Yesterday, ninety-two rolls of film came back as prints. Today, I am tired and exhausted. So the note today is going to be more light hearted than serious.
Our flight to Germany was on a plane leaving Philadelphia at around six p.m., and arriving in Frankfurt at around seven a.m. We prepared for the shift in time zones by trying to get on to German time before we left. For several days in advance, each night we would go to bed an hour earlier and we would get up an hour earlier. On the day of the flight, we got up at one a.m. The technique worked well; on landing, we got our rental car and put in a full day of travel without feeling any unusual effects.
We were unsure of how the driving would go but it was it was not much of a problem. Visiting some out-of-the-way places, as we did, one needs a detailed road map. If time permitted, we would take the back roads that meander through the villages. Just as here, these roads offer a better insight into life than the Interstates and Autobahns do. Because Eleanor is not very good at reading maps and she gets carsick if she reads, I was appointed the navigator and she was appointed the pilot. Also, she was concerned that I would spend too much time rubber necking. At other times, we wanted to move more quickly, so we used the Autobahns.
Leaving the Frankfurt airport, our first road was an Autobahn, but we were soon on the back roads leading to Kettenbach. Eleanor's Martin Zerby left from this village in 1709. The church, Lutheran, was locked but we took pictures of it and the village and noted that the next Saturday night there would be a violin concert of Bach. Also, we noted the time appointed for Sunday services. Neither of us had much experience in German villages, so Kettenbach was our introduction.
We wondered about all of the tractors, many of them large, with four-wheel power, that went up and down the streets. What we found was that barns were tucked away behind the houses. Even though the houses seemed to joined cheek-to-jowl, lanes led between the houses to the rear where the barns were. The fields that the farmers worked lay around about the village. This was the typical pattern. There were no isolated houses as we would think of a farm. All of the houses were in villages and the space in between the villages was free of structures.
A problem with photography is that the sun may not be in the right position for the best lighting. More than once we returned to a village at another time of day to get a better light. A second problem with church photography is that other buildings are right next to the church. A third problem is that the (Protestant) churches are usually locked so that interior shots are not possible. But be assured that there are enough photogenic subjects in German to prevent your camera from getting rusty.
(03 Jun 00)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.