Speyer, Thursday, June 3

We started an hour later than usual today at 9 and toured the pedestrian area of Salzburg for an hour in drizzle and light rain. It was the feast of Corpus Christie and most businesses were closed, but the tourist vendors were opening while we were there. There was a high Mass in the cathedral. The water in the river was even higher than last night.

We drove to Munich in steady rain. There we met Helmut and Heidi Birg for lunch in their favourite Chinese restaurant. This seemed a little incongruous in Germany, but the buffet was excellent and we all ate too much again. Helmut was most generous in donating some books for our library. He had tried to get a copy of the European edition of the English translation of Genocide of the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia in 1944-1948, but wwas unable to do so, so he gave us his personal copy. This edition has additional chapters to the German edition and the American English edition and also has some fine tuning of the original translation by the original translator. Another volume he gave us was a collection of essays by the Munich Donauschwaben working group in German, English, and Serbian. There was also a small booklet about the Donauschwaben. Finally, he presented each member of the group with a book about the political history of the Banat from Turkish times to the expulsion donated by the author, Hans Sonnleitner. If you are a researcher, you may recognize him as the author of several books about Banat genealogy and history. When Helmut told him of our visit, he was so enthusiastic that he donated the books. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures, but others did and I will try to post one later.

As we left Munich around 2 pm it was till raining, but it began to let up about one hour later. By 5 the sun was breaking through occasionally. We reached our hotel/pension about 6:30 and endured the most confusing check in I have ever seen. We went for supper about 7:30 and tried to eat light because of the large lunch. But the sneaky buugers tricked us by putting an ice cream store next door! By the time we left about 9:30 the sky was clear.

The pension is quaint and quirky in two buildings. Some of the rooms are tiny and others are fairly spacious. Some have toilet and/or shower in the room and others do not. Some on the top floor have sloped ceilings.