Bill: German Trip--Bedtime


Figure 1.--.

I recall the German boy I stayed with wearing a nightshirt. At the time, it struck me as odd. As I say I never saw them in England at the time except on Christmas cards showing Victorian scenes! I don't know if this was only a Summer thing over there or whether it was a general fashion as I didn't see any of the other German boys in their nightwear. As I said I didn't think that much about it at the time as so much was different over there to me from what I was used to at home so I suppose that was just another thing amongst many. I know that they thought it was odd that I insisted on wearing my school shorts and socks rather than the new lightweight shorts and short socks that my Mum had bought me. As I said my pyjamas were fairly thick flannel-type material and I think Mum did toy with the idea if buying me some new ones (thinner nylon ones) to go to Germany with along with all of the other new clothes she'd bought. (I think she wanted me to represent Britain in clothing as well as at swimming!). I am glad that she allowed me to pack those pyjamas as well as allowing me to travel in my school shorts and socks as they were a link to home. If I'd have had all new clothes over there I think that I would have been really homesick. I shared the boy's bedroom (they must have put a bed for me in there) but I know that I normally went to bed earlier than him as I used to be falling asleep when we were having the evening meal.

German Boy's Nightshirt

I recall the German boy I stayed with wearing a nightshirt. At the time, it struck me as odd. As I say I never saw them in England at the time except on Christmas cards showing Victorian scenes! I don't know if this was only a Summer thing over there or whether it was a general fashion as I didn't see any of the other German boys in their nightwear. It wasn't a long white nightshirt like I'd seen in picture books we had (like one we had of nursey rhymes - "Wee Willie Winkie" or "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe") or Scrooge wearing in "A Christmas Carol" (with those tasselled hats) on T.V. but shorter - about to the knee and striped - a bit like our pyjamas but his had single blue stripes on the white background.He just pulled it off over his head so it didn't button or anything like my pyjamas did.

Bathrobes

No I never saw the German boy in a bathrobe or slippers. But as I say it was Summer and also I tended to go up to bed and be asleep well before him and got up earlier too - much to his Mum's surprise but I was keeping the English routine that my Mum had set for me! I only noticed the nightshirt when he was getting up while his Mum was trying to coax me into wearing something other than my school shorts and socks and he was going off for a shower. I noticed the bathrobe page in the HBC German catalogue section. Maybe the boy in the catalogue image is wearing a towelling robe to dry off before getting into pyjamas. Or perhaps he is wearing a nightshirt if they were common in Germany. While the German boy I stayed with wore a night sure, I have no idea how common this was. Perhaps the boy in the catalogue is a "morning robe"as you suggest before getting dressed?

My Reaction

I did find that very odd as I had never seen them in England.As the reader who comments at the end says I had only seen them in books depicting the Victorian era and they were white. The German boy's nightshirt was blue and white striped and more modern looking but I still thought it funny - I wore my pyjamas as I did at home. His wearing a nightshirt may have been Summerwear. Girls in England did wear nightdresses - or "nighties" - but I don't think they wore pyjamas - pyjamas were definately for boys and nighties for girls! Maybe that was what I found funny - a nightshirt is more like a dress and they were for girls - we wore trousers including pyjama trousers - which we always called "pyjama bottoms" for some reason and the pyjama shirts "tops". Girl's nighties were of course more ornate and lacy than the nightshirt that the German boy wore (and in pink colours etc.) but I still found the thought of wearing such a garment odd somehow and it was that that struck me the most about German boy's clothes even more than lederhosen which I had seen in boys wearing in books (Hansel and Gretal and so on). I didn't think that much about it though at the time as so much was different over there to me from what I was used to at home so I suppose that was just another thing amongst many. I know that they thought it was odd that I insisted on wearing my school shorts and socks rather than the new lightweight shorts and short socks that my Mum had bought me but I've explained why I think that was already - they were familiar clothes to me in a strange country and I never did like wearing short socks.They never commented on my pyjamas - well not so as I could understand - so they can't have seemed unusual to them.

My Pajamas

As I said my pyjamas were fairly thick flannel-type material and I think Mum did toy with the idea if buying me some new ones (thinner nylon ones) to go to Germany with along with all of the other new clothes she'd bought. (I think she wanted me to represent Britain in clothing as well as at swimming!).

Familiar Clothing

I am glad that she allowed me to pack those pyjamas as well as allowing me to travel in my school shorts and socks as they were a link to home. If I'd have had all new clothes over there I think that I would have been really homesick. She didn't expect me to wear the school clothes all of the time though but I know that at bedtime in particular I always felt glad to get into my familiar pyjamas even though the bed was so different (with duvets which I'd never seen in England). I did sleep well though the same as I did at home - probably because I had been running around all day with the other German boys on the housing estate as well as swimming in the competetions.

Late Bed Time

He was older anyway but sometimes his cousin who I played with more and was my age and his Mum and Dad would eat with the family so maybe German boys did stay up later - at least in the Summer holidays. They certainly ate later than I was used to and I was normally ready to go to bed before we'd even started eating! I think that was because at home Mum always had us in bed early on schoolnights but then we'd be up early too as it took her a while to get us all ready and she made sure that we always sat down and had a proper breakfast and then got washed and dressed properly for school. When it came to the holidays - especially in Summer - I would always wake up early just the same as I wanted to eat,get on my favourite playclothes and get out with my friends. That meant that I was usually tired out by the evening and I was always ready to go to bed around the same time as I did on schoolnights and I must have been one of the few kids who never argued with my Mum about bedtimes - except that is to argue that I WANTED to go to bed which she wouldn't allow until I'd had my bath and I had to wait while she bathed my little brother first. I did have arguments later on when my older brother was allowed to stay up later then me after he went to secondary school and had more homework but I'm writing about that seperately. Anyway - I kept that routine in Germany (I think they were an hour ahead of us in time too) so I was ready for bed at about 7 o'clock whereas they didn't even start to eat until around then (we normally had tea as we called the evening meal around about five o'clock when Mum got in from work and then would just have hot milk - or Ovaltine as my brothers had ( I didn't like it) - after our bath and just before bed).

Washing Up

The boy's Mum often had to take me up to bed as I was falling asleep at the table and I normally just washed at the sink as they never seemed to run a bath there - they did have a proper fitted shower which I'd never seen in England and I was a bit scared to get into but I did get used to going into it in the mornings after I'd been there a few days and quite liked it then as it woke me up.One thing the German boy's Mother was like my Mum in was that she made sure I brushed my teeth properly before bed but then again even their toothpaste was dif! ferent to ours and I didn't like it (it was minty but ours was an old-type formulation - called "Euthymol" - which had it's own unique taste and my Mum swore by as they'd had it in their family for years - my grandparents had this too when went up there.The same was true of soap - we always used "Wright's Coal Tar" soap or,when Mum was giving us a proper bath when we'd got really dirty, carbolic soap which was red and I always thought had a nice smell of it's own.The German soap was more perfumed and I didn't like it (my Mum had perfumed soap - lavendar - but we were never allowed to use it and didn't want to anyway).

Morning

Anyway the point of all this is that I was in bed and asleep long before the German boy came up and I was also up early and dressed before he was. His Dad was sometimes still there with his Mum and I would sit in the corner watching them while he ate a roll and coffee and then saw him off to work. Then she'd take me back upstairs and wake her son up and tell him to tell me that I had to have a shower. It was a novelty for me over there as at home our clothes were always kept in the airing cupboard and Mum would get them out and ready while we were having breakfast whereas the German boy's Mum had unpacked my clothes into a cupboard in his bedroom (I had my own drawer) so I could pick out what I wanted to wear and put them straight on.My Mum would have approved of the shower. (Mom would have loved one for us I bet!) but as I say I was scared of it at first so I just had a stand-up wash at the sink like we did at home in the mornings while he had the shower.Then the boy's Mum would try to persaude me to wear something other than my school shorts and socks but I refused and she was pretty good about it as she must have washed the socks out for me every day so I could have them to wear clean. Only later when I got my school shorts really dirty did I wear some of the new ones Mum had bought me (ironically when we went to meet the mayor - but I've mentioned that before.The choice seemed to be the new shorts or lederhosen so I went for the new shorts! - which I then grew to like). It was when he got up in the mornings that I noticed that the German boy wore the nightshirt to bed rather than pyjamas and did think it unusual but, as I say, a lot of things in Germany both as regards clothes and other things seemed unusual (and interesting) to me. Some were probabaly common to a lot of German boys (like the lederhosen and eating rolls and jam ("Continental Breakfast" as it became known later in England) in the mornings whereas we always had porridge or - at my gran's - a Yorkshire fry-up. Also coffee drinking unlike tea or milk and,in the evenings, even a weak beer! My grandad would have gone mad if he'd heard that and I was careful never to mention it! Whether the nightshirts were common in Germany or particular to this boy I still don't know,




Bill










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Created: 10:52 PM 12/26/2004
Last updated: 9:08 PM 1/14/2009