A Well Kept Man

While Alli was off in the U.S., I decided to make the most of being so close to Germany (the land of my people...my people being White Anglo Saxon Protestants). After spending some time reading through my Great Uncle Chuck's research on our family history, as well as spending some time on Ancestry.com I found out that my Great, Great, Great Grandma and Grandpa came from an area in Germany which is now known as Oehrenstock (in the Thuringen region of Germany).

Using my trusty GPS, I was able to navigate to this small town (maybe 200-300 people still live here) where I soon realized nobody spoke a lick of English. Using my logical skills of deduction, I figured I could confirm my lineage by finding the town cemetery and finding old tombstones with my family name on it. Unfortunately my GGG Grandma and Grandpa's tombstones where not to be found having died sometime in the late 1800s, but I was surprised to find many, many, many others with the same last name as me.

This proved exciting for many reasons, but mostly because I always assumed we were one of those families who changed the spelling of their last names upon arrival in America to make themselves fit in better...but each tombstone contained the current spelling of my last name (Seeber, which translates roughly to Sea Bear). Even though I didn't really talk to anyone, I am pretty sure these people were all somehow related to me, even if only because we have the same GGG Grandma and Grandpa (although it appears it would be their G or GG Grandma or Grandpa judging by their ages). Anyway, I though it was pretty cool....

Starting Tuesday, I will be traveling in Belgium via Luxembourg (purely for bragging rights at cocktail parties...I've always wanted to go to one of the tiny European nations just so I could appear more attractive to members of the opposite sex.  Alli will let you know if it works).  I will be staying in Bruges (Brugge if you're Flemish) for three nights, and then driving to Frankfurt, Germany where I will spend one night (I will probably have to do a beer taste comparison here as well, um, for research purposes).