Finding Roots

First of all, I'm sorry about the hiatus around here.  I have a bunch of drafts hanging out in the queu that are all halfway written about one thing or another, but, yeah...I guess after two years of writing a blog one's bound to hit a dry spell.  The weird thing is there is a lot more to write about now, but it's harder to write.  I guess it's a kind of sensory overload type of thing.

Anyway, enough whining.  Let me tell you about a cool experience we had last weekend.

So, for many Americans it is really important to find out where your family comes from.  Since most of us are of descendants of immigrants, knowing the family story is important to understanding our identities.  We are Americans, but we're also something else.  Making those ties is fascinating and oftentimes helps us to understand why our families are the way they are.  Genealogy has always been a huge obsession in my family.  My mom's family has been writing down their family history for centuries.  Knowing it is very important to us.

My husband's family has been getting interested in their history too and they've been doing some digging.  There was this story that some time in the mid-1800's a couple sons in the family left the Baden region of Germany and moved to Northeast Ohio.  Back in Germany, their father owned a winery so, according to the story, they started one of the first wineries up near Lake Erie.  Meanwhile, back in Germany, the rest of the family stayed in their little village and kept on growing grapes, making wine, and hunting boar in the Black Forest.  While the Lake Erie Winery has yet to be tracked down in records, a cousin in America found the descendants of the German half of the family while he was stationed in Germany back in the 60's.  They were still living in that village making wine and hunting boar.  In the winter of 2010, my husband contacted that cousin and found out where the family was.  Then came to Luxembourg for business and the weekend in between his two weeks of work he drove down to the little village of Laufen to meet the family.  He found the winery's website and sent them an email ahead of time and lo and behold they remembered having some relatives in America and were happy to meet him.  He ended up staying in their 500 year old house, learning about the wine making process, and going boar hunting that weekend.  Despite the fact he couldn't speak a word of German and they hardly spoke English, they had a grand old time.  They insisted that he come back sometime during the harvest season and bring his wife.

So, last weekend we planned a trip to do some hiking in the Black Forest and while desperately seeking some maps of the trails online (the tourist website is a total joke) we discovered they were having a festival in Laufen.  So, he sent an email and they invited us to stop by for the festival.

Friday night we drove down to Baden with the dog and stayed at this great little hotel in the Forest about five minutes from Laufen.  While we did end up doing some hiking (up a super steep mountain, by the way), we spent most of our time hanging out with the family in Laufen.  It was incredible, actually.  The village is super small, one of those places where everyone knows everyone.  The family was extremely welcoming and even though they were preparing for the festival they happily took time to show us around.  It was insanely hot that weekend, so once the sun went down the wine festival really drew in the crowds.  Turns out there are several wineries in this little village and they all cooperate in hosting the festival once a year.  My husband's relatives have the oldest and largest (I would hope so after 500 years), but they're all still run out of their homes.  There's also a co-op in the village which buys the grapes from many of the smaller vintners and makes/distributes the wine.  Now I may be partial, but my husband's family makes the best stuff in town, but it may be because they are one of the last ones to harvest by hand.

Saturday night was the height of the party and we arrived at their place around six and didn't end up leaving until after 1am.  It was incredible just hanging out in this amazing little village drinking wine, eating boar and kartoffelsalat, listening to accordion music, and laughing in the same exact place my husband's ancestors did for 300 hundred years.  Few people get to have such an experience.  The best part was being treated with such incredible warmth.  Even though they had a million things to do, they treated us like guests of honor.  We didn't feel like oddities or attractions for being the random American relatives, we were just family.  The language thing totally didn't matter either.  Despite the fact there's a good 180 or so years of distance in history, my husband was family.  I don't know if it was because they were flattered or entertained that it was such a big deal for him to see that farmhouse and walk those vineyards or if they're really just that hospitable to everyone.  After eight months of being here, experiencing such friendliness from people that are basically strangers was brilliant.  It was definitely one of the best times we've had so far.

Anyway, that basically sealed the deal and we'll be starting our German lessons this week.