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Up early and through our usual morning routine, we were on our way to the Burg Main Street to do a little shopping. First stop was the Niederlechner Book Store, where John purchased some books and more maps for resale on this website's Gift Shop. We noticed that they were setting up a “Landmarkt” in the Burger Square this morning. The posters we saw said the market was going to be there from Friday thru Sunday. (A Landmarkt is a farmer's market in the small mayor’s square.) There were produce stands, booths with crafts, some sheep, a large farm machine, and at least 6 booths with various foods and drinks. We decided to come back later for lunch, when they were all finished putting out the tables and cooking the food. This looked very interesting.
After buying some fresh pastries and bread, we returned to the room to put them away for later. Back in the car, we headed towards Flügge to climb the Lighthouse. Traffic was much heavier this morning all over the island. You can tell that the tourist season has started and the weekend is started. The weather was a little overcast this morning, but that did not deter the visitors to the Island. With ease, we found the parking lot for the Flügge Lighthouse, which is a small lot next to a farmer's barn. He has a can nailed to a post indicating that parking costs 1 Euro and requesting you put it in the can. The parking lot was almost full, so knew we had found the right place. We started walking on the little road towards the red and white lighthouse. It will definitely be a 15-minute walk as Margit Seyer had told us. The sun was shining, but it was an extremely windy day. Seeing the lighthouse was a must, but our idea of flying in a small plane over the Island was OUT!!! There was too much wind to even consider that idea seriously today. It would have been a real photo opportunity, but not at that risk!!
By the time we got to the Lighthouse, gray clouds had blown into the area and it was starting to look like rain. We bought our tickets at 2 Euros each to enter the Lighthouse.
Climbing the circular stairs, we stopped often to take pictures. According to an information sign, the lighthouse is 16 meters tall, which is 52 feet tall. There was a great view from the top. John climbed out on the small ledge with the rails around the top. I had climbed high enough and I was satisfied to see the view out the windows. The wind was brutal and John said it was very hard to walk around the top and hold onto the railing. That’s why I decided not to try it.... I'll look at his photos!!!
John told me there was another set of stairs on the outside going up to another level, but he wasn't even crazy enough to try that! It was time to go down the stairs and run for the car, before the rain started. After we walked all the way back down, the rain was starting to roll in. We took off walking but soon got caught in the rain, and took off running to the trees for protection from the wind and cold rain. The walk to the Lighthouse is over a mile long, so as we ran between trees trying to stay dry but did not succeed. By the time we got back to the car, we were very damp and cold, so we jumped in the car and turned on the car’s heater for a minute.
I made John take me straight back to the room, as I was so damp. We cleaned up, dried off and got dressed again. It was time to go back to the “Landmarkt” for our lunch. By 1 p.m., the people were everywhere. We had walked from our room to the town square because we saw the traffic jam beginning when we were driving back to the room. Now the Landmarkt was full of people eating and enjoying the live music. Children were getting their faces painted, petting the sheep, and people were shopping and eating sausages and drinking the beer. It was all very enjoyable for us. We bought two kinds of sausage and some kraut-salat. Then John bought some fried calamari rings. Our stomachs were full and I was ready to do some wandering. Shopping around the booths with the local area items, we bought some fresh strawberry jam and a bottle of Störtenbecker's Kartoffelschnaps (potato schnaps) in a unique bottle. Störtenbecker is one of the old family names on the Island that John is familiar with from his research. Looking at the sky, it looked like we were going to get rained on again. When will we learn to bring the umbrella? On the walk back to our room, we stopped at the telephones in front of the Post Office to call our Mother. I had forgotten to get the access code from AT&T to call home from Germany before we left. I looked it up on the Internet the other night, so this time we had success in using the phone. As we had suspected, all was well at home, but it was nice to hear a familiar voice from home. As soon as I finished the phone call, the rain started, and we had about 3 more blocks to walk before we got back to our room. I jumped into a doorway to get our of the rain, but John ran on ..... and got the car, and drove down the street to rescue me from the downpour. We had about 2 hours before our appointment with Annemarie Riesßen for tea this afternoon. So we ran into our room, dropped our packages and drove off in search of another lighthouse. This time we went to find the Marienleuchte near Puttgarden. We drove thru the rain till it finally stopped. By this time, we were at the lighthouse. We had no luck this time as the gates around it were locked up and there is not any access. We took a few quick pictures and were on our way.
Shortly after 3:30 we were back in our room..... this time to rest!! I started working on this journal and John started to take a short nap, when the doorbell rang. I ran downstairs and found Annemarie on our doorstep asking if we had forgotten her. I had misunderstood her and thought the meeting was at 4:30 p.m., but it was actually at 3:30 p.m.!! We were late. I apologized to her and told her we would be right over. John jumped up and he grabbed his computer, as we hurried across the street to house #19. This is the home of Annemarie and Peter Rießen. We saw her the other day, when she invited us to tea and cake to further discuss her family history with John. Annemarie invited us into her lovely home. In the entryway of her home, she showed us an old chest belonging to an ancestor on her husband's side. This traveling chest was passed on to Peter thru his Mother, as it had been in her possession for many years. She is very proud of this wonderful old chest from 1790 and we could see why. It was in beautiful condition and had very attractive metal work on it showing the initials of the owner and original date.
Back in 1999, we had seen another old trunk from the 1600's in Fritz Mackaprangs house, so we know the importance of these old traveling chests. I think this Rießen family trunk was more interesting because of the decorative ironwork on it. It certainly was beautiful.
We sat down in her living room and had cake and tea with Anne and her husband, Peter. They have a beautiful home and John thanked her for inviting us to. She told us of a local custom of giving spoons as a gift for the birth or confirmation of children. She had several of these spoons that had been handed down within the family and showed them to us proudly. John's favorite one was an engraved one from Marcus Lafranz in the year 1797. The custom was to engrave the gift givers name and year on the spoon and give it to the child as a gift. Having finished our cake and tea, John turned on his computer to pull up he Fehmarn database to show to Annemarie. She had done research for her husband's line on her own at the Neustadt Archives and brought out these handwritten papers to show John. She had a family page on each male in the direct line of Peter's Mother and Father dated back to the late 1500's. Both sides of his family were Rießens, but not related at any point until they married. Annemarie and John compared notes and John added her information where needed and at times...... Annemarie added children's names on the older families pages. John had never seen anyone get his or her family research back this far on their own and he was amazed at the work she had done by reading the old church books. It is very difficult to read the church records before the 1700's as it is written in a very old script that is not used today. As John checked the work she had done, he found it all to be correct. Annemarie had told us she sometimes doubted that it was all correct, but John assured her that she had done a wonderful job.
Annemarie told us an old family story of the original 3 Rießen brothers who came to the Island, probably as long ago as the 1500's and they were given a family crest of an oak tree with 3 roots to represent the 3 brothers. Her husbands, Mother and Father probably descend from 2 of these original brothers. Through hundreds of years of research that Annemarie had done...... nowhere did her two Rießen lines connect. There is no proof of these 3 brothers, but John thinks this story is probably true, as he has heard it when reading the research done by Peter Wiepert. John explained to her that his database includes all the people born on Fehmarn, some as far back as the 1400's. Also, listed in the database are the descendents of Fehmarners who have left the Island for other countries. John told her they have not only immigrated to America, but to Australia, South America, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries. Currently, John has 116,900 individuals in this database. Annemarie was so grateful for all the information that John had given her that she wanted to pay him or do something for him. John takes no pay for his work. She told us that she paints pictures of the local Fehmarn scenery and wanted to give us each a painting. She proceeded to show us the paintings throughout her home that she had painted. They were beautiful and were of all the scenes on the Island that were so familiar to us. She gave John a painting of the Landkirchen Church and I received a painting of the Flügge Lighthouse that we had just been to in the morning. We were so touched by her generosity. We had talked for over 2 hours to Annemarie, and now it was time to leave. Saying our good-byes, we thanked her for the paintings and she thanked John for the help with her research. Back in our room, we realized it was getting late for dinner. We drove along the Burg main street, but most everything was closed by then as it was after 7 p.m. We went to the Sky grocery store and bought a few items to cook our own dinner in our room. Within 20 minutes, we sat down to a meal of fried sausage, kraut salad, potato salad and sliced fresh tomatoes. Cold sodas with ice cubes were the chosen beverages of the evening. Ice cubes are never served in Germany, so we made them in our little refrigerator as an added treat for our drinks. We relaxed and enjoyed our fine meal. After a quick trip to the Internet Cafe for our last chance at e-mailing home, we turned in for the night.
Tomorrow........ Driving to Hamburg
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