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#1: Die Blumen Author: Gem, Location: Saltash/Aberystwyth

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 8:53 pm
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Help! Got a bit over-enthusiastic with River and have just realised that I know nothing about the Maynard summer home Die Blumen. Does anyone know much about it? I've got a note somewhere that it used to be a school (it wasn't an old CS building, was it?) but may be imagining it... anyone have any idea where it is, or even a book which mentions a fair amount about it? Please, no-one tell me they sold it Confused

#2: Author: Squirrel, Location: St-Andrews or Dunfermline

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:13 pm
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Die Blumen was the summer home that held, in it's first creation, St Scholasticas school. When Miss Browne retired Madge bought it as a summer home for their family, and in coming of age Joey and co buy it from (I think) a teacher who used to have connections with the school - or something like that.

As far as I am aware they retain ownership of the building until the end of the series.

I appologise if I've got any of this wrong, as I'm working from memory here.

#3: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:33 pm
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That's all correct. IIRC there's quite a long description near the beginning of New when Madge, Jo and the Robin are looking over it soon after they've bought it, in Joey and Co, and again in Future after Jo and Jack have had some quite extensive building work done.

Jay B.

#4: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:41 pm
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It's quite strange, isn't it, that the same building can be used as both a School and a Summer house - you'd think the difference in size required would be quite profound.

#5: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 9:56 pm
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Lesley wrote:

It's quite strange, isn't it, that the same building can be used as both a School and a Summer house - you'd think the difference in size required would be quite profound.

It's even more remarkable that it was big enough for a school of over forty girls and its mistresses and domestic staff but needed extending to accommodate the Maynards and Richardsons plus Anna and Rosli.

Jay B.

#6: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:43 pm
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It sounds pretty big in New - Madge says that there'll be plenty of rooms for bedrooms, dressing rooms, sitting rooms, studies (for both Jem and Rosalie), etc, and that they'll still have loads of spare bedrooms which'll be good because they're bound to get lots of visitors.

That's pretty reasonable considering that it'd been used as a boarding school, even one for "only" 40 girls or so. How on earth it could then need extending for the Maynards, bearing in mind that they were only going to be there for a few weeks at a time and would hardly need a study, a secretary's room etc, I don't know Confused

#7: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:47 pm
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I think the music teacher Herr H...? had some of the school buildings knocked down, so that why the Maynards had to build an extension to accommodate the family, though why EBD had to include that as a story-line beats me. To show how rich and lavish the Maynards are? IIRC they add a sitting room for the girls and a workshop for the boys, as well as extra bedrooms etc.

#8: Author: Kate, Location: Ireland

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:51 pm
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Mel wrote:

I think the music teacher Herr H...? had some of the school buildings knocked down

I think I remember that too. Smile

#9: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:58 pm
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Mel wrote:

why EBD had to include that as a story-line beats me. To show how rich and lavish the Maynards are? IIRC they add a sitting room for the girls and a workshop for the boys, as well as extra bedrooms etc.

It seems excessive for a house they were only going to use for a month or so each year, and be out on excursions most of the time anyway. And within a few years, as the older Maynards and Richardsons grow up and leave school, they're not likely all to be there at the same time anyway. Unless Joey was planning ahead for the quads.

Jay B.

#10: Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US

Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 11:08 pm
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The only explanation I could come up with was that perhaps part of it was pulled down during the wartime firewood shortage, as with the passages of the school proper, leaving only the core of the chalet. Otherwise -- it does go from being called "a large chalet" to the description in Joey & Co:

Quote:

Die Blumen was not a very large house and when the two Maynard boys as well as the three Richardsons were added to the party, they were fairly full. Len had suggested that Ruey should share her room and her mother agreed. Con and Margot had another. A third was dedicated to the babies and Rösli; and Roddy had been put into the room Stephen and Charles had. A slip had been handed over to Roger and by that time, most of the bedrooms the Maynards had furnished the year before, were well-filled.

Adding space for the other grown-ups, that's still a fair number of bedrooms by today's standards. There's also the question of how many cubeys you can legitimately squash into a bedroom.

#11: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 5:12 am
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I think the actual reason is that EBD just forgot that the place had originally been a School and all that entailed! Rolling Eyes

#12: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 1:02 pm
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I didn't find this jarring because I assumed that the St. Scholastika girls would have been packed in, dormitory/hostel style, into plain long bedrooms. So one dormitory in St. Scholastika's that held maybe ten girls, would easily convert to one spacious, airy bedroom for say, Madge and Jem. Don't forget that they all had their own sitting rooms too, as well as their own bedrooms.

#13: Author: Miriam, Location: Jerusalem, Israel

Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 2:39 pm
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THere is a line somewhere in Joey and Co in Tyrol about how irritating it is that that that the previous tenants (Herr Helfens friend, by the way, not him) had had so much of the original biulding removed, leaving them with realtivly little space. The important thing, of course, was too force Ruey to have to share a room with Len, thus allowing for Ruey's reform. Had there been space, it might have been more natural to give a virtual stranger her own room, as she later has at Freudesheim.

Quote:

And within a few years, as the older Maynards and Richardsons grow up and leave school, they're not likely all to be there at the same time anyway. Unless Joey was planning ahead for the quads.

Alternately, Joey mayhave been planing ahead to times when holidays would include an extended family with married triplets and grandchildren, complete with attendant staff. Exclamation

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