Good idea with the stone, should have done that as well. Well, maybe next time. Liberec is a nice place, wd love to return and buy some property there or maybe somewhere in the area. The interesting part of course isn’t the lost property (yeah, fuck it..), but the history behind it.

I also find it fascinating how much ppl sttruggled after the war in order to just survive.

I can really feel myself what it must have been like for you, to see your family’s old house. In a way, it is part of your own history, and looking at it now is like opening a window to the past.
If I were you, I would take something from there; perhaps a stone from the garden, or a plant. Something you can keep in your new home, as a reminder. — I love collecting souvenirs myself… ;-)

My dad’s family also used to have some property in a suburb of former East Berlin. The Nazis took it away from them. After the war, the communists refused to give it back – it was now “peoples own property” (Volkseigentum), which meant it was owned and used by some powerful party-member. After the re-unification, we didn’t get it back anymore, because my dad’s family had “voluntarily” sold it, therefore had no more claims on it.

Well, we can’t get it back, it is now gone forever. But I have also been there, photographed it through the fence, and had a good look at it.
I could imagine my kid-father in his ninety-thirties outfit, playing in that garden (which was funny)
and
I could imagine military trucks passing along the road, Swastika-flags everywhere and hate-speeches/music blaring from loudspeakes all around (which was scary)

I had never seen that house before the fall of the iron curtain, my dad never spoke about it, and nothing connected me to it. Forget the financial loss – write it off as collateral damage from the war. I don’t want that house back.

But it left an impression on me. As does the paving stone (Pflasterstein) that I took out of the old driveway, which is now lying at home in my glass cabinet next to my grandfather’s only photograph and his pocket watch. That stone has seen it all, and it is now telling its stories to me, whenever I look at it closely and listen.