Wednesday, May 28 Sindelfingen

Frankfurter Leftovers



I had to include this picture of the ultimate portable hot dog stand that I saw in Frankfurt on Monday.






























Today was a long one! Quite a baptism under fire for our new tour members and driver!

This was Betty’s day as she had traced her line back to a few villages on the edge of the Black Forest. We added a couple of stops that weren’t on the itinerary, but when you are here maybe once in a lifetime, they are hard to pass up. Carol just realized yesterday that we were passing very close to where her father grew up in Sasbach, so we added that. And Betty had an obscure reference to a town named Waldshut that was pretty much on our way, so we thought we might as well check that out too. We deleted a possible tour of Strasbourg to fit these in.

By the time we loaded the bus it was 8:30. First stop was Sasbach, only 12 km off our planned route. Carol was quite thrilled to visit her father’s church (the cornerstone said 1740) and walk the streets that he walked, but we did not find any of her family in the cemetery.

We then drove through Freiburg and the Balck Forest to Waldshut. The scenery was beautiful along the way, not unlike the lower mountain valleys near Vancouver, except that there were no snow covered towering peaks in the background. We stopped at Waldshut for lunch and asked around about cemeteries. We visited two, but did not find anything of interest.











Next stop was Untermittingen, another name on Betty’s list. There was nothing of interest in the cemetery, but we were able to go inside the church (built in 1738) and Betty picked up a church bulletin with the priest’s email address. That should come in pretty handy! A lady in the cemetery told us that there were still people in the area with the two surnames Betty was looking for, so, combined with the email address’ she has some new leads to follow.

From there we went to the nearby village of Stuhlingen. No headstones there either, but we found two people with one of Betty’s names on the monument to WW I soldiers. Next was Villingen, a small city of 30,000-50,000 with a huge cemetery. We did a quick run-through, but didn’t find anything. As in all the cemeteries we visited today, most headstones were fairly recent and very old headstones were rare. Since about the 1970s, the law has been that you purchase a plot for about 25 years. After that, you must purchase a new 25 years or the plot goes back into circulation. Stones older than 200 years are exempt. Under this law, Betty’s stones should have still been there, but we found only a very few stones of people born in the 1800s and only a couple in the 1700s.

You have to admire how well they take care of their cemeteries in Germany. The headstones are usually quite large and beautiful. The graves themselves are usually planted with flowers or bushes. And they are meticulously cared for by watering, weeding, and other maintenance.

We finally checked into our hotel by 8 pm and ate in the hotel restaurant, closing the place up at 10. Weather to day was lovely with a high temperature in the high 20’s C (about 80 F) with hazy sun.