Wednesday, June 4 Secanj

It took me a little longer than planned last night – 1:30 am. The wireless internet was quite slow. Blogging, especially uploading pictures, is quite a test of its capacity. It went very slowly, freezing up on occasion and screwing up on others. I finally got frustrated enough to give up. This morning I had a Eureka moment and looked for a wired connection, found it, hooked up, and finished my business lickety split. What is especially galling is that I had discussed that possibility earlier with Johannes, our driver, but was so focussed on doing what I was doing that I couldn’t see beyond it.


We began the day with a huge Serbian breakfast served Swedish style (smorgasbord), before touring the grounds of the bishopric and the church. Then we picked up our packed lunches at the hotel and we were off to Ecka/Etschka where Stasa had arranged with the caretaker for a tour. While we were there the priest arrived. He spoke passable English and was thrilled to practice it on some Canadians with Donauschwaben roots in his parish. He had to have a picture with us to post on his web site and offered to take us on a tour of the crypts where the nobles who founded the settlement were buried. One of the nobles was Sigmund Lazar, so it is not hard to figure out the origins of the village names of Sigmundsfeld and Lazarfeld. From there we made a short tour of the cemetery.


Next stop was Sigmundsfeld. Guess what we did there? By the time we left, the ladies were ready for a bathroom break, preferably sitting down rather than squatting. We went back to an old estate that had been converted to a hotel at Ecka. It had uge grounds in a park-like setting and an inviting patio in the rear where we enjoyed some refreshments as thanks for letting us use their facilities.


We didn’t want to eat our picnic lunches in their restaurant - I don’t think they would have liked it either – so we cracked them open at the cemetery in Lazarfeld. There was enough food for two huge lunches so we all saved about half for supper.

They were in the process of cutting the grass and there were several large stacks of hay around.

On to Kathreinfeld. We were there two years ago and it was a jungle. They told us then that there were plans to clean the place up, so we were quite hopeful, but soon disappointed. The site was unchanged. They told us that it had been cleared and that two busloads of German tourists had been there last year taking pictures. Sorry, I just can’t swallow that this is one year’s growth. I think they tell this story to everyone hoping that they will volunteer some money. But I guess you shouldn’t expect them to spend their hard earned money to clean up someone else’s cemetery.


We hit two cemeteries in Stefansfeld. A thunderstorm threatened while we were at the second, but it passed us by with hardly a drop landing.



We moved on to Ernsthausen where we were able to verify one of the stories commonly heard in Serbia, but that we had seldom seen. In this case, the new residents cleared the cemetery for their own use by simply bulldozing the headstones to the edge of a small lake.

We arrived at Setschan about 6:30, but could not check in because the power was out, probably due to the thunderstorm. Frank and Nora Ann accompanied Marta, who had ridden with us all day, on our bus to Zrenjanin, where she would take a scheduled bus home to Kikinda. Some of the group who had a particular interest in this town went directly to the cemetery and had some minor successes. The rest of us finished our lunches and our Hungarian wine on the patio out front. Celeste and I packed it in about 9 pm, but a few of the others persevered for a while longer. As the evening wore on, a cool wind came up, then a few sprinkles of rain, then a steady moderate rain. Looks like it will be a cool wet one tomorrow. Today was once again very warm and sunny until evening.

Our hotel room is quite worn and tired, but clean enough. The toilet seat is broken, one of the sink faucet knobs is missing, and there is no shower curtain. However, there is no shower curtain rod either, so maybe that is just the way it is here. I will have to check with the others tomorrow. Whatever the shortcomings, it may be better than tonight as Stasa received a phone call from tomorrow’s hotel. There are some workers staying there repairing the freezers in a large agricultural plant. Their work is not complete and they have to stay over, bumping us from our motel for the next three nights we had planned to stay there. Stasa is working on some alternatives. We will see what the morning brings. 11 pm – enough for tonight.