Portrait: Ruthild

My landlord, Ruthild, always leaves vases of flowers the dining room table. The kitchen often wafts with a bouquet of scents from the variety of confections she bakes. In the mornings, opera or classical music floats from a small stereo on a bench in the dinning room.

Then, Ruthild sits with her coffee, cheese, bread and homemade jam spread out on the dinning room table and reads the newspaper. My breakfast often coincides with hers, so we sit and chat, often about trivialities like the weather, politics or our weekends.

This morning, the paper lays folded neatly to her side when I pull up my chair with my granola and tea. She sits with her chin in her hands, gazing out the window at the grey that masks Berlin from the sun.

We start with our usual conversation: It’s supposed to warm up later in the week, she says. I had a great time in Potsdam on Saturday, I offer. She rode bikes with her boyfriend along the river in the small town of Walldorf, where she often spends the weekends, she mentions.

Ruthild is a retired 50-year-old who grew up in eastern Germany. In place of work, she is part of a project to educate people about various religions.

When I first arrived, she was on vacation and had left a list of rules likely puzzled together with a dictionary. Those who grew up in the eastlearned Russian instead of English like those in the west. Maybe as a result, they appear very strict: Take off your shoes when in the flat; quiet after 10 p.m., close the window and lock to door when leaving the flat. The quiet, gentle manner about her when we finally met didn’t match. She pronounces her words clearly and slowly, as if paced by a metronome, and always almost sings my name before she begins a conversation with me.

This morning, I venture beyond previous boarders of our regular morning conversation. “Besitzt du in Hause in Walgart?” I ask. Yes, she has a house in this small town on the coast, she says, her eyes brightening, but more like a hut, with one room with only a bed, toilet and kitchen. It is enough.

“Ich zeige dir,” she says, pushing back her chair and padding up the stairs like a child on Christmas morning. She returns with a small photo album, filled with pictures of the home. They show a small rectangle house, trimmed with grass and a view of the sea.

Ruthild’s pride is a garden that grows wildly like unbrushed hair. Daisies and irises are its centerpiece, near a small brush labyrinth. Other photos show apple and plum trees heavy with fruit. A small table and two chairs sit in the backyard waiting for tea.

Ruthild and her boyfriend, Bernd, bought the house about five or six years ago, she tells me. She was looking for a getaway and saw an ad in a paper after a fruitless search through other means. The pruned gardens stacked next to each other like playing cards on the street leading to the house almost turned her away when she went to see it. Then she arrived at the one for sale, on the end, with a beautiful view and an untamed garden without the rigid rows of the others.

Yes, the “rules of the house” sitting on my desk don’t belong in this apartment.