Distant Family

This weekend I traveled all by myself to a very little town called Hofgeismar. So little, that it was made up of seven or eight villages, making up a total of around 27 thousand inhabitants. Why did I choose to travel here on my second to last free weekend in Germany? And alone at that? Because I have family there! When I say family, I don’t mean Americans who traveled to or even moved to Germany, I am talking about my ancestry. If you go back on my family tree to my great grandmother, my mother’s, mother’s mother. And then you look at her father, he moved to America from Germany. His name was Julius Menke and he was born in Hombressen, one of the seven villages that make up Hofgeismar. Now, his parents are where my family and the family that I stayed with connect. One of Julius Menke’s siblings had a daughter, who had a daughter named Renate (pronounced ray-naugh-tuh). So naturally, Renate is my Grandmother’s second cousin. Renate and her husband Harold Still live in Hombressen, in the house that Renate’s Grandfather built with his own hands, right down the road from where our common relatives, the Menke’s, once lived (the Menke house is still there). Renate’s daughter, Silke (sil-kuh), Silke’s husband, Jörg (yorg), and Silke and Jörg’s children, Christian (christy-on) and Florian, live in the main city of Hofgeismar. If I did my calculations right, Christian and Florian should be my fourth cousins. And how did we keep in touch with my fourth cousins? How did I find out that I even had fourth cousins? That is thanks to my grandmother’s love of genealogy. She has been compiling details of our family tree for as long as I can remember. My grandmother and grandfather also love traveling Europe and so when they found out they had relatives in Germany, their next European tour included a stop in Hofgeismar. They have been back at least one more time that I know of and took all of their children and their spouses (my parents, aunts, and uncles) with them. Now one of the 5 grandchildren has visited (me), and I hope the others will have a chance to get there someday soon as well.

I can describe my time there in two words, food and castles. This was the kind of place that you think of when you think of Germany. The houses had the traditional outlines of squares and triangles made out of wooden two by fours on the outside of the structure. There also seemed to be a castle on the top of every hill. OK, maybe not every hill, but at least two of them! And these castles were used in the stories made by the brothers Grimm. The first castle I visited was Sababurg, which was the inspiration and setting for the fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty. The second one I visited was called Trendelburg, and was the inspiration and setting for the fairy tale, Rapunzel. The view from the top of Rapunzel’s tower was outstanding, especially with everything finally turning green here in Germany. Even though it was a dark and rainy day, I could still appreciate the beautiful hill country around me. According to Harold, when Julius came over to America, he was looking for a place with a similar landscape as Hofgeismar. He ended up in Carmine, Texas in the north east and I could definitely see the resemblance.

At every chance they could get, Renate and Harold would stuff me full of food, stating that “I was only staying for two days, but I had to eat a week’s worth of food.” Rolled beef, dumplings, potatoes, red cabbage, cake, and cinnamon pears were just lunch. Dinner included 8 different kinds of meat, bread, and cheese served on round, wooden pallets. And brunch the next morning was similar to dinner, but with 8 new kinds of meats, cheeses, and breads. Everything was DELICIOUS!

Renate and I spoke about the same amount of each other’s languages. We could both only produce very simple sentences, but we could understand a lot more than we could speak. So if I spoke to her in English and she responded in German, we could usually figure out what the other wanted. Everyone else in the family was could have conversations with me in English but when it came down to sitting around the table at a meal, I would just try and soak up as much of their language as I could. I would catch a verb here or a noun there. After they would finish a subject, Jörg would see the dazed look on my face and give me a brief summary in English.

Being with Family from another country was an amazing experience in itself. The whole family was very welcoming and friendly even though they had never met me before. The whole adventure was a lot of fun and really encourages me to explore more of my heritage. Also, traveling alone without anyone or anything to fall back on may make you feel uncomfortable at first, but it is a thrilling and rewarding way to experience a new place.