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Foto: Tamer Barbaros
© Foto: Tamer Barbaros
Foto: Tamer Barbaros
© Foto: Tamer Barbaros

Mail

Mail

Autor:
Werner Matt
Translation: John Christensen

Mail

Punkt 18: Mail

We wrote more letters than we made phone calls. I wrote letters every week. In order to be able to call my wife, we had to set a date when writing letters: Acquaintances of ours owned a hotel half a day’s journey from my native village. That’s where I called her from the post office. Phone calls of more than an hour weren’t unusual, even though calls were much more expensive back then. Nowadays I’m on the phone to my family, down at the Black Sea almost every day. Back in those days we would always ask them if they needed something. We regularly sent money hidden in envelopes or just gave it to friends to take it with them. We rarely sent the money in Austrian schillings but changed the currency to Turkish liras beforehand. I even remember riding my moped to Liechtenstein twice for a better exchange rate. For one schilling I then got two liras.

Backside: Dear brother Hüseyin, I’m sending you the photo of us and of our tractor, so you will keep us in your memories. Greetings and hugs (literal translation of the last sentence: I yearningly kiss your eyes).

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