Moritzburg,
Germany
A
minor hiccup checking out of our apartment in
Wroclaw while the
cleaning lady called the boss to figure our how we should pay the
parking fee. With that taken care of, we started heading west. Nice
lunch in a small town along the way, and Aimée
scored more lace curtain
material at a fabric shop we found
in the town. And we took
in a mineral show at the town hall. And bought fruit.
Then
we set the GPS for the town of Osniecznica, Poland,
where family records said
that Steve's great-grandmother was buried. He had pictures of the
grave marker and other local information that his mother had left to
him. We found the town without difficulty, and just being there was
certainly a profound experience for Steve. After a few attempts to
locate the cemetery near
two different churches,
Sue Anne spotted a florist shop that appeared to specialize in
funeral arrangements, so a quick inquiry there brought about a good
set of directions. Although
it took a few sentences to find a common language....German. Good
thing that Sue Anne knows that Friedhof means cemetery.
It
was almost closing time, but the cemetery attendant did his best to
help us. Though
after quite a bit of searching we concluded that things just weren't
of the right generation. Although there were a very few markers and
architectural features from a while back, most everything was much
too contemporary. Was the older area destroyed in WW II? Or were we
in the wrong place? We just don't know. But simply being in this
ancestral home area was certainly special.
We
then worked our way
back to the main road and took off in the direction of the border at Görlitz,
Germany. We followed the commands of The Queen on our GPS and turned
right for the final approach to
Görlitz, only to find
ourselves heading back into the heart of Poland on a highway that
didn't exist when our map was created. This turned out not to be an
uncommon situation in areas where there had been a lot of recent
development. Time for an updated map.
It
must have been about 15 minutes before we got to an appropriate spot
for a u-turn. Then it was back to Germany, again with no customs
formalities.
Then
the rain hit, really hard. Traffic on the fabled Autobahn actually slowed to
under 60 mph! It stayed like this for quite a while before finally
abating. It was almost dark by the time we arrived in Mortizburg, a
small
town in the country between Dresden and Meissen. We were stunned at
the first sight that appeared when we entered the town—King
Augustus the Strong's
modest (a large chateau
like building) hunting
lodge on its own island in the middle of the lake. Too late to check
it out instantly, but a must-see before we left town.
Our
hotel was right nearby, located in the
woods in what certainly
was once part of the royal hunting grounds. The parking lot was
jammed, and it was clearly a very popular place. Very nicely
constructed, interconnected
buildings with private dining rooms and parties in progress. The
bedrooms were charming with dormer windows and chintz curtains.
The yellow and russet
colored autumn leaves out of the window were nearly as good as back
home in New England! We all enjoyed our meals near an old type
ceramic tiled stove. (Sue Anne drew the stove after the meal.)
Another adventure!
Steve at the cemetery in Osniecznica
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