>

 Europe’s different to a lot of other places.

Folk tend to stay put, rather than pack everything up and relocate to greener pastures at the drop of a hat.

Which is why you find clusters of names in the villages around here.

Klein-Winternheim has Fleck, Gabel, Eckert, Schreiber and Bugner.

They don’t make up 90% of the population, but it’s close. Very close. (And they all have 6 fingers)

Gonsenheim’s the same.

Becker.

Hairdressers, funeral parlours, garages, pubs – you name it and they’ve got it covered.

Even schools.

This is the Maler-Becker School on the main drag, named after Joseph, a famous son who made his name as a painter (Maler) of sacred murals in the mid 19th C.

Surprises me that they built it of brick, though.

You would have thought a material that would give the local decorator some work would have been a better idea.

His name’s “Becker”, by the way…

03 Feb This entry was published on 3 February, 2010 at 12:00. It’s filed under Mainz and tagged Architecture, Gonsenheim, Suburbs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.