The Tea Room

Everyone knew the tiny tea room at the intersection across from the primary school building. We children called it the women’s café. Besides a few men, it was mainly frequented by elderly ladies who spent their afternoons at small bistro tables, chatting away and sharing stories from days long gone — and those yet to come, which they feared. But middle-aged women also appreciated their coffee gatherings in the village tea room. There, sometimes in the smoky interior, they waited either for the afternoon to draw to a close or for their offspring to soon burst out of the school building’s entrance hall.

I was born in 1975 and wandered the corridors and rooms of the Luterbach primary school in the 1980s. The school building was bulky, box-shaped, and toy-block ugly. I didn’t like school itself, but I loved exploring the village and the many small shops that sadly no longer exist today.

Continuation in the book.