Sunday, June8 – Ulm to Munich

My daughter has been posting pictures of her twin girls online. We are having fun, but I sure miss seeing them develop day by day. I also have two grandsons in Vancouver that I will be visiting as soon as I get home.

Today we attended the Treffen of the Landsmannschaft der Banater Schwaben, held in Ulm every two years. This is a reunion of the Romanian Germans who left Romania in the 1980s, 1990s, and since. Their experience of the Banat is fairly recent and they maintain a deep love of and longing for their homeland. You can imagine the Yugoslavian Germans having the same feelings after they were forced out in the 1940s and 1950s.

 

We were barely in the door when George and Elizabeth were accosted by a radio reporter from Timisoara, Romania, as if they were celebrities on the red carpet. 

The schedule called for some opening speeches at 10, followed by a Roman Catholic mass. I encouraged the group to attend the mass, as it is a very emotional outpouring - the solemn music and hymns; the banners from all the villages; the visible emotion on people’s faces. Unfortunately, this year followed a different pattern. There were speeches by politicians, presentations to distinguished volunteers, and more speeches by clergy, and still more speeches by people in the Landsmannschaft. It was all in German, so I can’t be sure, but I am pretty confident they all said the same thing. By the time the mass started at 11:45, everyone but George and Kathleen had given up and gone on to other activities. And the only reason Kathleen was still there was because she had chosen a seat near the front and was too embarrassed to leave. Too bad this solemn remembrance was overtaken by politics and officiousness.

 

Meanwhile, the rest of the group had gone on to lunch, browsing the exhibits and sale items, and rubbing shoulders with other attendees. A few of us made contacts that may bear fruit with further conversations online.

We left at 2 for Günzburg, but, again, it was quite a large town with a huge cemetery. We gave it a quick once over, but never saw any trace of the names Erv and Bonnie were looking for. Then we were off to Munich. We left pretty close to on time, but it took a little longer than planned and we arrived about a half hour late. We were hoping to meet Helmut Birg at the Hofbräuhaus for our dinner, but he either gave up waiting for us or was unable to attend. He waited longer for us on our last trip, so I don’t think he would have given up on us that easily, but we will find out tomorrow when he is supposed to meet us at the Haus der Donauschwaben in Bayern.

Today was sunny and very warm, over 30c (about 90F). It was quite warm and stuffy by the end of the mass and pretty warm in the meeting halls too. The Hofbräuhaus also got pretty warm.