How much time has passed since the flood in the Ahr Valley?

For Annette and Josef Klees, there is more to this question than just the calendrical answer that more than ten months ago the masses of water hit their house.

The sense of time says otherwise.

"It's totally blurred," says Annette Klees.

At least when she is not in Ahrweiler, but in the transitional apartment a few kilometers away, the catastrophe also feels further away in time: "It seems like forever, three years or so." It's different with her husband Josef.

For him, the flood felt like six weeks ago: "It's crazy again, this different sense of time."

Tobias Schrors

political editor.

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When Annette and Josef Klees talk about the phases after the flood, they talk about construction phases.

That, after all, structures time.

First remove mud and furniture, then disinfect the walls, then – because disinfecting wasn't enough – chisel off all the screed and plaster.

After that, the building dryers ran until around the New Year;

not much has happened since then because there are still outstanding insurance issues to be clarified.

"That was the phase in which the first kink came," says Josef Klees.

"Everything drags on forever," says his wife Annette.

A lot has to wait beyond the construction site on the Ahr.

Annette and Josef Klees finally want to “find family time” again.

The children's doctor reminded them to take care of themselves too.

Children coped better with the experience of the catastrophe, says Josef Klees.

"They process that in the game, digging a car out of the mud in the sandpit."

Adults do it differently, he sees that in himself. "It's a topic that I can't tackle at all because I don't have the time, although it really has to be," says the family man about professional support in order to process what he's experienced .

"That also has something to do with mental health." Basically, it was clear to him relatively shortly after the flood that it was such a drastic experience that "we have to talk about it".

Even though many weeks have passed since the catastrophe, he and his wife still want to tackle the work-up.

"We'll do that when we go through the day a little more orderly," says Annette Klees.

Now it is still the case that you go to work, deal with the open questions about the construction site and eventually fall into bed.

Sometimes the kids get neglected.

The little daughter of the two, who overhears that her mother is talking to the journalist about life after the flood, says: "I miss our house." The four-year-old, unlike her little brother, who is one and a half years old still remember the old life on the Ahr.

Now she is playing with her brother in the garden of the couple, who have been renting a temporary apartment to the Klees family since the first day after the flood.

Josef Klees describes how his little son waters everything with his watering can and helps to cut asparagus in the vegetable garden.

When Annette and Josef have time to heed the pediatrician's advice, they already know who to turn to.

Everyone in the Ahr Valley knows the relevant places, says Annette Klees.

They also received a flyer.

An important address in Ahrweiler is a specialist hospital for psychiatry and psychotherapy, which itself has been affected by the flood, the "Ehrenwall'sche Klinik".

You can talk openly about it when you're looking for help, says Annette Klees.

"I think in the Ahr Valley it's no longer so dramatic that you're looked at crookedly." Many say that they want to do therapy at some point "when things calm down".

In this series, the Klees family from Ahrweiler reports on how they coped with the flood disaster.

Most recently it was about the first spring after the flood, the improvised everyday life, 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 was introduced in this episode.