Neither Faeth nor I have ever traveled to Europe before, so
we really had no idea what we were getting into. Just making it to Europe was
an experience. We were up at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday to make our morning flight,
where I almost forgot my lucky sweater, then had to kill five hours in
Philadelphia waiting for our connection. Finally, after an 8-hr flight, we
arrived in Amsterdam. While it was 8 a.m. local time, we had just gone through
a 7-hr time shift, and it was very difficult trying to make my brain admit that
it wasn’t 1 a.m. anymore.
From the Amsterdam airport, we took a train to Groningen, a
city just outside the German border. During our 2-hour train trip, it finally
started to sink in that we were actually in Europe. We could see hundreds of
windmills twirling above picturesque fields of sheep, long rows of brick houses
and signs everywhere in Dutch. We would have been a bit worried about the
language barrier, but we were meeting someone at Groningen. Thankfully, we
still have family in the “Old Country”—that is, Germany—and they graciously
offered to let us stay with them for a few days. You can’t imagine the relief
we felt when we arrived at the station and saw Cousin Ralph waiting for us.
Ralph took us across the border into Germany. We got to ride
the Autobahn, one of the to-do’s on my Germany list, with Ralph pushing his car
up to 220 kilometers/hr. just to give us a thrill. After another two hours of
driving, we arrived at the place we’d be staying: the house of Ralph’s parents,
Christoph and Gerda. Gerda is the daughter of my great-grandfather’s sister.
I’m not really sure what that makes us, but Faeth and I were just happy to be
with someone we sort of knew.
Gerda and Christoph were kind and generous and spoke about
30 words of English. “Perfect German?” they asked hopefully as soon as we’d
met. I understand why they’d think that; every generation of my family has
spoken German, and even my parents are fluent. But I chose to study Spanish,
and Faeth is studying Russian, so neither of those was much help. All I had was
one year of German I’d taken five years ago in high school. But we were able to
communicate with an odd mixture of German/English mixed sentences and lots of
hand gestures—and constantly flipping through our German-English dictionary.
During the next few days, Gerda and Christoph showed us
places from our family’s past: the church where my great-grandfather Henry was
baptized, the home where great-great-grandfather Deiter lived, the school Henry
had attended… They even had pictures and letters written by long-ago
generations a hundred years ago. Holding Christmas cards written in my
great-grandfather’s hand was something special. It was a link to my family’s
past and part of my own identity. I started to better understand why my
great-grandfather had been the way he’d been and what his life had been like. I
hadn’t known him very well, but standing in his childhood house made me feel
closer to him. Suddenly, I was able to form a more complete picture of the man
who had emigrated from Germany with nothing as a young man and died a
millionaire landowner in Iowa, who mixed newfangled ideas with deep-rooted
values and love of family.
This is Great-Grandpa Henry's school house
The three days we spent with our family were filled with
love and laughter, despite (and sometimes because of) the language barrier. You
don’t need words to tell someone you love them. When it was time to go to the
train station, Gerda made sure we had bagged lunches for the trip and Christoph
hugged me close and whispered, “Ich leibe
dich.” I hope we can meet again
someday—and maybe next time I’ll actually know some German! I have a feeling
though, that whatever the obstacles between us—different languages or thousands
of miles—we’ll always have a special connection based simply on love.
me, Christoph, Gerta and Faeth
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