Sepia-toned vintage photograph showing two elderly women (identified as the author's Aunt Agnes and presumably a cousin or family member) standing indoors. Accompanying text describes a three-week visit to Germany during a retirement trip to Europe from late March to early June, focusing on health-conscious lifestyle, healthy eating, and traditional Black Forest cake.
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What the page says
During our retirement here Pat and I arranged to go to Europe for a long holiday. We left at the end of March and were away until the beginning of June. The first three weeks were spent in Germany. My cousins were all very health conscious and they seemed to walk everywhere! We ate very healthy food while there and only had cake as a special treat; beautiful, authentic Black Forest Cake, the "true" Black Forest cake and a delicious torte. Pat even has that recipe she got from my family and has made it here.
MY AUNT AGNES IN GERMANY
People: Derek [DISTEL, implied author], Pat [DISTEL], Agnes [aunt], Willi [William Robert DISTEL, 63 - the man in the photograph]
Places: Europe, Germany, Black Forest
Interesting facts
The photograph is older than the story beside it. The page is about the 1997 holiday, but the print is not. The two people are <b>Agnes</b> - Bernhard's wife, and so Derek's aunt by marriage - and <b>Willi</b>, his father, identified by the family in 2026. Willi died in July 1972, so the photograph is at least twenty-five years older than the trip described here, and most likely comes from his own visit to Villingen.
Aunt by marriage, uncle by blood. Agnes married into the Villingen family; the connection to Derek runs through her husband Bernhard, the youngest of Willi's five brothers. She was the last of that generation still living when the memoir was dictated.
