My Grandma Lydia was just 4 years old when her parents brought her to the U.S., an immigrant from what was then the Russian empire. She was pretty lucky compared to today’s Dreamers. Laws about entry were a lot vaguer, no passports required. Germans from Russia were often sneered at as “Rooshians,” but she lived […Read more]
As children, we used to share what we did on our summer vacations. As an adult genealogist, I can’t wait to share what I learned on my summer vacation about finding ancestral towns in Germany! The Meyers Gazetteer has gone online (not new news), but at the recent IGGP conference, I learned that it has […Read more]
The best shoes ever. EVER. These little beauties draw compliments when I wear them to the office with a skirt, yet are undaunted by the ankle-twisting paths of an African village. They’re right at home at a dressy British theater, yet sturdy enough to tromp through German vineyards or pound eight miles of Dubai’s never-ending […Read more]
I feel completely inadequate in my relationships whenever I’m faced with one of those online security forms asking me to answer a “secret question” to set up an online account. Their predefined set of questions mock me at every turn. Where did you and your spouse meet? (I’m not married.) Where was your first date […Read more]
My reason for being in Ukraine became abundantly clear in a rundown bar on a Sunday morning in Odessa. I was serving as an international observer at Ukraine’s first parliamentary election after the Maidan Revolution had toppled the corrupt, Putin-puppet president eight months earlier. My observation partner, Kevin, and I had started the day early, […Read more]
From the very first email, I felt my ancestral town of Osthofen reaching out to welcome me. The email was, of course, not from the town itself but from my guide for the day, Ursula Feile from the tourist office. Her cheery note: “We’re so excited you’re visiting the town of your ancestors. We’ll show […Read more]
In travel, not all toilets are created equal. Some are much less equal than others. Of course, I am referring to the squat toilets found in many parts of the world outside of North America. Some can be gleaming porcelain fixtures, while others are nasty holes in the ground (and lots of variations in between). […Read more]
Guest blogger Laura Schott is a recent college graduate who took her first-ever trip to Europe to visit her ancestral lands of Germany and Norway. In the midwestern United States, one can expect to find people of two origins: German and Scandinavian. My fiancé and I, both from Fargo, North Dakota, and both recent University […Read more]
My 1999 visit to Gräfenhausen (origin of my Billigmeier family) epitomizes what not to do when visiting an ancestral town. I showed up there one afternoon, completely unplanned. I stood on the street, looked around, didn’t talk to anyone (didn’t actually see anyone to talk to), took a photo of a building that looked important, […Read more]
There was joy. There was singing and dancing and borscht. There was violence and death. Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution was a complex progression of populist protest, community gathering, and deadly serious revolution that cost people their lives. Counting Sheep, the interactive “guerrilla folk opera,” brilliantly portrays Ukrainians’ hopes for a better future as they stand up […Read more]