New Family

We traveled to Stuttgart yesterday to meet my dad's cousin Fritz.  We were all quite nervous as we didn't know what to think or expect.  So we made the hour and a half trip via train and when we pulled into the station and got off the train,  who should be standing there with a sign "WEISS" in his hand but Fritz and our other cousin Stefan.  It was quite a surprise.  So after walking to our hotel (which was right across the street from the train station) Fritz and Stefan took us to Trude's house.  Trude is Fritz's older sister and Stefan's mother.  In a wheelchair, Trude is a bit frail at 82 but you could see the excitement in her eyes that we were there.

We were immediately treated to coffee and homemade cheese cake that Stefan's wife Bettina had made from scratch.  The cheesecake seems to be made differently as the taste is not the same as at home.  The cake is much lighter in consistency and in taste.  As we sat eating the cake, we chatted about our families and other very light topics.  Fritz has told Mom that his English is not very good, but I think it is much better than we had expected.  Stefan's English is better and Bettina's better yet.  Often if Fritz didn't understand something it became Bettina's job to explain it in German.

When we were done eating the cake, Fritz pulled out his computer and showed us the family tree that his son Max had done.  There were people that were missing their dates of death, but he traced at least the Weiss men back to 1769.  Then Fritz pulled out the other things that he had gathered and found, including pictures of people that he knew and others that he did not. We think that my grandfather was in one of the pictures, but we weren't sure.  We tried to identify the unknown people, but it was really hard to determine who they were as we don't have any pictures of the family.

Fritz, Stefan and Bettina took us to dinner at a local restaurant near Stefan's house.  We began dinner at 6 or so and weren't done until nearly 8:30.  Fritz's wife Kirsten joined us for dinner and she then became the interpreter.  Her English is VERY good and she wanted more practice.  Kirsten is a teacher at a Montessori school and finds that English is very helpful as it tends to be the only language that everyone speaks.  Because the restaurant was local, the menu was only in German so Kirsten had to translate it for us.  As dinner progressed, Kristen became the translator instead of Bettina.

Today we will be going to see the areas that our family has lived, including where Grandfather grew up.  Maybe we will see some gravesites of other relatives.  Then tonight we are going to eat in Fritz's restaurant.