When I woke up on Saturday, my cold was worse, and I stayed in bed for the morning. Eleanor, on her own, drove over to Scheibs. The rest of the day is a bit foggy to me, but I seem to remember that Eleanor came home about lunch time. One of the things that we did in the afternoon was to visit the Rathaus (city hall), to see if they had copies of the map showing the farms in the area. They didn’t, but the clerk promised to try using his digital camera and take a series of photos of the large map posted on a wall across the street. We were dubious but he wanted to try it. The map came in the mail today. He took four shots of a map and printed them and pieced them together to make one. It is far better than anything else we have at this time.
We also visited the local museum. It was almost like visiting a small town museum here. Nothing spectacular but if you are in Gresten, don’t miss it. The building that it was in was used as a Catholic chapel when the main church in town was Lutheran from about 1570 to 1630.
We had been investigating taking the train to Vienna. Florian Berger said what they did was to drive to point near Vienna and then take the train the rest of the way. We decided to drive all the way, with Eleanor at the wheel and John reading the maps. Our objective was to see a particular street, Plankenbüchler Gasse, named for a sub-mayor of Vienna. A "Gasse" is a short, or smaller, street. In this case it was four blocks long and was located on the far side of Vienna across the Danube River. Nearly all of the buildings along it have been built or rebuilt since World War II. It is primarily apartment buildings, at least four stories high, which seem to be inhabited by professionals. (There is a road named "Blankenbaker" here in the US. It is in Kentucky, outside Louisville close to Jeffersontown.)
After we had walked the entire length of the street, photographing every Plankenbüchler street sign, we went to the big art museum and spent some time there before driving back to Gresten. This particular Sunday was seven weeks after Easter and therefore a semi-holiday. The following day, a Monday, was Whit Monday, if I remember my terminology correctly. This is also a semi-holiday.
In the morning we left Gresten with the objective of getting close to Regensburg, where we had an appointment in the archives the next morning. It was not very far out of our way to go by Kollerschlag in Austria, which is only a few miles from Germany. This village was of interest because the owner of the cafeteria in the building where Eleanor works hails from there and has several relatives there, including his mother and father. When we reached there, we took pictures to show we had visited the town. Then we decided to eat. Eleanor asked the waiter if he knew the Mayer family and he said yes. Georg Mayer was a good friend of his so he said he would call him and have him come to the restaurant. He did and a lively conversation ensued in English as Georg speaks English. Then Georg insisted we go home with him and meet his parents and another brother. We did and we spent perhaps an hour with the family. They were all very excited that a friend of their son in America would stop. We had to take some cookies that his mother had baked to him.
(11 Jun 02)
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.