Heimat

Heimat sort of means home.  Supposedly there is no word in English for Heimat.
Heimat was also a TV series in Germany, about the region I grew up in.  It's usually a forgotten area of Germany, not very important, no big industrial area, just woods and fields and some light industry, my brother works for a furniture company, for instance, and there is not a lot that the region would be famous for.

We used to go from one end to the other when we visited, my little town is near the Rhine River, and we drove straight across to the other end by the Saar and Mosel.  We'd visit Trier, one of the oldest cities in Germany, founded by the Romans, go to Mettlach to check out what Villeroy and Boch offered in new china designs, and take pictures at a beautiful curve in the Saar River.

But that's not what I want to talk about.  A long, long time ago I was in a small Theater group, which still exists, by the way, and we'd put on a play maybe once or twice a year.  The founder, director, and driving force behind the theater group had gone to school with the director of 'Heimat'.
And some of the people that were in the group with me, ended up with small parts in 'Heimat'.
I was able to see the first series, I forget how, I had it on VCR tape, and I enjoyed it very much.  And it put the area I come from on the map.  When I run into Germans now, the first question usually is 'where are you from?', and when I say 'Hunsrueck', I used to get a blank look.  And then I had to 'walk' them to my home: make a left in Frankfurt, go across the Rhine, then up a little bit, then drive up the mountain, and you're there.'

 How when I say it, and maybe add 'Heimat', you get the 'oh, yeah'!  (also the series is so long ago, that even that is fading).
I made a life-long friend in the group, we are still in touch, sometimes don't hear from each other in ages, and then pick right up again.  We were the same age when we started in the group, we were the babies, and we loved going out and to dances and all the opportunities we had because of it.

I was in touch with our theater group leader for a while after we all got e-mail, and I enjoyed our exchanges.  And I was shocked when my mother called and told me he had a heart attack and died. I still think of him often.

I loved growing up in that area.  I can still talk in that dialect, which often gets taken for the Frankfurt dialect.  It's so different!  But I guess only people from either Frankfurt or the Hunsrueck can tell the difference.  And every village has slightly different pronunciations and or different words.
And what's really holding me up, is that I can't find the photos I meant to post from that area.  A lot of them have been up, when I visited back in January.

I will keep looking for the photos I meant to put up, I promise!