Munich, Sunday, May 23

Today was the main day of the Treffen, or meeting, in Ulm. It is held in four large aircraft hangar sized halls. One holds a Mass in the morning and a cultural program in the afternoon. The other three are for people to meet and greet. In the entrance foyer there are several displays of books, maps, and other souvenirs for sale.

In the meet and greet, each Romanian village has a few tables allocated to it, depending on the size of the village. People from the same village congregate at the same table and catch up with one another to exchange gossip. They also wander to other tables looking for people that they know from other villages. There were adjacent tables for Kanada and Amerika which we claimed as our own. Only one other North American, a man from Montreal, stopped by. A few Germans stopped by to ask if we knew Joe from Kokomo or some other friend or relative.

Several of the group immediately set up shop in this area. In the afternoon, Ray found a couple of English speaking people from Triebswetter and talked to them for an hour. This part of the Treffen is quite joyful as people who have not seen each other for some time renew acquaintances. It includes a brass band and dancing in the afternoon.

The rest of the group took in the Mass before rejoining the others. This event is not as joyful. The mood is solemn and melancholy as people remember their old homes and what they have left behind. While they are pleased and thankful to be in Germany, they still have an emotional attachment to their former homes that is apparent in the ceremony and in the fervour with which they sing the old songs.

The ceremony begins with a procession which includes flags and banners representing the villages and also small banners remembering deceased loved ones.

The Mass includes a singing, accordion playing priest, and concludes with another procession. A small brass band supplies the music.

The afternoon cultural program had a wide variety of acts, including modern dance, traditional dance, a skit from a Brazilian group about the difficulty of keeping their German language alive, and other skits about life in the old country.

We had to leave before the end of the program to make our planned visit to the Hofbrauhaus in Munich. It was pretty quiet when we arrived, but it was really buzzing when we left. There was some kind of soccer excitement for the Munich team and the streets were full of people. We had planned to meet Helmut Birg there, but missed each other until we were just leaving. We made a quick contact and confirmed our meeting tomorrow at the Haus der Donauschwaben in Bayern.

Today was a beautiful day weatherwise. It was mostly sunny and nice and warm without being hot. Too bad we spent most of it inside. Except for Johannes, our driver, who got a bit of a sun burn reading outside while he was waiting for us.

Tonight’s hotel is very nice. The rooms are a little larger than most we have seen and are quite modern.