The rainbow never sets

Polish system of six years in Primary and six in High School was maintained at first. This meant that both Günter and I started at the same school, he in year six, I in year five.

Our boarding house was called the 'Pension Siebenbürger'. At that time the students came exclusively from German land owners of the province of Posen, both boys and girls. The head was Frau Siebenbürger, whom we all called Tante Else. She herself was the daughter of a land owner near Posen and had a son in the boarding house. There were about 14 boys and girls including us, but at this stage neither Horst nor Bernd were there. Their parents had chosen a family who took in boarders, but they didn't like it as much as we did, and a year or so later they joined us at Tante Else's. In the first year Günter and I shared a room with two other boys, about two or three years our seniors.

"Come quickly, the Wyczinski's are having a fight," we heard through the corridor of the boarding house. Everyone seemed to be rushing to their room, but by the time we arrived we could see only two red faces, their long plaited hair very ruffled, and rather sheepish looking. Then we were ordered out. Erika and Rosel did not like to be caught fighting by the boys.

"You should take an example from them," said Harro, who never fought with his sister. "I'm talking to you, Günter and Dieter, you seem to get at each other rather often."

It was true. As brothers do, we often had rows, but we really loved each other, and if one of us was attacked by someone else, the other would come to help.

For lunch and dinner all boarders sat together at table, boys on one side, girls on the other. Tante Else sat at the head, having everyone in sight. At times the conversation was quite noisy, other times it could be very quiet. At one of those quiet moments, one of the older boys would say: "Jutta, why are you blushing? Come on, tell us the story."

As everyone looked at Jutta, she would promptly turn into a red beacon, for no apparent reason. We all burst out laughing. Sometimes tales from school were told, specially if they were amusing, or Tante Else wanted to know, how we had done at our exams. At times this was rather embarrassing, and it was then time for the boys to get red faces. This helped to put group pressure on us in order to perform better. Overall, there was a good atmosphere in the boarding house, and we liked it.

Our cook was Berta, and we called her 'Dachs', the badger. No one remembered why, she seemed to have come with the furniture of the boarding house. Her cooking was rather mediocre, and especially a few years later on, when food was pretty scarce, it was quite bad. But she had to make sandwiches for everyone for school, and as they were placed on each one's assigned place at table, one would be wise not to spoil relations with her.

At school settling in took a little longer. Having never been used to a

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