On the left is the view of Oestrich as seen from Astrid's apartment. On the right, she's making a small contribution to the biomass of the continent. Serious work as you can see by the expression on her face.
Developmentally delayed, Astrid didn't learn to smile until about age 13. Really. Her mother has the photos to prove it. (Although she does report that there are a few snapshots of a feebly developing grimace from about age 11 on.) 
Her sister Immy on the other hand, couldn't stop smiling. Or having adventures. She depicted on the left trying to hug a dachshund, any dachshund. If she could only catch one. So many dachshunds, so little time.
Immy did make one attempt to make Astrid loosen up. It was considered such an historic event that it made the local papers. (Though the newspaper article refers to modern young ladies preferring automobile to horses, the behind the scenes story was much more interesting. Sent outside to play, the girls wandered off. The fair was in town, on their street and about two houses away. The carousel attendant picked them up and let them ride over and over for a really long time. Meanwhile their family was frantically trying to find them. When their grandmother arrived on the scene, the attendant tried to collect big time bucks. But he miscalculated. This grandmother was from big city Berlin, not a sleepy Westphalian village. He probably spent the rest of the day wishing he'd never put the two little girls on the carousel.)
Very soon after the Great Carousel Caper, Immy and Astrid found themselves on-board the TSS Columbia, sailing away to faraway Quebec, Canada. For once Immy joined Astrid in her worries. She even missed the big party the crew threw for all the kids because of seasickness. Astrid is shown in the photo on the left wearing a dress and a unicorn head, holding her mother's hand. Notice how the boys got captain's hats. Astrid had a lot not to smile about.
Upon her arrival in Canada, it didn't take long for Immy to show her appreciation of Edmonton, Alberta's fertile soils. If she was trying to make Astrid laugh, she almost succeeded. With the aid of a lupe or magnifying glass, an incipient leer can be seen spreading across Astrid's little face. The girls' father was quick to demonstrate that Humboldt University boys are particularly adept at learning local customs. He won an ashtray at the Red Deer Curling Club in the Edmonton Typo 604 versus Red Deer Typo 870 competition. All those notebooks and years of studying Turkish gone to waste. 
New Canadians enjoying some of the benefits of their adopted Alberta homeland. The shiny car everyone is so proud of is about ten-years-old, older than the gravel road it's being driven on. Because Astrid and Immy's mother was expecting a new little henchperson to help Immy's dastardly plans, they only had to wait about four months to get a phone not the usual six.
It wasn't long before the henchperson AKA Caroline joined Immy. Here, at the opening of the first Loblaw's store in Edmonton (corner Princess Elizabeth Road and 118th Avenue), the camera captures Immy during a moment of quiet reflection, as she realizes her plan may take years to put into effect. Meanwhile back in Letmathe, the girls' grandmother wondered why Canadian children ran around in their pyjamas all day. Don't ask the girls why they were selling '58 Chevrolets at Loblaw's. They were children (albeit of serious mein and filled with dastardly plans). Besides the only one of them to grow up and own a Porsche was Immy (Astrid and Henchy, AKA Caroline, preferring the improvished gentility of the artist.)
On the right, Astrid admires leathers belonging to a First Nation girl while helping to celebrate at the Six Nations Festival in Southern Ontario. (In the background, Caroline is dancing for rain to save herself from having to eat boiled corn soup. Could it be that Immy's evil plan has been foiled?) The girls' thought that a leather dress might be a nice souvenir. The girls' father however, not wanting to disappoint them (leather dresses for three being out of the range of a modest immigrant income), bought them the first three grammar books of the Mohawk language complete with workbooks. Drat that Humboldt University!
So which photos out of the boxes and boxes full of them have come closest to predicting the girls' future paths? On the right is Immy's Brownie troop from Sunningdale School in Oakville, Ontario. She still wears uniforms and is at present a Lt. Colonel in the U.S. Army. Astrid, after her appearance on the front page of the Red Deer Advocate, decided her future lay in words, all kinds of words.
She speaks about five languages, has three degrees in various kinds of literature and actually wrote a 32-page paper on French Manner Adverbials that one of her professors read at a linguistic conference. She ran her own typesetting company before deciding that typing out her own manuscripts would be more fun if not as profitable. Caroline grew up to be an opera singer and actress. You might not be able to tell by the faces in the picture on the right, but the emerging smile on Astrid's little face and the scowl on Caroline's show that while Immy may be succeeding with Astrid, she has her work cut out ahead of her with Henchy, whoops, I mean Caroline.
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