Tuesday, June 10, Szeged

I had planned to tour some of the sites of Timisoara this morning, but because of our adjustments from yesterday, we headed out on the road first thing in the morning. This proved to be a good choice as we had a leisurely and productive day today.

We began with a stop in Sackelhausen for the twins. This was a huge cemetery as it was a large village and one of the earliest established in Banat.

We went on to the Stefan Jaeger museum in Hatzfeld. Jaeger was a famous Donauschwaben painter who captured many scenes of every day life in the Banat. The museum holds a few of his original paintings and many copies, artefacts, and an exhibit that tells his life story.

Next stop was the Ostern cemetery where we found what seemed like a dozen of Frank’s family and a few other people of interest as well. Sorin found the man with the church key and we were able to go inside there also. We then went back to the cemetery and had a picnic outside the entrance with the groceries I picked up the previous night.

We went on to Grabatz for a short stop and then on to Lenauheim for a tour of the Lenau museum. Sorin had not been here before, but had heard of it and thought it would be worth checking out. He was right. Lenau was a famous Donauschwaben poet of the early 1800s.

The museum told about his life and times, had a collection of dolls dressed in the Trachten (village costumes) of most of the Romanian Banat villages, and had several artifacts. Frank hit the jackpot when he noticed a display of an 1828 document with one of his ancestors’ names on it. This paid off for all of us when he bought champagne at supper!

Equally important, the museum had passable bathrooms. Finding suitable bathrooms and food in these small villages is a constant challenge.

From the museum, we went to the cemetery looking for some of Betty’s relatives, but without success. This was our last cemetery stop, although we might stop at some on the way back out of force of habit. We dropped Sorin off before the border, spent a half hour of expected bureaucratic waiting, and were back in Hungary. We were in Szeged a half hour later and went looking for a restaurant that Sorin had recommended. We think we found it. Szeged is renowned for its fish soup so Nora Ann and I tried it. Several others tried the goulash. Both were very good.

Today was as hot as any day so far. At one point the outside air sensor on the bus read 34 degrees C.

I can’t conclude this section without commenting about Sorin. Although an engineer by training, he is a historian by passion. He lectured us about Banat from Deutsch Stamora to Timisoara on our first day and from Timisoara to Bethausen and back on the second day. Then he answered questions thoughtfully and thoroughly the rest of the way. Although you might expect a negative connotation from the word “lecture,” nothing could be further from the truth. His comments were always interesting and backed up with facts from his research. I find his research to be of the highest standards of truthfulness and integrity.