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When the carriages stop in front of the "Friesenpesel" after the Hallig round trip, Heike Ortlepp has the menus ready. Then the restaurant fills up to a hundred guests in one go. For some, the 54-year-old must explain what she herself had to ask many years ago: that "Dead Aunt" is cocoa with rum and "Labskaus" is a porridge made from potatoes, corned beef and beetroot juice with fried eggs on top and Bismarck herring next to it ,
Instead of fish and crabs, Ortlepp grew up with spiced meat and broiler - and so there was a lot to learn when she came from Thuringia to the March Island in 1994. On a land spot, which rises at high tide only two meters from the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea.
Gastronomy was not her profession at all. In Eisenach, the trained vehicle mechanic had screwed Wartburg together, "on the assembly line, assembly in three shifts," she says. After the turn she trained as a window dresser, but found no job. Through the employment office she searched for jobs on the North Sea islands, and Hooge was the first thing she was offered.
"When I came here, I could not distinguish a herring from a plaice," says Ortlepp, a petite woman in a white blouse, who still smiles after twelve kilometers of tray towing. After the upheaval, she was glad that she could earn money. She wanted to see the world, "in the past only the Eastern bloc remained."
With the first ferry on and off
There were many biographies like Ortlepp's after the fall of the wall. Hundreds of thousands set out to seek the better life in the West. Annemarie Pezzi, landlady of the "Friesenpesels", located the additional workers. Since Hooge has only about one hundred inhabitants, she depends on seasonal workers.
At the end of February 1990 she went to a reception center near Flensburg and found two couples in their early 20s looking for work. Pezzi did not mind that they did not bring a gastronomic experience. The then 46-year-old had already trained many, and in March it was still quiet. The dining room had to be neatly swept, and there was something to do here and there.
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At Easter, however, the guest houses of the Hallig filled, and to the 200 vacationers came again so many day-trippers. A lot, considering that the island is only six square kilometers big. But that is exactly what attracts many: a defiant patch of earth in the middle of the Wadden Sea, from which only ten tusks look out during a storm surge. That's the name of the heaped-up hills on which the houses stand.
Guests were now grouped in groups in the "Friesenpesel". And then came the day when Pezzi found the room of her seasonal forces empty. They had flown out, back to the mainland with the 8 o'clock ferry. The landlady was disappointed. "I thought: If they all are like that, they can stay where they came from," says Pezzi. "They probably believed, here is the land of milk and honey."
Once Hooge, always Hooge
In Pezzis world applies: nothing comes from nothing. After the Halligschule she worked in St. Peter-Ording and on Sylt as an unskilled force in the service. In 1970 she returned and took over the "Friesenpesel", Hooges oldest restaurant, in which much is as 200 years ago: Dutch tiles, brass lamps, blue doors. Even today, at the age of 75, Pezzi stands behind the counter every night, chatting with the guests. After work, she gives her team caraway brandy.
The fact that East Germans were still working with her at that time next year was because she thought: they can not all be like that. And because it was getting harder to even get seasonal powers. "Not everyone wants the Hallig," she says. "Here you can only stand it if you are in harmony with yourself and nature." Not for nothing it says: once Hooge and never again Hooge or once Hooge and always Hooge.
Heike Ortlepp has liked the Wadden Sea and the vastness. And that, although the then 29-year-old knew only the woods and mountains, not even the Baltic Sea had seen them. Gradually, she also became warm with the locals. "They did not open their arms, but I'm adaptable," she says. "They are not as taciturn as they say." Many Hoogers embrace their Heike when she returns in April.
Only a few years Ortlepp did not come back. She moved to Flensburg for a man, and when the relationship ended, she was trained in flight safety in Frankfurt. But because of the shift work, she found it difficult to make contacts. "Go back to your Hallig, I thought, there I am." Since 2007, Hooge is back home. When the season is over, she visits her family in Eisenach and travels wherever she wants. Most recently she was in Israel, before that in Panama and Australia. "I like working for it, that I can afford the trips."
"I can only drive horses," says the coachman from Mecklenburg
Hans-Jürgen Hecht and Horst Schäfer, two solid Mecklenburgers around 60 with peaked caps, are fulfilling a different dream on the Hallig. Hecht, whom everyone calls Hansi, started out as a teenager in tournament riding, worked as a nurse in an animal clinic and then in a riding club. After being privatized, he decided in 1999 to earn his money as a coachman.
"At the employment office, I said: I can only drive horses," he says, laughing at his cunning. At the only vacancy, he said immediately and was one of the approximately 308,000 people who were living in East Germany and working in West Germany. A woman who would have held him did not exist.
Shepherd, tall, calm, whom only Horst calls, came to Hansi for five years. He is actually a bricklayer and, by the way, bred Mecklenburg draft horse. When the "Friesenpesel" needed two new horses, Hecht called his buddy Schäfer, and when he came with the trailer, he liked it so much that he stayed and learned carriage driving. He leads a long-distance relationship with his wife during the season, bringing with him his draft horses Paul and Pauline. They are clamped almost every day.
Pike and shepherds drive mostly day visitors over the Hallig. Up to five times a day, they tell of the 35,000 geese that eat fat on the salt marshes in the spring. Or by the Hooger, who tied his wife and daughter to the chimney during the storm surge in 1962, so they would not blow away. The tours do not offer much variety. Nevertheless, they like to joke with the guests, who often take them for locals. Also because their Mecklenburg Platt sounds similar to that of the Hooger.
"They have learned to manage, over there"
Some years ago they thought about starting a coaching business themselves. Then they could have lived at home all year. But the risk of self-employment was nothing for her. Then prefer to retire to Hooge, at 7 o'clock get the horses from the paddock, relax at 18.30 clock, a beer and off to bed.
Hecht celebrated his 20-year Hallig anniversary at the beginning of July. More than 90 guests came, including the mayor and many locals. "I always remember that we have two homelands," says Hecht. But it is good that they are not too different.
As satisfied as the two of them are with their lives on Hooge, Annemarie Pezzi seems to be so content with her seasonal forces from East Germany. She appreciates her approaching nature. "If something breaks here, you have to come up with something," says Pezzi. The blacksmith is not around the corner, a repair costs ferry money and time. "Of course you can do that later, but first a way out must be found so that no failures happen." And that's what the coachmen can do. "They've learned to manage, over there."