Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Vrsac, Saturday, May 29

Our first stop today was Karlsdorf where we were able to enter the church and look around. We made a brief stop at the cemetery for a picture of Ray, but we did not do a search because it was raining, it was a very large cemetery, and we had already looked for Ray’s people on a previous trip.

We then drove on the Georgshausen, another stop for Ray. We visited the cemetery, but there is not much to see there. The German bodies buried in the old cemetery were exhumed and reburied in a mass grave marked only by a crucifix.

Next stop was Setschanfeld. The cemetery there is covered by thick brush and inaccessible. The church was torn down in 1952, but there is a park and monument in its place. We ate our boxed lunch there while Stasa conversed for the whole time with the locals, who were quite intrigued by the presence of these foreigners.

We arrived in Zichydorf ahead of schedule, so went directly to the cemetery, where job one was to find the headstone of Betty’s grandfather. She has a picture taken nearly ten years ago that shows some landmarks in the background and another picture we took in 2008 that she did not notice until we got home. From the landmarks in the first picture, we were able to determine approximately where it was taken, and from the second picture we know that it was there two years ago, but we could not find it after an intensive search by the whole gang.

We next went to the church in preparation for a mass that was planned for us at 2:30. We found about a dozen ladies already gathered there laying out goodies for after the service. By the time mass began, there were more than two or three dozen people in addition to our group. I am sure that church has not seen such a crowd for a very long time. After mass there was a large reception with goodies, wine and “Zichydorf schnapps.” Everyone was so excited that we had come. They thanked us over and over and over again and encouraged us to come back again any time. It was apparent that they had been planning this big event since they heard we were coming.

We could have stayed longer, but we had to tear ourselves away because we had promised the priest we would go to his nearby town. There he had arranged for us to view the original church books for Zichydorf and Georgshausen. All the really old books are in the archives. The ones in the parish begin in 1895 or later except for one book that begins in 1834. We were able to find two pages that were missing from the digitized church records that we have, so I will get those up on the web site as soon as I am able (a few weeks at least). From the viewing of the church books, we then went to the restaurant across the street for a meal that had been arranged for us.

From our meal, we returned to Zichydorf. Betty and a few others did one more unsuccessful search for her headstone while the rest of us toured around the town taking other pictures, some for ourselves, and others that people had asked us to take. We finally reached our hotel at 8 pm.

We checked into a different hotel in the city centre tonight. This was our first choice for both nights, but they were booked for last night when we tried to reserve. They are in the process of renovating. It was a bit better than when we stayed there in 2006. We ran into a little problem though. The phone line for the credit card system went down in the evening and they advised us that we would all have to pay cash in the morning or wait until the line was repaired. We had spent all day trying to get rid of our Serbian Dinars because we are leaving tomorrow. Now we had to track everybody down and everyone had to make a run to the automated teller to reload.

This morning, we awoke to overcast skies with some very dark clouds on the horizon. As we drove to Karlsdorf, it started to sprinkle and, by the time we arrived, there was steady moderate rain. The rain stopped after we left and the skies gradually cleared to mostly sunny by noon and the temperature again reached the 25 degrees C range. The high humidity makes it feel much warmer.

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