Chicken soup and vanilla pudding, a little red bicycle, Sunday high mass; just a few things that the Austrian Sylvia Festa from Vienna thinks of when thinking of Brabant. Sylvia was born in 1954 in a cellar full of mold in post-war Vienna. As a girl of 7, she was sent to foster family Van Lier in Udenhout to let her escape from that colorless and unhealthy environment. “I loved those people, they were so good to me.”
The parents of Sylvia Festa (69) lost their apartment during the war. It was destroyed during a bombing raid. “Vienna was then a gray, unattractive, broken city. A city full of ruins.”
The first years of her life she was forced to live in a cellar with her mother and father. The windows were high up, it was impossible to see out. “It was a small room, without a toilet or running water. And it was very humid. Still, my mother tried to make it cozy there.”
“I started a 48-hour train journey to Tilburg with 900 children. A real adventure for such a little girl.”
Several times a year the walls had to be re-limed because they were black from the fungus. “Twice I got severe pneumonia and had to go to the hospital.” Even after the family finally moved to a dry apartment in 1959, little Sylvia continued to struggle with her health.
In 1960, a friend pointed out a Wiener Caritas project to her mother: poor boys and girls from the city could go to foster families in the Netherlands. “I started a 48-hour train journey to Tilburg with 900 children. A real adventure for such a little girl.”
At Tilburg Central train station, a man with a megaphone announces that Sylvia can go with the Van Lier family to the Udenhout countryside. The family lives on a farm with cows, chickens, rabbits and a horse. The contrast with the moldy Viennese cellar is enormous: “I thought: I’m going to paradise.” And there on the farm a friendship for life begins.
Sylvia sleeps in bed with Mien, the youngest daughter in the family. The other girls are in the same room, the boys sleep in the attic. There are six children in the family. And very soon the Viennese girl is one of them.
“The first word I learned was bicycle. I was given a little red bicycle.” With it she tears through Udenhout, with the children from the neighbourhood. On Sunday she drives it to high mass. “Father and mother Van Lier rode in front, then the children from big to small. And I cycled at the back.”
“The best thing was: every year to the Efteling with the whole family. I still like to do that now.”
The Van Lier family is very religious. “Every night we had to pray a rosary.” Her Dutch foster brothers and sisters try to escape. And Sylvia learns quickly. “Once I ran off with the neighborhood kids on my bike. That time I fell in the mud. I smelled so bad then.”
Van Lier’s mother cannot scrub the stench away with soap and water and eventually uses her expensive bottle of eau de cologne to make the girl smell good again. “From then on, I have obediently prayed a rosary every day.”
The girl stays in Udenhout for nine weeks that first time. She returns as a child twice more. And later she visits Udenhout with her children and grandchildren. When she talks about it, her eyes shine. “The chicken soup with balls and vanilla pudding were einfach lovely. I had even gotten a little fat from the good food.”
Every year there is a trip to the Loonse en Drunense Duinen. “I always had sand between my teeth there. But the best thing was: every year to the Efteling with the family. I still like to go there.”
“My experiences as a child in Udenhout have marked me for life.”
Sylvia kept a lot of contact with foster sister Mien van Lier. “In 2010 we celebrated fifty years of friendship in Udenhout. We call each other weekly. And I will always be grateful to my foster parents, as long as I live.”
She concludes: “At that time, Vienna was grey, dark and broken and shabby. The Netherlands was colorful, beautiful, prosperous, liberal. With open people. My experiences as a child in Udenhout have marked me for life.”
Together with Sylvia, 900 foster children went to the Netherlands in 1960. Sylvia would very much like to get in touch with children from then, who were in Brabant between 1948 and 1965. This to share the vivid memories together. Are you a foster child from then, or did you have a Viennese foster child during that period? Sylvia likes to hear it. Emails can go to [email protected]attn Marjanka Meeuwissen.
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