Friday, June 2 – Ulm

Our day began with a mini-disaster. Helmut called and asked for me while I was in the shower. As soon as I was decent, I went down to see him and found him laying on the floor of his room, incapacitated by severe back pain. He said that he had gone to bed with a sore back that had become worse overnight. While in the shower, his back had gone into spasm, so that it took him 15-20 minutes just to get to the phone and call me. He had called for an ambulance and he had called his company to send another driver, likely in 2-3 hours.

We watched as the ambulance took him away at about 8 a.m. and decided to kill some time by going to a nearby mall for some breakfast. We gathered Helmut’s possessions, loaded them onto the bus, and planned to be back by 10 to see how things worked out.

A little before 10:30, who should walk in but Helmut. They had taken an X-ray, given him a shot of pain killer and some chiropractic treatment, and suggested that he stay for 10 days. Meanwhile, he had learned via his cell phone, that the bus company was unable to arrange another driver. So, he came back to us. We were happy to have him back as we have become quite fond of him and he has become quite interested in our mission. We admonished him to let us do all his lifting. He will take it easy for the next few days as we are staying put in Ulm. He will self-assess how he feels on Sunday morning and we must assess the risk of continuing with him.

With Helmut back at the helm, we were off to Tuebingen for a guided tour of the old university town, constructed tin 1477 and still in use. Our guide was Elisabeth Tielsch.















From there we drove to Ulm, our home for the next couple of days. Our hotel is within walking distance of everything we wanted to see. We made a short tour and had another excellent German meal. We have to stop eating like this. Later, several of us headed out to a Laundromat. The Fritz’s and Dornstauders got the jump on us by spending half the night doing laundry in Pforzheim.

June 1 – Sindelfingen

I wasn’t too sure what to expect from this day, but it turned out to be another good one. Today we only drove about 50 km to Sindelfingen to visit the Haus der Donauschwaben and the AKdFF in Sindelfingen. I had only a vague idea of what we would find, but I knew we had to at least check the place out. It was time well spent.

In an opening address, Frau Henriette Mojem explained that, in 1954, the state of Baden-Wurttemberg took on the specific responsibility for Donauschwaben around the world. In 1964, the city of Sindelfingen took on the specific responsibility, with assistance from the federal and state governments. In 1970, they built the Haus der Donauschwaben as a cultural centre. It contains museum displays, a library dedicated to all aspects of Donauschwaben culture, meeting areas, offices, etc. Some of the offices house the AKdFF, which is more focused on genealogy than culture. The AKdFF has published numerous family books from many of the Donauschwaben towns and houses its own small library of the titles it has published.

Although Frau Mojem speaks some English, she was more comfortable in German, so Frank and Helmut translated for us. We had a lot of fun with it. After the opening address, we toured the main floor, including the museum and performance areas. One of the highlights, if that is the right word, is a pair of walls engraved with the names of the Yugoslavian Banat villages and the number of citizens killed in the war and its aftermath. Zichydorf is near the left edge.

The museum contains a number of village costumes on dolls and mannequins. Here is a small sample.



And Herr Kurzhals had called ahead for us and asked her to bring out of storage the banner for the 50th anniversay of the Zichydorf Men's Choir.


We broke for lunch at 11 :30 and cleaned up our leftovers from yesterday in the Haus banquet room. At 12:30 we toured the library and a room that had been configured as a typical (if somewhat large) Donauschwaben guest room. Here Frau Mojem presented me with a souvenir book for placement in our library.

Then it was time for an address by Herr Anton Neumayer of the AKdFF. Then we were turned loose on the museum and libraries for the rest of the afternoon.

We left at 4 as the place was closing and found our hotel only a few blocks away. Some of us went out for another great German meal, while the four unattached ladies chose to eat more lightly and went to a nearby store. We finished off our meal with apple strudel, ice cream, whipped cream, and a custardy cream sauce. Carol would have killed for it. We all keep saying that we have to eat more lightly, but most of us aren’t doing anything about it yet.

Today was another cool, cloudy, windy day, with some steady rain. It didn’t bother us, however, as we were inside all day.

May 31 – Pforzheim

Today was a remarkable day, especially for Jim Griffin. He was pretty tickled yesterday when we toured St. Paulin church in Trier. His research has revealed that the Bolen name that he is searching evolved from the French Paulin. In Trier he found that St. Paulin was very revered in an area not too far from his ancestors’ stomping grounds.

We drove a couple of hours south to Metz and stopped to tour a bit around St. Etienne cathedral. A 15 minute stop turned into an hour as a couple of us tried to cash travellers’ cheques at a bank that wasn’t too familiar with them.

From Metz we drove southeast to the group of villages in which Jim was interested. The cemetery was half way between two villages, Voimhaut and Vittoncourt, on his list. When we stopped, we asked a local how old the cemetery was. He said that this was the newer cemetery and that the old one, with the time period that Jim wanted, was in the next town. We drove on (they were only a mile or two apart) and all piled out to investigate the cemetery. Not finding anything of onterest, we were just about to leave when Helmut, our driver, asked a lady about the Paulin family. She said there are none here any more, but there is a fairly new family plot. We drove back and, sure enough, there was a whole family of Paulins from the last couple of decades.

We drove back to Vittoncourt for a picnic lunch of groceries that we had picked up when it looked like the sun was coming out and the weather was warming. Unfortunately, it was a trick and we had a pretty cool lunch of local meats, cheeses, and baguettes.

After lunch, we drove on to the next village on Jim’s list, Hollacourt, a tiny village of not much more than a dozen houses. We almost missed the church, which did not look like a church at all, and only found it because a couple of headstones were poking up above the surrounding fence. Jim hopped out by himself for a quick look around while the rest of us stayed behind to keep warm. Suddenly, he started scurrying around in a frenzy. He had found a small plaque that had come off an old grave stone. On the plaque was the tombstone data for one of the people for whom he had been searching. A couple of the ladies grabbed the roll of paper tablecloth, and soon we were they were making a rubbing of the stone.

Meanwhile, one of the locals wandered over to check out what all the fuss was about. I feel pretty safe in saying that this town had never before seen a tour bus of any description, so we were quite a curiosity. When we told him what we were up to, he said that he was a keen genealogist himself and that he had genealogical information on the whole town in his office – the mayor’s office, that is. Soon he was making copies confirming and expanding Jim’s research. He and Jim exchanged addresses and the mayor promised to send Jim copies of all the original documents that he could find in the town records. That's Jim in the middle with the Mayor on the right. The one on the left is just some guy who wanted his picture taken.

With Jim grinning from ear to ear and floating so high that we had to hold him down, we went on the third village, which did not produce any new discoveries. At the fourth village, Mainvillers, Jim and I unsuccessfully scouted the cemetery outside of town. We almost drove past the church before somebody noticed that there were some headstones right beside it. Again Jim jumped out to investigate while the rest of us stayed snuggly inside. Suddenly he again began to scribble furiously. We all jumped out to join him and found that he had discovered another tombstone that took his search one step farther back to another village. This stone was more of a monument than a headstone and it was built right into the side of the church. With another rubbing in hand, we were finally off to Pforzheim with the rest of us all wondering if we would experience similar luck.

We arrive in Pforzheim at 5:30 pm. We had two items on the agenda: to hook up with Daryle Niedermayer who was to arrive in Frankfurt today and meet us at the hotel after a train ride; and to contact Herr Georg Kurzhals, who had been so generous to our group when we were getting started. Herr Kurzhals has not been in the best of health, so we were going to telephone him, see ho he was doing, and make a plan from there.

On arrival we were met by Daryle, who had arrived an hour previously. He informed us that he was having coffee with Herr Kurzhals, who had been there waiting for us since 1 pm. We all went for supper and took turns crowding around Herr Kurzhals who, at age 94, personally experienced many of the aspects of life in Zichydorf that we had only heard about. Despite a weak voice and halting speech, Herr Kurzhals was clearly happy that all these people from so far away were taking an interest in the thing closest to his heart – his home village. We finally took him home at 9:30. He was clearly tired, but very happy.

The scenery is just beautiful. Rolling hills green with bluffs of trees and ripening crops. Picturesque villages nestled in shallow valleys by creeks and small rivers. Almost every view is postcard perfect.

May 30 – Trier

Hooray! My bag arrived overnight and Baz and Bev were here this morning. They arrived about 9 pm last night, right after we returned from our junket. All is right with the world. We all had an excellent continental breakfast and headed down to meet our bus at 8 am.

We met our driver, Helmut Trierweiler, and drove to Mainz where we took a driving and walking tour of part of the city and some ruins of city walls from Roman times. Dr. Susanne Altmayer was our guide.






From Mainz, we drove a little over two hours to Trier through picturesque, green rolling land and hills for another tour, this time by Heidi. We saw numerous wind turbines along the way. This tour was a little more extensive, but again targeted Roman ruins. Except that some of them weren’t ruined. The piers for a major vehicle bridge are still in use, although other parts of the bridge are newer. We hit 5 churches. One was built by the Romans as a throne room beginning in 306 ( Yes, that’s 306 AD), but converted to other uses, becoming a Lutheran church in 1856. Another was the Roman Catholic Cathedral, begun in about 980 and modified and added to many times over the years. Right next door and attached to it is the Roman Catholic parish church. Why you need 2 churches of the same religion side by side escapes me, but they were both pretty impressive in their own ways. The church shown here is St. Paulinus, with its ornately painted ceiling.

One of the main attractions to this world heritage listed town is the Porta Nigra, or Balck Gate.

We checked into our nearby hotel about 6 pm and then drove to a nearby restaurant where we spent the rest of the evening.

Weather was much like yesterday, but we had pretty steady light rain between Mainz and Trier. Fortunately, there were only a few drops while we were touring.

May 29 - Frankfurt

Well, here we are, in Frankfurt. The Regina group left at about 3 pm. Our flight out of Calgary was delayed until 6:30. We arrived in Frankfurt 8.5 hours later at 3 am our time or 11 am Frankfurt time. We had to wait about half an hour on the tarmac for our gate, and then proceeded through a labyrinth of corridors and passageways through immigration to claim our bags. That is, all our bags except one. Mine didn’t make it.

The luggage delay enabled Jim Griffin to catch up with us. He departed Ottawa via Toronto. We all caught the hotel shuttle where we met three more of our group – Carol Cincotta, Sue Kujala, and Marge Louis, all from Minneapolis – St. Paul. They had arrived a day ahead of us.

After a short break to get ourselves cleaned up, we all jumped into two taxis to downtown Frankfurt where we toured the Romerberg district. We passed up the Texas Spare Ribs for a good German meal at the place with the yellow umbrellas. Except me. Wanting something light, I ordered the Frankfurter salat mit Kartofflen. I envisioned a lettuce salad with some fried sausage thrown on top and some potato salad. Instead I got yummy fried potatoes and cut up, cold wieners with a few sliced cucumber pickles mixed in.




We returned to the hotel about 8 pm and settled down for a well deserved rest. We are concerned that Baz and Bev Fritz have not arrived. I hope that they are here when the bus is ready to leave in the morning, or we will have some complicated logistics to get hooked up again.

Weather was cool, cloudy, and windy all day with occasional showers and occasional sunny breaks.

May 28 – Regina

Here is the Regina group at the airport prior to departure (l to r: Mary Ann Hueser, Trevor Harle, Betty Harle, Glenn Schwartz, Nora-Anne Dornstauder, and Frank Dornstauder).



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