Birthday Gift

I have heard for years from friends of mine that Germany is the place to go if you collect antiques. I have heard the raves of how you can find them so cheap. Tongeren, Belgium is suppose to be the mecca for all antique shoppers here. Now that I am finally here and I see what all the fuss was about.

Last week I went shopping with a neighbor and the mother of a neighbor who is a German National. They introduced me to a local little flea market here. When you first walk in it looks like nothing but furniture and other junk. The furniture had some outstanding prices 10 Euros ($12.50) for a desk and 20 Euros ($25) for a bedroom set.

After 10 minutes of looking around I found two gems off in the corner full of dust. They were nothing more than two antique foot pedal machines. I LOVE antique sewing machines. I was even more excited when I saw the price was well below what they go for in states.

So after much mulling and dragging Paul down to the flea market to look at them I settled on this beauty below. It was an early birthday gift to me from Paul.

It is Haid & Neu made is Karlsruhe Germany. It is from the 1940's and has a wooden foot pedal. After doing some research the Haid & Neu machines were famous for wooden foot pedals especially during the 1930's and 1940's. It was their trademark. The machine came complete with all accessories including the strap to turn the wheel on the machine and instruction booklet complete in German. This was a real gem.

Now I can hardly wait to go to Tongeren, Belgium in a few weeks.