Trier - Family and Friends

Family in Trier, Germany?  Well, yes.  They might not be blood relatives, but it certainly felt like a family visit.   On our trip to Germany, we we're able to coordinate a visit with Anna and Frank (and their kids, Fiona and Justus).  Anna was an exchange student that lived with my Mom in 1983.  I was off to college, but got to know Anna well.  We've kept in touch over the years, but certainly not as much as we could have (completely my fault there!!).  The last time we had seen each other was at Anna and Frank's wedding in 1994.  My Mom and I flew over for the event.  The year before, Anna and Frank and visited me in Chicago on a long holiday and stayed with me and my roommate Sam.

So we flew into Frankfurt (Hahn) airport and rented a car and made our way to Trier where Frank and Anna now live.  Google Maps was very good to us and led us right to their front door, and if Justus would have raised his hand when he saw us, we would have pulled right in.  We drove through the neighbourhood and back tracked before we were able to verify the address.

They live in a beautiful home.  Anna offered us accommodations and I  was a bit nervous that our family of 5 would put a crimp in their lives.  My worries were unfounded.  Their home is not only beautiful, but large.  They had two spare rooms for beds that we were able stay in. And they were most welcoming and generous to all in the Rames family.

It was their spring break and they were heading out to New York a few days after we arrived, so on the last day, we both packed up early and headed on for our respective holiday plans.

As we were saying our good-byes, we noted how it didn't seem like 19 years since we had seen each other.  This is why this is a family visit to me.  Time doesn't dim the comfort and pleasure of visiting in my family and this was such a wonderful and comforting visit.

Trier is the oldest city in Germany with roots going back to 19 B.C.  It is near the German/Luxembourg border on the western side of Germany.  There are still many Roman structures.  On Saturday, Anna took us to the Trier Coliseum and we attended one of Justus' football matches. After we went to the city of Saarburg.  We went on a ride down the side of a hill and then walked through that very old city.  As you can see from the pictures, the weather was a bit chilly with temps around 0.  That really didn't change for the entire week and things were chilly during our whole visit.

Joe and Grace on the the ride down the side of the mountain.

The coliseum in Trier.

Saarburg castle (at the top of the hill in Saarburg, of course.)

Saarburg has a river and falls right in the centre of town.

It's NEVER to cold for ice cream!!

The next day was Palm Sunday and we wanted to attend Mass.  For the uninitiated, Palm Sunday Mass is one of the longer services you can attend in the Catholic Church.  There is the reading of the Passion of Christ.  This Mass might be the most boring for kids to attend, now put all the words in German and  you pretty much have our experience   I think Grace put it best in a quote later that day.  "I'm really tired.  I didn't get enough sleep at church."  She ended up putting her head on Martha's lap for a few winks during the service.  It started out at St. Gangolf's Church in Trier, also known as the Market Church.  Don't ask me exactly what happened here, other than the passing out of palms (in this case, boxwood branches).  It's always a family tradition that the kids weave their palm into a cross.  Try doing that with a boxwood branch!  There were quite a few bishops attending based on the number of violet skullcaps in the procession.  This was a smaller church and known as the peasant's church.  It was odd in that it was surrounded by old buildings.  So to get to the front door, you had to go through a gate between buildings.  It was like they built the church and all the land around it was developed.  You can really only see the spire from the market square.  Very beautiful and very old (built in the 15th century).

We were at St. Gangolf's for a short while, then the entire church processed across the market square to the Trier Cathedral.  This church is incredible and famous for being the place that Joe was at when he decided to ask Martha to marry him.  She wasn't there at that decision point, but that was kind of the point to the revelation.  The cathedral was full and the LONG Mass began.

After Mass, we met up with Anna's family and we walked around Trier for the rest of the day, working our way across the town to the cool sites.

Kids on Constantine's big foot.
There were a bunch of these around town (replicas)

J.J. and Justus at the Roman Baths.

Porta Nigra (Black Gate). 

 

St. Gangolf's.  Bell tower visible.
Entrance is to the left of the yellow building.

Outside Trier Cathedral

4/29/95 - Martha and Joe's anniversary on an
archaeological site tag in the baths.

Next day was a visit to Luxembourg. We figured while were were here, we'd hit the most countries we could.  Truth is that Luxembourg is a short drive from Trier.  Germans go to Luxembourg to buy cigarettes and gas as they are much cheaper. Anna took us for a walk around the city and we visited the American Cemetery in Luxembourg.  We have a tradition of going to the cemetery on Memorial Day (Tahoma National Cemetery in Washington state).  We missed that one last year, so I thought we'd stop by here.  Buried here is Gen. George S. Patton.  Like most cemeteries in Europe for American war dead, it was a beautiful and somber place.

We finished the night with a cookout and made bread over the fire.  The next day, we were going on our own as our hosts needed to pack for their vacation.

Proof we were there.

Grace doing her Dr. Strangelove impression
and the boys wondering who Dr.
Strangelove is?

With Anna at the fortress of caves that guarded Luxembourg.

Luxembourg flag next to strange faces
that followed you as you walked by.

Died in a car accident in Europe and
asked to buried with him men.

We'll bring this tradition back with us.  Not for camping
unless you want to bring yeast, but great
for the backyard.

Our last day was to be a solo journey.  We had been talking with my Mom about some of her genealogy research on the Rames' and she had made it quite far back.  One of our ancestors was born in Germany and migrated.  He then went back to Germany and died there.  My Mom had traced him back to a town called Morbach.  So we decided to head to that area to show the kids where their great-great-great-greats(?) came from.  In planning the day, Anna pointed out another mountain slide in Riol that was much better, so we decided to head to that.  There was a need for speed and we meant to satisfy it.  This one was much more of a mountain and A LOT longer.  Also, the cars were not free floating down a slide, but were on rails like a roller coaster.  The tow up took 5-10 minutes, so you you can guess how long the ride down was.  Here's a video to our trip down.  Probably the best value of the trip as the whole family got two trips down for EUR 24.

From there we went toward Morbach.  We didn't have a lot of expectations for our visit, but wanted to show the kids some of the area.  We saw a couple of things in Morbach, large fields and large paper/wood mills.  It was a bit bigger than we expected.  We saw the local church and went to see if there was anyone there that might be able to provide us any details on the people that Mom had identified.  No one was there, but a man that came into pray.  He handed us all small religious medals in German as we were leaving.  We were driving around the town and went past the Rathaus.  For those of you that don't know German, this word is always funny to an American.  Rathaus is the town hall or the local government.  There was a sign on the side of the office that said tourist information.  Martha saw it and we decided to stop in.  We left the kids on the car and went in.  We met a woman in the office and told her our story and that we were trying to find some descendants.  She looked at what we had and then said, "I don't think I can help you, but I know someone that can."  She proceeded to make a phone call and then walked to another part of the building and brought back a man called Bertold.  He spoke no English, but with our translator, he went through Mom's paperwork.  In the middle of this conversation, he pulled out his iPhone and opened up a small spreadsheet and was going through it and I saw the name of Stephen Reimes, which was the name and spelling of our ancestor.  I'm not sure what he was connected to, but the idea of us going to this small town in Germany and finding this information on the iPhone of a man that doesn't speak English was rather amazing.  There was some lengthy discussion between our two German helpers and the translator said that Bertold could help us, he just couldn't do it right now!!  Not that we were looking for specific details or documents right then, just some direction for Mom. Well, we traded emails he told us he would get back to us in a week or so.  We were pretty excited and went back to our car and were talking about the find.  There was a knock on the door and the two were outside with another question.  I called Mom right there to get the answer and told her the story.  She was pretty excited about the progress and we'll see where it brings us!?

We headed back to Trier for our last evening with Anna, Frank, Fiona, and Justus before we made our next adventure.

We had a wonderful time in Trier and we are already planning for Anna's family to make a trip to the Northwest and figure out how we can provide the same to them!