Tuesday

Oops! Thanks, Pat for correcting me. I changed the name to Marie (Cohn) as the wife of Samuel. Rosalie was the name of someone I was meeting later on. And when I read what I've written, I apparently see what should be there and not what is.

On Tuesday we were pretty much on our own until 3 PM. We discovered lots of areas around Brake ... neighborhoods, hospital where I was born, BAKERY (with the best mandelhornchen with chocolate on the ends that we tasted in our travels), shops, train station, post office, bank, Opa's garden plot, ships, cafès ... you name it, I think we saw it ... and either Chuck or Pat photographed it.

But the best was at the beginning of our walk. Last year when Pat and Bernd were in Brake they met Hans Berger, whose mother used to work for Opa and he remembers playing cards or dominoes or something with Opa. I tried writing him a letter and included some old photos and I hoped he might be able to identify the people I did not know, but it was returned, so we weren't sure what happened. It turned out to be the wrong address. At the beginning of our walk Pat says, "It's Hans Berger!" He stopped to chat with us as he was on his way to enjoy coffee with friends. We arranged to meet another day. It was good to meet someone that remembered Opa ... and me ... even if it was 69 years ago.

About 3 PM we went to the Ship Museum where Ulla arranged a tour in English with Captain Uwe Schmidt. Bernd said the museum was small and it wouldn't take long. Wrong, but a nice, wonderful tour. Captain Schmidt also explained about all the ropes used in the shipping industry to tie up the ships or hoist up the sails on the sailing ships. That's when we told him that S. Weinberg, Inc. (Opa's business) bought and sold those ropes to the ships owners. Then he started to ask us questions about the business, but we had few answers. This is another thing to investigate.

And he told us about the Reeperbahn. We were going to Hamburg and as we were planing our trip people would giggle and ask us if we were going to the Reeperbahn. We hadn't heard of it, so decided we had to go. It originally was a long street where rope long enough to tie up ships was made, but is famous for other things today. You'll have to open the link to find out, if you don't know.