Verden, High Society

And now for some semi-royal affairs.

grand piano furbishing, Verden

Once upon a time, a young girl from Verden sojourned in London as an au-pair girl in the service of a dentist family there. Sojourned is the most apt translation I can find for the verb weilen, used by our local newspaper, the Verdener Aller Zeitung of March 20. Anyway, the mistress or landlady (the most apt translation I can find for Frau des Hauses which refers to the London dentist herself – maybe her husband is a dentist, too) had been looking for a good grand piano for some time, and the guest from Verden (the young au-pair girl) recommended the Helmich workshop in Verden. (To recommend and workshop don’t quite befit the solemn keynote of our local newspaper’s article, but my time and translation skills are limited. Anyway, the dentist travelled from London to Verden and her piano mission was carefully attended to.

But not only this: Cherie Blair, then prime minister Anthony Charles Lynton Blair‘s lawful wedded wife, and one of the dentist’s patients, learned about the great grand piano from Germany of which the dentist was so enthusiastic. And as the prime minister’s family was looking for a piano too…

And then, Mrs and Mr Helmich travelled from Verden to London (or to Chequers) to do the fine-tuning of the piano, after its successful delivery.

So, Chequers became home to a prime ministerial piano from Verden, which “shows us in how high esteem craftsmanship and reliability are held”, tells us Katrin Helmich, boss of the workshop. But “every other customer matters just as much”.

Now I’m imagining how Cherie Blair sitting at the grand piano (the piano adorned with a nail cross, Verden’s coat-of-arms), singing Catholic hymns. And as Cherie is not alone, maybe H.E. is playing on that thing too, singing Bombs on Baghdad.

(Sick idea, I know.)

Anyway, that’s past now. Because when the Blairs left Downing Street (and Chequers), they left the piano behind, says my local paper. So now it is Gordon Brown playing there. He’s a real nice and easy-going guy. If you don’t believe me, watch and listen to this.

The British Army of the Rhine in Verden

In January, I wrote about the Brunnenwegskaserne barracks and the new building site there. As the barracks are demolished, they are logically missing on my photos.

There are people who did a documentation online. You can find information on three formerly British barracks in Verden here – the Brunnenwegskaserne is under the third link (Shiel Barracks).