Cornelia Castle

My story with the name Cornelia is dedicated to my grandmother Cornelia Carls. She is the mother of my mother and is born in the Netherlands. After spending ski Holidays in Austria, she met my grandfather. They moved from Austria to Germany and finally settled in Gittelde Osterode im Harz. My Haniel Cousins from my father's side have their residence close by. It is a knight castle called Rittergut Altenrode. I once visited my cousin Christian Wätjen there and spend a few nights at the castle. The weekend was interesting because of two things. One was I got in touch with vaulting the first time, which is a knight sport. I became German champion in it, won a bronze medal at European Championships and won the wood medal two times at World championships. The other thing was that they had a lot of rabbits. Christian and I left the rabbit's cage open and during the night a fox came and killed some of them. I remember Christians, Mother Waltraut, showing us the dead rabbits. The Wätjens also had this Haflinger horse called Nicki. My cousins Alice and Betina were practicing vaulting on this horse. I remember Alice longing the horse and Betina tried to jump on it. She could not make it and the sisters switched. Alice made this amazing jump on the horse while it was cantering like a real Amazon. They made me stand on the horse when the horse was standing still. I remember it felt high and scary. When I turned my head around, my grandmother was standing there to pick me up. She did not seem too excited about it. I had to think about this picture during my group therapy at Alexianer Pankow. My therapist Jan Gruthof always said: "Mr Köngeter would please come from your high vaulting horse now" when I got dramatic. These words could have come from my grandmother too. She was smoking while we were still eating. When we looked at her disturbed, she said in a very calm way that we were allowed to keep on eating. What is your story with the name Cornelia and doing things for the first time?