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Jurgen Bredthauer aboard
the Pabst Blue Ribbon, 2008
John -- After four visits to Germany and one to Mallorca, I finally convinced Jürgen Bredthauer and his wife to visit us here in the Seattle area last week. The exchange rate between the Euro and the US dollar may have played a role, too.
Since Jürgen lived with my family and me during senior year (1971-1972), we have stayed in touch, building a stronger friendship today than we had when we lived together. Jürgen married in 1978 the young lady he met when he went home on Spring Break in 1972. My mother, my wife, Karen, and I traveled to Hamburg for their 25th wedding anniversary in 2003.
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Dave 1972
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Jurgen 1972
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Waltroud and he have raised three lovely children – Julia is a Neurologist resident two years out of med school. Anna is a Logistics coordinator for Lufthansa, and Peter is in his senior year at the university studying business and real estate development. Jürgen, after being a court judge, is a partner in a Notariat firm (a Notary in Germany is very different from one here in the USA) in Hamburg, and Waltroud is an aesthetician with her own business.
Jürgen has never been a fan of long distance air travel, thinking the 2 1/2 hour flight from Hamburg to their vacation home in Mallorca is about the maximum for humans to endure. The 10-hour flight from Hamburg to Frankfurt to Seattle just about exhausted him, but we still found time to do some touring of the area. It had changed quite a bit since Jürgen took the bus from San Diego to Seattle, Vancouver, Victoria and back in 1972. We also found time to visit some outlet malls for Waltroud and Karen to do some shopping and for Jürgen to do some grumbling about the time women take to shop. I had the opportunity to witness Jürgen’s shopping habits when he purchased some iPods for Peter – two and a half minutes to buy three iPods and two headsets. We were in and out the door.
We even had the opportunity to get out on the boat twice – once for a day trip (see photo) and once to go to Seattle for the night to catch the Neil Diamond concert and dinner. Yep, Neil Diamond. It’s a long way from the Jethro Tull that Jürgen used to listen to.
I always try to see Jürgen and family when I am in Europe on business or pleasure. They will make an effort to meet us once we get onto the continent, once coming to Paris when my wife and I were in the UK for a wedding. Usually we will meet them at their home in Hamburg or in their place in Mallorca. They figured turnaround was fair play last year when they visited their son, Peter, in Costa Rica and asked us to meet them in Miami. Somehow, that distance thing of flying from Hamburg to Paris doesn’t quite equate to flying from Seattle to Miami, but we did it anyway and had a great time.
I am so grateful to have stayed in touch with Jürgen. He shames me with his language skills, being fluent in English, and conversant in French, Danish and Spanish. My three years of Spanish under Mrs. Archibald help me get by when I travel, but I am nowhere close to his breadth and depth of language skills. His grasp of world politics is amazing, and his grace, compassion and love for his family and country are in the finest Teutonic tradition. I am proud to call him my friend, and happier still that he considers me his -- Dave Pabst ‘72
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