WEDNESDAY, May 30, 2001

Awake by 4:30 a.m., John is typing at the computer again. My morning alarm clock is the clicking of the keyboard by brother John!  He is so excited to put new information in his database that he gets up with the light of day and starts working until I kick him off the computer for my work.  This seems to be the best schedule for us, as I can stay awake later at night than him.  He’s an earlier morning person than me.

The weather is a little gray and cloudy and much cooler this morning.  After breakfast, we went to the shops down by the harbor at Burgstaaken to locate a marine store that sells flags.  We found it over by the Silo Climbing attraction (how bizarre!) and bought a few flags for our Fehmarn Shop on the website. 

Today was not going to be so hectic, as we had “quiet” things planned for today.  John dropped me off at the Market Square in town where the local vendors have booths and displays set up for the weekly open-air Market.  There were merchants selling fruits and vegetables, flowering plants, tablecloths, aprons, T-shirts, clothes, purses, shoes, fresh eggs and fresh chicken, sausages and other meats, natural vitamin creams, candies of all kinds, along with various gifts items.   I love this kind of local open-air market. 

Open air Market in Burg’s town square

John went on his way to the Kepelle cemetery on Sahrendorfer Str.  to take more photos of the headstones.  We had arranged it so John would pick me up in about 1-½ hours.  That gave me just enough time to wander thru the open market in the town square and shop.  I found those lovely, embroidered, small tablecloths that I like so much, and bought another one (to add to the ones I bought the other day!!).  I got myself a Fehmarn T-shirt to remind me of my trip, and some of those cute hanging, wooden cut outs of ducks & flowers with ribbons and bows on them to hang in my windows.  Everywhere you look, the windows of the homes have lace curtains with these hanging wood decorations.

Then I went shopping at the Stoltz’s department store and found some of those Kinder candy eggs (hollow chocolate eggs with small plastic toys inside) to bring home to my grand-children. After some more wandering and shopping, I heard John calling me on the Motorola Talk-about Radios (with a 2 mile range).  He was parking the car behind the Burg Church and we arranged a meeting place on the main street.

It was 11:15 am, so we went to the Bakery for lunch and had a quick, hot meal.  Then we were off to the Jen’s Market, a small main street grocery store, for some beverages and snack supplies.  We had to rush home as we had an appointment at 1 pm, and went back to our room to straighten up things.  

Jens Market on Burg's main street

Peter Seyer, and his wife, Maggie arrived by 1 p.m. and we invited them up to our room.  Peter had found John’s website by accident a couple months ago, and asked for help with his family genealogy.  John sent back a report of about 50 pages and Peter was very happy.  Since then, they have been e-mailing back and forth.  Whenever Peter finds dates or names that John did not have in the report he was sent, he will e-mail the information to John.  This type of information (corrections or additional information to add to his database) is very helpful to John and he welcomes the contribution.

Peter speaks very little English, so Maggie, his wife was our interpreter.  She said she does not get much practice with her English, but she was great.  This made it possible for John and Peter to converse about their mutual passion – genealogy.  John showed Peter his database and some of the copies of church records for his ancestors.  Peter asked specific questions about his research of the Seyer family and John answered his inquiries.  John explained to Peter how he does his research and the care he takes in being sure all the data is accurate.

John showing Peter & Maggie Seyer information form his database

Peter brought John some printouts of indexes of births, deaths and marriages for all the Seyer families on Fehmarn.  This is the just the kind of help John loves to receive.  He takes all these pieces of information he gets from other researchers, along with church records he researches in the archives, and information from the headstones that he collects and puts them in his database.  It keeps growing and growing.  Last week he had 71,000 names in the database.  He tells me this has been his most successful trip for collecting information and it will probably take him about a year to enter all the new information he has collected on this trip into the database.

I think what John is doing by gathering all these collections, old and new, into one database…..one that is easily read and available to the people who are interested in their Fehmarn families is just wonderful.  We have heard time and again, how hard it is to get to the actual records, much less actually read them and fully understand them.  John’s collection is invaluable to anyone who is researching their family history from Fehmarn.

About 3 o’clock, we were finished, so Peter and Maggie invited us to have Kaffee & Kuchen  (Coffee & Cake) with them at a local cafe.  We all walked to the main street, where we relaxed in a little restaurant called Mopsey’s.   We continued our conversation about genealogy, and other things, such as our families, the work we do, traveling, etc.  Peter and Maggie have never been to the United States and we’ve never seen Europe, except for our limited route to Fehmarn each year.  We found out that Peter was a colleague and fellow worker with Karl-Willhelm Klahn and that he had also worked with Peter Wiepert, 30-years ago when he was setting up the Peter Wiepert Museum. 

We wanted to go back to the cemetery to finish taking the pictures of the headstones.  Peter and Maggie knew of this cemetery as it was near Peter’s sister’s home.  We went back to get our car, and met them at the cemetery.  As we walked around, Peter showed us his Father’s gravesite.  We talked of cemeteries and the importance of the work that John does with his research.  We enjoyed their company, and assured them that we would be back next year, before parting company.

Peter at the grave of his father

Now…. We had work to do.  John showed me where to start and we began systematically taking photos up and down each row.   By the time we were finished, John had almost 900 pictures from the Kepelle cemetery on Sahrendorfer Str.  We noticed that some of the stones were missing on gravesites, with some sites having been recently cleared.  In any of the cemeteries on the island, there is a 25-year limit in the cemeteries.  In order to have the headstone remain longer, the family must pay the church.  In the back corner, John found the dumping area for the old headstones.  I caught him walking around the discarded stones, looking for any ones that were intact and face up… so he could get one last picture!

John trying to get one last picture!

We wanted to go to the Bannesdorf Church and Cemetery to take more pictures, but the sun was too bright and at the wrong angle for good shots of the headstones.  So we decided to eat dinner and let the sun set a little more for the evening.  We had a very fine dinner at the Kroger Restaurant, a very charming place on the main street of Burg. The waitress spoke no English, so we pointed to our selection on the menu.  It works!  We’re getting better with the menus as we actually knew what we were ordering this time.  The food was excellent and we enjoyed this relaxing meal.

It was about 7:30 pm when we finished dinner and we went to the Bannesdorf Church to add these headstones to John’s collection for the web site.   While we are at the cemeteries, people are tending to the flowers and greenery around their families gravesites….. and looking at us very curiously.  We are a strange site…… click (of the camera), move to the right….. click, move to the right……click, move to the right……. and down the whole row like this.  People must think we are very strange, especially, when they try to talk to us and find out we cannot speak any German.  (Don’t all the tourists take pictures of ALL the gravesites!!!!!)  

Before long, we make another trip to the Internet Café, after finishing up at the cemetery.  A few e-mails later and 5 DM for the fun, we were soon returning to our room.  John had several discs full of photos to download into the laptop computer.  I let him play on the computer, and it was about 11 or 12 pm when we had all the photos loaded in the computer.  We were exhausted!!

Time for rest. 

J

Click here to continue on to Thursday

The FEHMARN GENEALOGY Site
Created using Microsoft Frontpage and maintained by:
John Kostick, 131 NE 172nd Street, Miami, FL 33162