The original objective for the trip to Germany was to take a lot of pictures and find out where church and government records were stored. This was meant to setup other trips I would take to Germany in future. By the end of the trip, my objective was to get out of Germany alive. This newsletter will try to deal with what happened on the trip.

There are mistakes of spelling and facts in this newsletter. I am sure that I’ve left things out. These things can be dealt with in future newsletters.

A couple of months before going to Germany, I "found" out that the Haas ancestors came from Hinterkleebach. Taking a wild guess, I ordered microfilms for Bayreuth (Bayreuth is the nearest big town.) What I was looking for was John B. Haas’s permission to leave Germany from 1882. Two weeks before the trip, the films came into the Milwaukee Family History Center. I went to the LDS church not sure what I would find in the films if anything at all.

I meant to start with the film from 1882. I goofed and loaded a film from around 1877. The heck with it, I might as well look at this "wrong" film just to see what sort of data was on the film. Well, I got in about 10 or 20 screens when I found a document with Hinterkleebach on it. I was feeling lucky that I ordered the films for the right town. Looking closer at the document, I saw that it was a document for Johann Haas. I was about ready to have kittens. As I looked at the rest of the "document" I determined that it was Johann B. Haas’s "marriage documents."

Well, I was pretty excited. I printed the documents and sat staring at the screen for about 5 minutes. The heck with, I might as well skim the rest of the film. Cruising through the film, I noticed another document for Hinterkleebach. I looked at the document and saw that it was Georg Haas’s marriage documents. This was strange, I thought Johann Haas’s brother Georg was married in the USA. Well maybe it was a cousin. To make a long story short, it turned out that Georg was Johann’s brother. BUT IT WAS DIFFERENT GEORG. Obviously Johann’s and Georg’s parents weren’t too creative in naming their children, they named them Georg, Johann, Georg and Johann. By the way Georg Haas married a Bauer.

I mentioned that I found "marriage documents." There were about 20 pages in Johann’s marriage documents. One of the nice things about these documents was that the bride had to provide a detailed list of her family. There is a lot of stuff in these documents that will take awhile to figure out.

I didn’t make it through the 5 films that I ordered. No big deal I thought, the films will be at the church for a week after we returned from Germany. I could look at them then. Well, it seemed like a plan at the time.

We left from Madison on Tuesday Nov 2 on a jet puddle-jumper. The takeoff was 30 minutes late because high winds in Chicago were delaying landings. O’Hare is a big airport. I had visions of having to go from one terminal to a terminal on the other side of the airport. Luckily our arrival terminal was the same as our departure terminal. It was about a 3-minute walk to our departure gate.

Our plane left Chicago Tues. at 5:30 PM and got into Munich at 9:30am on Wed. Our seats were in the back. We had aisle seats. I would hate to be in a middle seat between two fat guys. The seats were as comfortable as they could be. But the lack of legroom and sitting for so long can be uncomfortable.

There is a seven-hour time difference. The trip took about 9 hours to get to Germany. Only 3 hours of the trip were over the Atlantic Ocean. It was fun watching people trying to turn on the reading light. Your first reflex is to reach up towards the light to turn it on. However the controls were on the seats. There weren’t any air nozzles. Normally I like to turn these on full. It didn’t seem to be a big problem. They turned the lights on for dinner about 2:30 am ( German time ) 8:30 pm CST They showed two movies. One was "The Thomas Crown Affair" that started at about 3:45 am The second film "A Message in a Bottle", stared Costner and Newman that started about 6:15 am. (Roger Ebert picked as one of the worst films of 1999. ) If one wanted to it was fairly easy to sleep. It was "nighttime" for most of the trip. They did turn on the lights for dinner. First light was about 7:15 on the plane.

Munich Airport is very easy to get around in. There are two levels with the terminals on one level. The terminal is pretty much a straight shot like a stripmall. Going through German customs only involved stamping our passport. They weren’t really set up to check anybody’s luggage. No check in the US, no check in Germany. We could have brought anything in. There is a large shopping center in the Munich Airport. You can buy almost anything there. There was also a train depot. They had an automated ticket kiosk that looked like you had to be a rocket scientist to work it.

We picked up the rental car (an Audi wagon). The standard transmission was going to be fun. We left the airport, pretty much using the "force" to find our way. Got lost and had to stop at a gas station to get directions. The woman in the gas station was very helpful. We didn’t lose much time and we were on the autoban.

The rental agreement was interesting. We could not go into Italy or Czechoslovakia. The contract said that the border guards would seize the car and we would be hosed. Seems it is the national pastime in these countries to steal rental cars (or anything else not nailed down.)

The German autoban is everything they say it is. You want to stay in the right lane of the two-lane highway. The only time I changed lanes was when we got behind trucks. We went about 120 kph; the trucks went about 80-90 kph. You don’t dawdle in the left lane. I’m one to watch the rear mirror so I generally know what is behind me. I was amazed how many times a car would come out of nowhere and tailgate me. If you get a flat or have other car trouble, the road shoulders aren’t big enough to get off.

As we left the autoban and got on the "backroads", we just headed in the general direction. The trip took about 3 to 4 hours. The roads are pretty well marked, but you have to just go with the flow when driving through the small towns. Every turnoff looks like the main road. There isn’t always a sidewalk, so you have to drive right by the building.

Waldmuenchen is not a big town, but we still had to deal with small "unclearly marked" streets, some going one-way. Luckily there were signs pointing to our hotel on the outskirts of town. The hotel was nice. (We made our reservations over the Internet in August. It took 2 days for the hotel to respond to our email.)

If you are going to stay in Waldmuenchen, the Hotel Bayerischer Hof is a good place to consider. It is on the north side in a quiet part of town. Behind the hotel is a large 7 11 style store. The hotel rooms have refrigerators that can hold pop, fruit and other stuff. If you want "regular" potato chips you are out of luck. Most of the chips are Pringle-like. Those chips that are regular style have some weird flavor like garlic. (You have to remember that most stores close at 6:00 PM,only during the week ,open on Saturday morning, and closed all Sunday.) The parish house is right across from the store. The town square is about 300 meters from the hotel and is an easy walk. The hotel also has a very nice restaurant. The food is very cheap in the restaurant, an expensive meal is about 25 to 30 marks. A dollar is worth about 1.8 marks.

NOTE: I used a camcorder to "map" the entire area. I did not change the dates in the cameras. The file date on the cameras are 6 hours behind German time. ( You can check this by the photos I took of clocks. )

By about 3:00 PM we were ready to crash. I snoozed for a little bit. At about 4:15 PM I took a 1 ½ hour through Waldmuenchen. It was a nice peaceful walk through the town. I noticed a lot of small vending units attached to machines (cigarettes, candy). Right next to the town square I found a vending machine with an interesting array of products: film, tampons and condoms. I would have liked to be in on the meeting when they decided that people visiting the town square would need this combinations products. There were two types of film, one brand of tampons, and four brands of condoms. Apparently there are very discriminate buyers for certain products and need to have more variety.

Around tight corners, there are concave ( or is it convex ) mirrors which allow drivers to see oncoming traffic around corners. This is okay for drivers, but if you are walking you are on your own. Drivers don’t even slow down. They check the mirror before getting to the corner and just shoot through.

I noticed a bus stop that connected the surrounding large towns. I noticed bus stops in all small towns. In the outlying towns, there is usually a bus shelter.

We ate about 6:00 PM. Then we snoozed.

During the night I woke up about 2:45 am. The Larry King Show started at 3:00 am on CNN International. We slept late. Mid-morning we took a drive through the Bavarian Forest. This time of year, the weather is foggy and cloudy. They pretty much shut down many tourist spots. I thought the overcast weather added to the beauty of the scenery. Lots of small, lovely towns, lots of mountains and valleys.

We went to Ast after we got back. Ast is in a big, flat valley surrounded by hills/mountains. This was the parish that Franziska Bauer went to. We took a quick look around the church and the cemetery. I looked but I didn’t find a tombstone for the Schimdthofer family. In the cemetery there were only family plots – no individual plots. They bury the bodies in the same plot and put lye

on them to help the decomposition process. November 2^nd. All Souls day is a holiday and an important day in Bavaria. All of the plots had fresh flowers on them.

I am not sure why the Bauers and others from Untergrafenried went to Ast instead of Waldmuenchen for church. Ast is about 2 miles further from Untergranfenried than is Waldmuenchen.

When we got back to Waldmuenchen I took a walk around the town. I noticed a door in the "town hall" labeled Tourist Office. I figured that I would stop in on Friday.

That night we went to dinner with Dr. Michael Lechner and his wife Marcella. Michael is the cousin of Lucille Lechner-Wankerel. We went to the Hotel Napoleon, which is just outside of Waldmuenchen. The manager was a friend/patient of Michael. The food was excellent, plentiful and cheap. One of dishes served was uncooked meat with a heated rock. You cooked/heated your meat at the table using the rock. Talk about a lawsuit waiting to happen. We had a meat / potato / vegetable meal for three served on one big platter placed on the table.

The alarm woke me up at 7:30 am. I could have slept for hours. I went over to the Tourist Office about 9:00 am. This was the beginning of an interesting day that would change what I thought I knew about the Bauer ancestors. Again my objective for this trip was to just find out where the records were kept so I could spend time laboriously going through them the next trip.

Apparently I was the not first person from Plain to go to the tourist office. They where ready and waiting for almost any request I could come up with. They had large binders with data about the "Auswanders" who went to America. They had a book printed in Germany that translated Hildagarde Thering’s book on Plain. They had the Sauk County Phone book and the book on St Anne’s shrine. The man at the tourist office set up an appointment for me with Georg Ederer for 2:00 that afternoon. He also asked me what the family names were that I was interested in. They also had several books on the Waldmuenchen area that I purchased.

When I got back to the hotel, we took a trip to surrounding small towns. This was another objective of this trip. I had maps of the area but I had no sense of how close these towns were to Waldmuenchen or how easy it would be to get around. It was very easy to get around. Taking a loop through these surrounding towns was only about 20 to 30 kilometers. Along the route there were many signs pointing back to Waldmuenchen or Ast. This made it almost impossible to get too lost.

The main point of this trip was to visit Untergrafenried. This is the village where the Bauers and the Ruhlands came from. I knew the house numbers of the lots that they lived in. I started taking pictures of these buildings. Walking around I talked to a farmer. He told me that all the house numbers had been changed. The new house numbers for the Bauer/Ruhland ancestoral homes were in the number range 51-70. So I wasn’t taking pictures of what I wanted. He pointed out the right area to me. It was down a hill by a corner in the road. This house number change and the "right area" seemed right because I saw an old building with a 10 on it that was "out of sequence." There weren’t any old buildings to take pictures of. At least none of them looked old So I just took pictures of the areas that the houses would have been in. (Next time I go to Germany I will be sure to have pictures of American farms. The farmer I talked to was very interested in what American farms looked like.)

Farming is different in Germany. The farmers live in town and go out to their land to work. This is why there are so many small villages. There is only so much land and if you had large towns, farmers would have to walk a long way to their land. Milk collection for dairy farmers is also different. The farmer loads up a canister on a cart. This canister is about 3-4 feet high 2–3 feet wide and has three wheels. They drag this cart to a central collection area where the milk truck stops. After the truck comes, the farmer takes his cart back to his farm.

At Stein Loehe, ( Laubmeir home town ), there is a church dedicated to the war dead. The outside stations of the cross seem to have been put there in the 1950’s. The building is small. You can get in the front door, but are stopped by a metal fence. Looking through the fence, everything seems stuffed into a small cramped area.

By the time we got back it was about time for my meeting with Ederer. Like an idiot I couldn’t find the parish house so I was late. (It turns out that the parish house is just behind the hotel. ) By now I had violated several cardinal rules of genealogy. Experts have told me that the church workers are very busy. They like to have advanced notice of the visit. They also tended to get peeved easily which makes it tough to get them to help you. (After I got in the parish house, Ederer told me that somebody had set up an appointment for June 2000.) It would have been helpful if I would have had more details of the family histories. Knowing how to speak German would have been helpful. (Ederer didn’t speak English.)

I didn’t know what records if any that Ederer would have. You have to remember that the really "good" records from the early 1800’s would be old and fragile. These are not books that you casually flip through. Maybe the books are kept in a central office miles away. Maybe the old parish priest didn’t know how to write. Maybe the records were destroyed in the war. In all likelihood the records would be in the old script. To make it even tougher, the records most likely would be in Latin. In my wildest dreams, the best thing that could happen is that Ederer would know where the records were and who I could write to when I get back to the US.

When I finally got into Ederer’s office the fun began. He had handwritten family trees for the Bauers all laid out when I got there. Within a few seconds we had the Bauer family tree going back to about 1757. I also found out that I really didn’t the complete story on Franziska Bauer’s family. Where do I start?

Franziska had two brothers and four sisters. The father of her children was a Schmidhuber. Franziska’s grandmother was a Schmidhuber. I will make one speculation, were Franziska and the father of her children cousins. I decided that I didn’t want to go out on this branch of the family tree because it was over a very "shallow gene pool" filled with alligators. There is even a Schmidhuber in the Kraemer branch of our family. Franziska’s third child was named Joseph and died ten days after birth. Franziska’s mother died and her father remarried. His second wife died. He came to America. I believe he is buried in the old St Luke cemetery. To make it even better, it seems that Franziska did not tell/know her sons their correct birth dates. I tried to tell Ederer that I had different dates from death certificates and tombstones.

It was at this point that I felt like I was hit by brick. Remember, the existence of old church records was in doubt. Even if they did exist where were they and could they be looked at. Ederer pulled out a large binder. This binder was an index to the old church records. AT THIS POINT EDERER REACHED FOR A SMALL 5 X 7-INCH METAL BOX. IN IT WERE MICROFICHE COPIES OF THE CHURCH RECORDS FROM ALL OF THE SURROUNDING CHURCHES INCLUDING AST. Ederer showed me the birth record for the Johann B Bauer. The microfiche copy of the records was very clear. Ederer was able to read the old Latin. (Unfortunately the fiche reader did not have a printer.)

It finally got to the point that I had to tell Ederer to stop. My head was swimming. I left knowing that for practical purposes my Bauer genealogy searches were through. Most of the records I would need could be gotten in the US from the Mormons.

Ederer impressed me as being well organized. I would say that when in doubt trust his research.

He was very friendly and he went out of his way to be helpful. This is definitely one guy that we are going to have to contact again. ( I’ve got his address & fax number. )

Today we went to Hinterkleebach (home of the Haas ancestors.) We left about 9:30 am spent about an hour in the town and then drove back to Waldmuenchen getting back about 4:15 p.m. We put about 300 kilometers on the car. This town was a hard to find. We finally found the road going north to Hinterkleebach. If I remember correctly, the road is between Vorderkleebach to the east and Poppendorf to the west . It is west of Trockau and south of Bayreuth. Hinterkleebach was like all the other small German towns. I didn’t see any "old" buildings but I still took a lot of pictures. Per a resident of Hinterkleebach, the Haas ancestors probably would have went to church in Poppendorf. This will give us a place to search for church records.

Most of Hinterkleebach is not on the main drag. Even in this small town, there was a vending machine for smokes on an old building out of the main flow.

I have no orientation as to where the Haas ancestors lived. On the southeast side of town there is an open field where farming could be done.

There was a new building being put up in the town.

Looking at the town sign, Hinterkleebach is the Gemeinde of Hummeltal and the Kreis of Bayreuth.

As we were driving around, at several towns we saw groups of men around man-made ponds. No clue as to what they were doing.

We walked to the church in Waldmuenchen to take some pictures. One characteristic of the churches in this part of Germany is the onion-shaped dome on the tower. It seems as though the building is water-heated radiators next to the outside wall. It seemed like it could be pretty cold in the church in winter. Up by the main altar there is a large heating grate that the priest could stand on if it got too cold.

The Lechners took us out to eat again at Napoleon’s. We had beef that had been cooked in hay for several hours. It had a good (but not strange taste.)

This was the point that the trip turned nasty. Mom had stomach pains so Dr Lechner was called. He was at the hotel by 7:30 am. He was concerned that Mom had a bowel obstruction that could be serious. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Koetzting. If it weren’t for Mike Lechner things could have been real bad. We didn’t speak German. He couldn’t go to the hospital with us, so he called his mother and had her go with us. Turns out she is a doctor too. She rode in the ambulance with Mom. She also did the talking with the doctor.

The doctor’s couldn’t tell what was going without tests. The plan was that we would come back on Tuesday after the tests were done. At this point there still was a chance that we could leave for the US on Thursday.

We went back to Mrs. Lechner’s home for dinner. If it weren’t for Mom being in the hospital, this would have been an excellent visit. We ate at a bench-like table. There as a moveable door in the bench that gave access to the kitchen.

The dinner was sausages, bread, crackers and spreads. Eating was a little awkward. I didn’t what to spread on what, what to eat first, what to eat together. They seemed to wait for us, as guests to start, and I was waiting for them to start eating so I could figure out the "proper" way of eating this stuff.

In the morning I went back to Ast to finish taking pictures. I also went to Prosdorf (Mike Gruber’s hometown) and took a few pictures.

We got to the hospital late in the morning. Mom was taken to a hospital in Cham for a CAT scan. After she got back to Koetzig, we had to wait for a couple hours to find out what was going on. It turned out that the bowel obstruction wasn’t a problem, but the doctors didn’t know what the problem was. The doctors said that they would need to run some more tests and we would know better on Wednesday what was going on.

At this point there was an outside chance of getting out of Germany on schedule. This all changed when we got to the hospital. We were told that they were flying Mom by helicopter to the University Hospital in Regensburg for surgery for an ulcer.

We followed by car and got there a couple of hours later at about 1:00 p.m. or 2:00 p.m. Mom was still in the emergency room getting checked in. Luckily many people at the hospital spoke English. They didn’t speak English at the main desk where we asked for directions. However, they were prepared with a preprinted card in English directing us were to go for assistance.

The doctor explaining the surgery said there were 3 possibilities. The ulcer might require a couple of sutures, taking out half of the stomach, or removing the entire stomach. This didn’t sound good. By about 6:30 p.m. they were ready to take Mom into surgery.

After the surgery, we found out that it was a couple of sutures.

The doctors and nurses were very helpful. They were very concerned that we had a place to stay in town. The hotel that they first recommended was full for two days. They helped us check into another hotel downtown. We left the car parked at the hospital and took a cab to the hotel. (We didn’t do much driving in Regensburg. We were told that the streets of Regensburg make the streets of Madison look simple. )

It was comforting to be in a big city. By now I was longing for anything in English. The cable TV in the hotel had a channel with CNBC/NBC shows. I am not a big fan of Jay Leno or Connan O’Brien but I was glad to watch them tonight. I knew we were backed in civilization when I looked out my window. There was a large movie Cineplex. They had a large, outdoor poster of Adam Sander’s movie BIG DADDY. The poster was a picture of Sander and a little boy "watering" a door.

We took a cab back to the hospital. Dad went into see Mom and I went back to Waldmuenchen to get our stuff and check out of the hotel. Mike Lechner had called ahead. Maria (a great person at the hotel) had all of our stuff packed up. I drove back to the hotel and dumped our luggage. I also managed to ding the car a little. I took a cab to the hospital.

Mom was moved from intensive care to a regular room. At this stage Mom seemed like something out of the Living Dead. I was considering signing her up for the organ donor program but I couldn’t read the german form.

Lots of tubes. Lots of pain. Mom was not a happy camper. She didn’t like anyone at this stage.

Now the fun started. We kept asking the doctors when we could leave and different doctors told us completely different dates. At first it was 5-10 days. Then it was 2 to 3 weeks. Then they wanted Mom to stay in the hotel 2 to 10 days after being checked out of the hospital. The week before Thanksgiving, the "main" doctor told Mom she would be home by Thanksgiving. When I talked to him in the hall, oops, he didn’t thought Thanksgiving was 2 weeks away. I am sure Mom enjoyed this let down.

The first four days Mom didn’t get real food or water. For "moisture" she got an "aerosol" can that she sprayed into her mouth. Every day Mom got better. She still couldn’t walk or move much on her own. The doctors wanted her to get up and walk around. Fat chance of this happening.

The weekend after the hospital was tough. Mom was not improving as much as she did the first days. Also the hospital was a ghost town. There were a few nurses and invisible doctors. There was not much therapy that Mom could get.

On Monday Nov 15^th Mom could drink tea. She must have been feeling better because she started complaining that nobody wrote her. She complained that the guys at the bar didn’t even send her anything. Late in the morning we got four cards. (It only took 4 days for the cards to arrive.)

By Tues. Nov 16^th most of the tubes were disconnected.

Wed Nov 17th month Mom started getting real food. However she still was not walking well even with people walking by her. This was a real concern. If she couldn’t even walk a few steps how were we going to get her into a plane.

On Sat Nov 20^th we told the nurse that we wanted to try to get Mom to walk. The nurse said good and she came back with a walker. I guess this is a good lesson, you got to ask for stuff. Mom got in the walker and started to motor. She wasn’t going to win any races but she able to walk a pretty good distance. Things were looking better.

They were giving mom medicine to thin her blood to protect against clots. Because of this, mom had to take big potasium pills 3 times a day. She really didn’t like them. She would make us leave the room when she took them. She said the pills made her cry. ( I think she wanted us out of the room so she could throw the pills away. )

On Mon. Nov 22^nd, two different doctors told us two different times for checking out. Even the best case wouldn’t get us back to the US until Tues. Nov 29^th because of available flights. We talked to the doctor about leaving the hospital Tues. Nov 23^rd. The doctor didn’t seem too keen on this idea. We had him call Dr Michael Lechner. Apparently Lechner convinced him that a release on Tues. Nov 23^rd was okay with us flying out Thurs. Nov 25^th. Again Mike Lechner saved us.

We got a nice package from Geri and Bill Bergman. They had the very nice idea to send us the last three weeks of the Weekly Home News.

Once we go the okay to leave on Thanksgiving, it was time to scramble to make arrangements. It was easy to get the airline tickets since all airlines had people who were fluent in German and English. I made the reservations on Monday. At this time Mom didn’t look in good shape. There was talk of thrombosis (this is where a blood clot lets loose and you die). Not wanting to take any chances, we booked a first-class ticket for Mom. This ticket was not exactly cheap.

Fortunately while all this was going on, I had Julie to talk to. She was able to explain what the doctors said and what to ask. Miss Optimist was concerned that mom wouldn’t be able stand the flight. Julie was concerned that sitting in the uncomfortable seats for nine hours would turn mom in to blubbering, crying and out-of-control. This would be all we would need, would be to get in the air and have to make an emergency landing in France or England for an even longer stay.

On Tues. Nov 23^rd Mom was supposed to be released by 11:00 am. I was hoping nothing was going to go wrong. They took her stitches out in the morning. We were concerned that Mom’s shoes didn’t fit. How was she going to walk around in the snow? One of the nurses gave us some plastic "footies."

Mom was kicked out of her room at about 11:00 am. We had to sit around for 3 to 4 hours until we could see the "social worker." The social worker was a nice touch of the hospital. This person made sure that we were going to be okay when we left the hospital. She made a lot of calls to find somebody that could help us with Mom. She got the Red Cross to get Mom a wheelchair and a ride back to the hotel. They let us keep the wheelchair and leave it at the hotel when we left Thursday. The head of the Regensburg Red Cross came over on Wed Nov 24^th to give Mom an injection.

It was scary checking out of the hospital. I wasn’t sure of the process and didn’t want it to get to the point where they ask us for a credit card to pay the bill. Like the hospital in Koetzig, they agreed to send the bill to the insurance company. It would have been tough to come up with the money for the hospital and helicopter ride. Fortunately we didn’t have to.

The insurance company asked us to get a detailed bill and a translation. I could have translated the bill. In Germany they bill you based on the room that you are in. They don’t even bill you separately for the surgery. The bill was 1 day in intensive care and 12 days in a "regular room." There is a fixed, daily charge based on the room.

As soon as we got Mom into the hotel she lit up like a lightbulb. After over 2 weeks in the hospital Mom was probably happy to be "free." She seemed better able to take care of herself.

On Wed Nov 24^th I drove down to Munich to get the tickets. Part of the goal of this trip was to get an idea of what the route was like. It was about 110 kilometers to the airport. Once you got on the autobahn it was a straight shot. The airport was easy to get around in. If you missed a turn you just got back on the loop and tried again. I had to stand in line for about 30 minutes to get the tickets. I mentioned to the Lufthansa agent that we would need a wheelchair. She said it would be taken care of.

As I left the airport to get back to Regensburg I got lost again. I was driving around in the boondocks. I saw a gas station and figured I should gas up again. It was like the Twilight Zone. It was the same station (and the same person) I went into the first day in Germany when we got lost. Well, at least I knew where I was. I got back to Regensburg about mid-afternoon.

Now the waiting started. We tried not to think of anything that could screw up our getting out Germany. The biggest fear was that I would oversleep.

Thurs. Nov 25^th I woke up at 6:00 am to load the car. We left Regensburg about 7:00 am and got to the airport about 8:30 am. Even though our flight left at 11:30 am we didn’t want to take any chances of not being at the airport on time. It had snowed just a few days earlier.

At the airport it was pretty easy. There was a door right to the baggage check in plus they had people to help with the baggage. I left Dad with Mom and the luggage and went into the terminal to get the wheelchair. I went into the Lufthansa office and asked for the chair. The agent who sold me the tickets the day before started work at 6:00 am. She remembered that we were coming. They were all setup to check our bags in and get us our boarding passes by-passing all the waiting in lines. . They also let us sit in their lounge with juice and cookies. (I wonder if this was normal service or due to the fact that we had a first-class ticket.) I left Mom and Dad and returned the rental car. Returning the car only took a few minutes.

We had a letter from the hospital saying that they "had no objections" to Mom taking the flight. Lufthansa didn’t ask for this letter even though they knew Mom was not in good shape.

At this stage I finally started to believe that were going to leave.

The German passport control looked at our passports and sent us through. To get on the plane we had to show a clerk our passport as part of US custom control.

I was shocked when I saw first class. I thought first class were the seats when you get on the plane. Turns out that these were business class. First class was empty except for Mom. The seats were huge. It seems like they reclined in almost every direction. She also had a personal vcr built into her chair and her choice of any movie they had on the plane. ( We got to watch the "Wild Wild West" and a movie with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts about a women who had trouble getting married.) We got first class because we didn’t know if Mom could handle the 9-hour flight and when we got the tickets she was in the hospital displaying zombie-like qualities.

Turns out that the roughest thing she had to deal with on the flight was did she want duck, lamb or fish. We got beef in tin foil. The flight personnel left us sit with Mom for most of the flight. This is definitely the way to fly.

When we got into O’Hare there was a wheelchair and a person waiting. I am thankful we had somebody from the airport there. It was like walking through a maze to go through customs. She also made sure that we handled our luggage properly and got on the right train.

Mom almost got us busted by customs. She didn’t declare any food or plants on her customs form. I suppose she didn’t think the roses and the bottle of champagne she got from the airline counted.

When we got out of customs, Julie and Kent were waiting for us. We knew that Mom couldn’t make the flight to Madison because you had to walk outside and up a loading ramp. There was also the strong possibility that the trip could have killed her. The plan was that they would take her to a hospital in Sauk. Mom wasn’t crazy about this, but what was she going to do. She couldn’t walk home.

Later, it turns out that this was a good move. Mom had an infection and the stitches didn’t heal right. ( Infection is normal and occurs 40% of the time.) I am real glad they didn’t find this in Germany. There is a good chance that I would have had to learn how to sing O Tannenbaum for Christmas.

I spent the time waiting for the flight to Madison eating Macdonald’s burgers and watching the Cowboys and Dolphins. Fortunately Thanksgiving was not a busy day at O’Hare. Our flight from Germany was only about half full.

-1240 Waldmuenchen becomes a city

-1658 whole city burns down

-1742 Pandurenoberst Trenck

-1895 local line to Cham openned

-1945 30% of town destroyed in war

-1990 border to Czechsolvakia openned

the post office was built in 1527 ( it is to the left of the Rathaus )

the Rathaus ( city hall ) was first mentioned in 1492, the current building was built in 1907

the statue in the market place is of Nepomuk and was donated by the Franck Brothers

the well in the market place is from the 18^th century

Annually they publish a book about the area. I have a copy of Waldmuencher Heimatbote Jahrbuch #32 Dec 1998. It might be interesting to look at earlier books starting in 1966.

Munich is about 170 km away

Nurenburg is about 130 km away

In the 1970’s there was book published about the 700 year anniversary of the church (1265-1965)

This would be an interesting book to get our hands on.

At the high altar there are statues of St Wolfgang and St Benedikt. There is portrait of St Michael.

Mom’s main doctor was Dr Doenenecke(AIP). We met so many doctors that we couldn’t keep their names straight. We referred to him as the doctor with the scar (facial scar).

Other doctor’s names were Dr Stumpf and OA/Dr Boedecker (the big guy)

Some of the nurse’s names were Sister Nadine, Uli, Silvia, Rubini, Judith Gaby B.

One of the male nurses was Carl. Mom called him John for about 4 days until he finally corrected her.

On the third floor waiting area, there was a fish tank with a strip of paper in English saying

"We are too young to end up as sushi please"

When you look out the window you could see several small towns. Towards the end of our stay, they put up a display in the waiting room with a picture of the view and the names of the towns.

The main entrance to the hospital was a circular, automatic door. You would usually see smokers huddled in front of the hospital.

The walk between the hospital and the hotel was good exercise. It was downhill to the hotel and uphill to the hospital. There were the "Stairs of Death." The walk uphill to the hospital was bad enough, "Charles Atlas" I’m not, you had to walk up a flight of stairs. The first times up the step winded me. You also had to walk under a bridge that pigeons "decorated" with their droppings.

I only brought a wind-breaker jacket with me to Germany. I figured the weather wouldn’t be too bad and if it was we weren’t going to be walking all that far anyway. Boy was I wrong. With the snow and the cold, the walk to the hospital was pretty quick.

Around Munich we noticed fields with "telephone-poles." We found out that these were hop fields.

There wasn’t a library in Waldmuenchen. It would be nice to know where they have old newspapers to do research.

Cell phones are called "handies."

Phone numbers are not fixed length.

In order to maintain the old look of the villages, towns set standards for colors and styles. The building owner doesn’t have to follow the standards. But they get money to defray their costs if they do. In the US you will see houses that look "run down." Not so in Germany. Most of the German buildings were stone buildings with some sort of plaster-like coating. This coating was painted in vivid and contrasting colors. Without looking closely, most of the buildings look like they were painted in the last few years.

Waldmuenchen gets its water from Czechoslovakia. The water is very pure and doesn’t have to be treated. Some of the houses in the area use the water to generate electricity. They can sell the excess to the power company. One thing that they don’t use electricity for is air conditioning.

Windows and doors work in a unique way depending on how you turn the handle. One way they open like a door and the other they open from the top.

You have to use an electric adapter. Depending on what you plug in, you might just need a plug-converter. In other cases you have to have a device to change the power level. I got a device from Radio Shack that was built to handle all types of plugs and power levels in the world. This comes in handy if you need to recharge camera batteries.

Most every town, regardless of size had some sort of church in honor of the soldiers who died during the World Wars. In Untergrafenried the church was built in the 1980’s. In Waldmuenchen they had pictures of the dead soldiers.

The churches in Ast and Waldmuenchen replaced older buildings. They incorporated pieces of the old church into the walls of the "new" buildings.

The tombstones in the Ast cemetery were family plots. Sometimes they included two family names ( husband and wife ). It didn’t seem as though these markers were the original. The current ones seem to be replacements. Most of the markers were granite. Some were "older" carved stones. There were a handful of wooden markers.

We saw a couple of Zilker tombstones in Ast.

I camcord-ed 1/3^rd of the tombstones in Ast. I think I did the older section of the cemetery.

If you want to gamble there are several casinos just over the Czech border. (No they are not run by Indians.) Considering the possibility of being robbed, I probably wouldn’t go unless I was with a big group on a bus.

I am a TV junkie and it was tough to go without English shows. It seems that most hotels have cable. They all have CNN International, which is okay. In Regensburg their cable system also had a CNBC/NBC channel. The CNBC shows were Time and Again and Dateline. These shows were "old." NBC shows included Jay Leno and Connan O’Brien.

One German talkshow that I enjoyed watching was Harald Schmidt. This show is a direct clone of the Letterman show. The stage is arranged like Lettermans with a view of a town. There is a band with a Paul Schaefer-like band leader. Schmidt would make the same expressions as Letterman. It was spooky.

On Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. they showed a NFL football game. The announcers spoke German but sideline interviews were in English. They would edit the game and eliminate the "boring" parts like kick-offs. One team would score and the next thing you would see is the other team starting from their 40. Because of the editing and the 7-hour time difference they can only choose from the early game. Usually the game was with the Bills or other AFC East team. We did get to see the Packers beat the Lions at Lambeau field.

Parking lots work differently in Germany. You don’t pay somebody when you checkout. You get a ticket with a magnetic strip on it. You take this to a vending machine and load it up. When you leave the parking structure you put the ticket into a machine.

MTV was also less restricted. I saw some videos that would be better suited for the Playboy Channel. One of my "favorites" was the Bloodhound Gang and their Hooray for Boobies album. A bunch of guys in monkey (not gorilla) suits singing "You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, let’s do it like they do it on the Discovery channel. "

Considering that there was hard-core porn on regular cable channels, one shouldn’t be surprised. In the US there are lots of shows that show an Internet address. I only noticed these internet addresses for sex-phone numbers.

I will occasionally watch South Park at home (a strange, crude cartoon on the US Comedy Channel.) In almost every show Kenny is killed which prompts one of the characters to call somebody a bastard. In Germany they use the word Swinehund (pig dog).

They had a number of American TV shows translated into German. Tool Time, The Simpson’s, Married with Children, Deep Space Nine. One that surprised me was Hogan’s Heroes. Germans aren’t exactly smart or good guys in this show.

Allerseelen (All Souls Day Nov 2^nd) is a major holiday/holy day in Bavaria. There were pictures in all the local papers. There appears to be some sort of procession with the families gathered around family tombstones. All of the graves were covered with fresh flowers.

The beds in German hotels are really firm. Blankets are not the same as they are in the US. They are folded and placed in the middle of the bed. Some blankets are like big pillow cases into which you can place liners. I had two beds in the rooms I stayed in. I would line on the other bed’s blanket to soften the mattress.

German toilet paper is okay. But hotels have not heard of washcloths.

If you plan on being in a German hospital, bring pajamas, a housecoat and slippers. They want you to get up and walk around as soon as possible.

If you ask for water, you’ll likely get mineral water. This stuff is pretty bad to drink if you are not used to it. Germans consider mineral water to be more healthy than tap water. At the hospital we would dump out the bottle of mineral water and fill it with tap water.

We purchased a large cross at the Hans Sedlmayr store.

There is War memorial in Waldmuenchen next to the Franck house. The memorial is for wars 1870-1871, 1914-1918, and 1930-1945. Considering that the Bauers left for America in the early 1870’s, it would be interesting to find out if the war was one of the reasons

For a couple of weeks after we got back to the US, I was messed up by jet lag. I also would wake up in the middle of the night thinking I was still in Germany. It would take a couple of minutes to get re-oriented.

Answers:

Ludwig Haas’s name was James Lewis. He did not have a birth certificate. The name comes from his baptism certificate.

The Blau family tree covers Rose Ruhland-Blau’s family. The Ruhlands and the Zilkers were ancestors of the Grubers and Haases.

This newsletter should be called Haas & Schmidhuber.

This is the last newsletter that will be sent to cousins (except from the one’s I have heard from).

I am interested in getting together and talking about what I got and what you got. Please contact me if you are interested.