Discovering the past

For today, I set up an unbelievable schedule -- according to Hamilton standards.  I had trains to Bern, Basel and Freiburg; then a luggage drop at my hotel; and finally trains to Karlsruhe and Muhlacker in order to arrive and have my cousins pick me up for coffee in the afternoon.  Trains were fabulous -- all on time, clean, and connections easily made in the 10 minutes scheduled layovers.  Sham showed me how to download the tickets onto my phone so that I could use that method for tickets despite not having mobile data or an wifi connection in most of the spots.

Franz and Johanna picked me up in Muhlacker.  I might have recognized them, but their voices were still the same as the last time I saw them which was about 30 years ago.  We had a lovely afternoon coffee session examining old photos, some of which I had seen before as my parents had duplicates and others which were new to me but I recognized the people or the situations.  There were aspects of my family's former life in Germany that I had never heard.  I saw, for the first time, a picture of my grandmother who died when my father was 12.  She was Johanna, in fact, I had an aunt Johanna, my cousin is Johanna, and my daughter is Joanna.  Obviously a popular name in my family.

We caught up on each other's lives and children's lives.  Franz and Johanna had visited Canada and wanted to know about my brother and sisters and their families.  Their younger daughter Nina was at their house also.  She is a lovely lady forensic veterinary who recently married and is now expecting a baby girl in February.  We had a hurried supper at a local spot, enjoying a back garden and some great Swabian food.  It was a fast ride back to Muhlacker to catch the train back to Karlsruhe and here I am on the ICE headed back to Freiburg.

I can't say enough positive about the trains here.  After ditching the luggage, it was one of the adventures that I had always dreamed of -- backpacking through Germany into places whose names I have heard all my life, but are only now gaining meaning as I visit them.  I took lots of pictures of the pictures in the photo albums which I will share with family.  It will give them a better understanding of where we come from, just as it has opened the past for me.