celebrated her 7th birthday. On the same day, she had to swim for her 2nd swimming certificate and we could come along.
"November does what it wants" and so the first snow fell. Fortunately, it did not stay for long and we were able to install our ‘Balkonkraftwerk’ (three solar panels and an inverter with battery) in the garden at the beginning of December. We had actually thought of putting it on the flat roof of the garage, but the panels are a bit big and heavy to drag them up to the first floor and manoeuvre them out through the window of Sylvia's hobby room. That's how it goes! Unfortunately, we couldn't test them because a long period of grey weather arrived.
Off we went then: to the Christmas market at the Old Harbour in Leer, which is held four Sunday afternoons in December.
At the end of the year we decided it was time to trade in our Outlander, which will be nine years old in 2025, for a new, slightly smaller vehicle. Sine we are quite happy with the reliability and the luxurious equipment of Mitsubishi, it'll be an Eclipse Cross, again a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. Delivery will take place in 2025.
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This year, Christmas and Hanukkah coincide. Time enough for us to work on this annual report. And on Boxing Day, we went to Bourtange for yet another tradition: the lighting by Chief Rabbi Jacobs.
We wish everyone a happy and healthy 2025 in a more peaceful world!