Postcards from the past

Just before Christmas my mother handed me a package containing well over a hundred picture postcards. As I’m not a postcard collector, I wondered why she thought I wanted to have them. I quickly browsed through them and noticed they were all addressed to me. The postage stamps dated from the mid-sixties to the early eighties. They came from all corners of the world!

Postcards from the past ... I'm sure you'll recognize some of these places/events!

I knew that my mother had been collecting postcards featuring churches from all over Belgium, but I never realized that she had kept all these cards from faraway places. In fact, I was even shocked when she showed me three large cardboard boxes, stacked to the brim with picture postcards. She explained to me that she has kept them all these years in an old sideboard in the attic. In an attempt to de-clutter, she has brought them down and has spent several afternoons going through them, throwing out the ones that have no sentimental value to her and setting aside the ones that are addressed to me. A formidable achievement for someone who, for as long as I can remember, has been pretending that she would have been a lousy secretary if she had worked in an office!

I thanked her for the postcards, took the package home and put it aside … until last weekend, when I removed the rubber band and looked and read each and every card. Some were from people whom I clearly remember. A few were a real mystery! For instance, a card from Hessen in Germany, from a boy called Jürgen. The stamp indicated that it was sent in September 1974 (I was 17 at the time). Seeing the name, the boy’s surname immediately sprang to mind. However, I couldn’t for the world remember where I had met him and why he had sent me a postcard – in German, a language that I hardly master! – apparently apologizing for not writing more frequently and indicating, in a not so subtle way, that he wouldn’t be writing any more letters or cards and that I shouldn’t bother answering this card!

It took me 48 hours to figure out (searching in the dongeons of my mind) who this Jürgen G. was and where I had met him … Care to know more about this long forgotten teenage romance and the history behind some of the other postcards?

P.S. I kept only 30 or so cards of the original package my mother gave me. Jürgen’s card wasn’t one of them. So he definitely wasn't the love of my life ... Wonder what has become of him, though.