In the eighth month after the flood, the Klees family is slowly gaining ground under their feet.
"It's a bit, I think you could say: improvised everyday life," says Annette Klees.
Everything is provisional.
"The children go to the improvised school or the improvised kindergarten, people go shopping in the improvised shops, or you go to the improvised doctor's office," she says.
There are even improvised restaurants.
Almost everything is somehow back, "but not like before, not normal".
Tobias Schrors
political editor.
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Annette and her husband Josef Klees bought the first shoes for their little son in an improvised shop.
The little one has been walking for a few weeks.
"It's temporary, but at least there were familiar faces," says Annette Klees.
The boutique in the so-called pop-up mall in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler belongs to a long-established shoe store where the Klees family went shopping before the flood.
Familiar faces are worth a lot when a world has collapsed.
Shopping was a bit different than before the flood, when Annette Klees would have simply gone into the store and said: “We would like shoes for our son now.” This time she called beforehand because at the time the remaining stock was still sold who had survived the flood.
Luckily there was a suitable pair for the son, with whom he is now taking his first steps in shoes.
Shoe stories after the flood
There are so many stories to tell about shoes and the tide.
One is about the boots with which Josef and Annette Klees took their first steps through the mud when the water receded.
Luckily, the Klees family had their rubber boots ready to hand in the stairwell.
With others they were in the garden house and went under.
Another story is that of a colleague who brought Josef Klees' shoes from work to the emergency shelter without being asked.
And because that touched Klees so much, the story isn't really about shoes, but about an attentive person.
Anyone following this series about the Klees family will already know the third story: the one about the sneakers that Josef found in a donation store and that he wore to his son's christening.
A pair of shoes can only be considered trivial if you have never been without one.
It is part of the longed-for everyday life that things are in their place and not everything becomes a problem.
Everyone can see the destroyed house on the Ahr as a problem, but not the thousands of trivialities that make up everyday life.
Annette and Josef Klees therefore often feel misunderstood outside of the flood region.
"You live in two worlds," says Annette Klees.
"You inevitably feel closer to the people who are affected yourself, because you have the same problems, the same experiences." Outside the Ahr Valley, nobody can understand one thing, says Josef Klees: "You go to work and live in an ideal world. "
Two things remind them that they are still living in a state of emergency with their daughter, son and mother-in-law in the emergency shelter.
One is the shift between worlds when they drive to work, and the other is the moment when they read a text like this for the series about their life after the flood.
"I have to say that when I read it, it seems worse to me than when I experience it, because we're not the only ones," says Annette Klees.
"All the neighbors, all friends, everyone we know has the same problem." It's different than living in one place and burning down your own house, "then you feel much more like a victim than if everyone around you is experiencing the same thing”.
The catastrophe connects.
That's how the neighborhood in Ahrweiler grew closer together, says Annette Klees.
It is inevitable that she or her husband Josef will be "arrested for a beer" when they are at the construction site.
You stand together.
In this series, the Klees family from Ahrweiler reports on how they coped with the flood disaster. Most recently, it was about the first Christmas, the christening of the little son and the beginning of the renovation of the house. In the FAZ podcast for Germany, the Klees family is presented in this episode.