19 September 2008

This day was going to be a more relaxing day. After all, the press conference, reception and lunch were over. How much more could there be? HA! Little did we know!

Ulla had arranged a trip to Bremen with Herr von Wedel as our guide so we got up and had a leisurely breakfast ... until Manfred came strolling into the breakfast room with warm greetings and a very big smile. He then opened the newspaper and held up the article that Thomas Bücher had written. It was a nice big article on the front page of one of the sections with a large photo (the big picture with all of us is not in this online article)! Wow! We are celebraties! Well, on a small scale and perhaps only in our eyes, but very exciting to us. And then the fun began.

Our first trip that morning was not to the train station, but to the Nordwest Zeitung office in Brake. We dashed in and started to asked if we could buy some papers and were told no, we could take as many as we wished and, yes it was a nice article. They recognized us! Then as we were going back to our car there was a man in a hurry to get somewhere, but he kept turning to us and smiling, nodding and indicating that he knew who we were. We really were celebraties!

When we got on the train to Bremen we plowed (our reading of German is limited) through the article and decided that Herr Bücher did a great job. What we really wanted to do was hold up the paper for all on the train to see, but we decided to be a little more dignified.

We had a wonderful visit in Bremen with each of us grabbing onto the legs of the Bremen Town Musicians statue with both hands so our luck wouldn't run out. And pigs are very definitely the most prominent statues that we saw, with stores that sold painted pigs and store fronts displaying pigs. Bremen is a blend of old and new. Very nice.

When we got back to the Ambiente, we rested until it was time to leave for Oldenburg as Ulla invited us along with Almut and Leslie and their husbands for dinner. I had my coat on to leave and the phone rang. Claus Lühring was calling. He saw the article and remembered that he had a formal photo of his grandfather, his great uncle and my grandfather with some other men at a "Kegelklub" (bowling) outing. I was so impressed that he saw the article about us, dug out the picture, had it duplicated and brought it to us the next morning!

Ulla has a wonderful place with a lovely garden. I had a special treat because Lesley brought her album of quilts she made. And dinner was delicious and leisurely and it was good to meet the husbands.

After dinner we saw the other newspaper, Kreiszeitung Wesermarsch, and there we are again, but apparently they don't have the article online ... or I can't read enough German to find it. Lesley verbally translated the articles to us. We all laughed as, yet again, it was mentioned that the "73 year old Claire Welch returns after 69 years." I was honored by all the attention and it wasn't until a few days ago that I zeroed in on the fact that 9 November 2008 is the 70th year anniversary of Kristallnacht.

And Ulla is the best at timing. So, after a relaxing evening Ulla brought out her coup. Opa wrote in his journal that he was a town council member, but Ulla could not find any records of it and we were determined to find it, but after our trip to the Staat Archives without any luck, we resigned ourselves to not finding it. Bernd had given Ulla the journal in German with the dates in them and she made another request to the Staat Archives and they found it! She really is a wonderful researcher, but she waited until the end of the evening to tell us! Pat & I said we both would have shared that information right when we walked in the door. Here she is sharing the new found proof.

As we drove back to Brake a warning light went on in the car, which we couldn't translate very well ... something about tire pressure, but no tire looked like it needed attention and midnight is not the time to attend to that so we ignored it and drove safely on.