FINDING A SAWATZKI

Took a shower this morning and woo...the clean towels were so stiff they could have walked off on their own! They were clean (white), but I wasn't sure if they were 150 grit or 220. Dad said you could dry off and exfoliate at the same time! I called them loofah towels. I'm sure it did increase the circulation, though.

Bought some brotchen and leberwurst (liverwurst) and senf (mustard) to make a late lunch today...oh and some home made fresh sauerkraut from the metzgerei...the meat market where we got the liverwurst. They have small supermarkets, but they still have metzgerei and bakerie (bakery) as separate stores, too. The bakery we went to to get the brotchen had been in operation since 1567....amazing! And more amazing is that Dad remembered this date from our trip here 2 years ago!

Here's a photo of an old grinding stone of this bakery...look closely and you can see the year. It is a mill and a bakery...they grind their own flour to make the bread.



Here's the mill and bakery:


These are some sights as we drove along in the Black Forest today.





So we drove to Teningen because I had been told the last time I was here that there was an Anya Sawatzki that lived here. So...how to find her in a sizable town??.....go into a florist shop and ask. So I went in and asked (in German) if the lady there knew an Anya Sawatzki and she said no so I then asked if I could see a phone book. So I looked in the phone book and saw an Anya...but the last name was spelled differently....but I did find a George Sawatzki & I wrote down his name and address. There was a customer at the counter and she asked me if I had checked online. It turns out she speaks English and so she was very nice to check on her smart phone on facebook to see if there were any Sawatzkis around. She couldn't find any...but it was very nice of her to try.

So we plugged the address of George into the stupid gps and for awhile it worked , then it went out, then back. Anyway we did find close to his address...but there was one house that was not numbered and we think that was his. So where do you go and what do you do?? So we found a hotel in a neighborhood close to his house. I went into the hotel and told the lady the situation and asked if I could use their phone. She was very nice and called the number and got him online then handed me the phone.

I said "hello is this George Sawatzki?"and he said "ja"...and I said "this is Linda Sawatzki" and he paused and said "that's interesting". So I explained to him that we were trying to do some family research. He said his family was from Prussia from the Danzig area and that his grandfather was Johann and his great-grandfather, and his great-great grandfather were all Johann Sawatzki. Because of his age and the dates, I knew the connection was not with his grandfather or great-grandfather...and both of those Johanns were not the Johann Sawatzki from our family. He said he would look through the family records and I should call him back in an hour.

So we putzed around town and I called back in an hour from a different hotel. He said he had copied some papers and would give them to us. So we decided to meet at the first hotel....which was near his house in 15 minutes. So we did. We sat down at a table and started comparing notes. Our ears perked up when he said that his great-great-great grandfather was Jakob and he married a Maria. Well OUR Johann Sawatzki's parents were Jakob and Mary/Marianna/Maria. But the dates didn't match up...George's Jakob Sawatzki died in 1820 and OUR Johann was born in 1859. It may be a possibility that George's Jakob was the father of our family's Jakob. We should know a bit more if/when we hear back from the church in Poland. The interesting part is that all of George's relations were listed as Evangelical/Lutheran. It could be that somewhere in our family they switched to Catholic?? He also said that there were lots of Sawatzki's all over Germany. So that was about it. I hope we can piece some things together with the info that hopefully will be sent to me. The bottom line is this...anyone with the name Sawatzki had family that originated in Prussia...and it seems that they all scattered. So I would guess that all Sawatzki's somehow are connected...I just don't know how many generations back you need to go to find that connection.

So I guess this story is to be continued...but not anymore on this trip.

We got into Bad Krozingen late afternoon after all of that, wanting to go to the spa here, but we had to go down the road a bit to find a room.

So we decided to go to the spa early tomorrow and head up to the Rhein area after that tomorrow afternoon.

We had our late brotchen with leberwurst...and I took one bite and passed on that...yuck! I had some zwiebelkuchen instead and an apple. The concern is that we have the smelly remains of the liverwurst wrapped in some paper in our room. It is hot in here and our window is open...and have I said that there are no screens on the windows here? That's anywhere in Germany. So an occasional bug might fly in during the night. But tonight I'm afraid a raccoon or something worse may crawl in tonight because of the smell. I'll have to look up in my German dictionary how to tell a raccoon in German to GET OUT OF OUR ROOM!!

oh and we forgot all about the sauerkraut we left in the car all afternoon. At least it won't ferment much more!

We sat outside of the hotel where we are staying, trying to get the internet to do some more research...and we ended up talking to a man from Holland, who was very interesting.

A bit later we went into the restaurant here and I had a cup of soup and a small salad ( I am very sick of meat today) and Dad had some ice cream with chocolate on top for dinner. Neither of these lends themselves to having a beer.....so for the first time since we left home...we didn't have a beer today...but to tell the truth, we had 2 apiece last night...so we're good.

Here's a photo taken from our table in the restaurant. This was not for a special party...this is how all the tables look... only some tables are for 2 or 4 people.