When I was a young adult I had a pen pal. I have always loved to write and it was so exciting to sit down and write actual hand written letters and then mail them off far far away. She lived in Austria, first in the town of Haid and then later in the town of Pucking.
If I remember correctly I was shopping for greeting cards in our local Hallmark and they had a pen pal program. I signed up and Hallmark matched me up with Sabine Baum from Austria. It was mysterious to have a person to write letters to that lived in a different country. Spoke a different language and lived in a different land.
She was an artist this girl I had found. She would send me pictures of her artwork. She would send me pictures of her family. She had one brother and a mom and dad. It was so crazy too because we both worked for our parents and our parents owned construction companies. It was like a parallel me. We even drove the same color and make of cars. It was the craziest coolest thing.
She loved music. I loved music too. She loved to write. I loved to write too. She loved to draw. I loved to draw too. We were both dreamers and we both seemed to really get along, at least in our written letters. In the time we wrote to each other she sent me 4 mixed tapes. We began writing when I was 21 years old and she was a few years older than me. It seemed we only wrote to each other for 3 years. The last letter I found was in 1993, I had already gotten married and she had my first married address. I suppose maybe I got busy once I got married and got pregnant fairly quick with our first child. I’m guessing I lost contact because of a busy life. Which really bums me out.
Sabine called herself Sunny. She loved Guns and Roses, Queen and tons more her music range was wide and I loved that. She was really distraught when Freddy Mercury passed on, she wrote a tribute for him and reminisced with me how in school she was part of the Queen club, Vice President actually. She also liked BB King, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone. Not too long ago Starshine played Nina Simone on her radio program at KUSF and I “thought” it was new but turns out Sabine introduced me to her decades ago. I had just forgotten.
I think I will spend some time reminiscing these old letters. I have a small pile of them. I found Abbie’s pink Barbie tape player and I dug it out of the donation pile, once I get new C batteries I will listen to some of these mix tapes Sunny made for me. I tend to hold on to things and I think that’s OK.
I’m just sharing about this pen pal I had so that maybe I might find her again. One never knows? I know some gals who live in Germany, and while I know that’s not Austria….it’s kind of close…sort of. You know 6 degrees of separation? Perhaps someone I know knows her somehow. Her name back then was Sabine “Sunny” Baum. I remember her brother was almost exactly my age within a few days and his name was Tom. I wonder if she is out there someplace?
No joke, as I finished posting this on my blog Queen came on the radio "we will rock you" I love how details are so important and how things align.