|
Village
Photos 2004 Carpinis Back
to the
|
Re-visiting the Banat An account of our trip from 16th to 24th May, 2004 By
Diana Lambing
Sunday
16th May - all six of us meet up at Vienna airport, most of us making it
by the skin of our teeth! We have come from as far as California,
Georgia, New Jersey and the UK. An hour-long flight to Timisoara during
which we get to know each other a little...this is going to be a great
little group! We are met at Timisoara airport by Pavel, the owner of the
Pensiunea Zefir, the small 6-roomed hotel on the outskirts of town
(Mehala)... he is holding up a sign saying 'Zefir', so we will recognize
him. He and his daughter, Laura, have their two cars outside to take us
all to the hotel - a bit of a squeeze, to say the least, trying to get
six people and all their baggage into two small cars, but we somehow
manage it!
The hotel is a sweet little place, very new and very friendly, being so
small. We get to know their quirky little ways over the days, having to
ask for extra towels or to borrow the hair-dryer etc. (and they don't
seem to have face cloths in Romania!), but it's a great little place and
ideal for our group. Once unpacked, we all decide we've just got to make
the most of the rest of the day (it's about 5 p.m.) and make a quick
trip to our places of interest, i.e. our own villages. One of the
receptionists, Dora, speaks good English, so she comes with Tom, Marge
and myself who are being driven by Pavel (no English, no German!) to
Sandra (Alexanderhausen) to announce our arrival to my third cousin and
his father. Then it's on to Uihei (Neusiedel) for a quick look around
the tiny village and the cemetery. I haven't been here for 35 years, but
it all comes back to me. It's wonderful to see the place again. Then
it's back to the hotel, and the whole group decides to go out for a meal
at the Pink Panther, a local Hungarian restaurant where we all have the
same dish (Chicken Paprikasch) - delicious, home-made food.
Monday
17th May - we all have to go into town in the morning to change our
money into local currency, and immediately become millionaires (one
million Lei is equal to about $30). A quick look around the shopping
mall next to the bank - this is so different to when I was last in Timisoara during the Communist era, where everything was so drab and colorless,
and the streets were full of marching troops of soldiers and huge
posters of Ceausescu everywhere - quite scary, really. I have to buy a
pair of jeans and a sweatshirt as the weather is quite cool today and I
haven't bought anything really warm with me. Oh well, it's all good for
the economy! Once we've done our bits of shopping, we look for a taxi
driver to get us back to the Zefir, preferably one who speaks English or
German. Tom, Marge and I eye up a couple of taxis on the stand and I
approach a young-looking driver and ask if he speaks English. It seems
he does a little, and when I hand him the hotel's business card, he recognizes
the address and takes us there. During the short journey, we strike up a
conversation with him and get a good feeling about him. He seems keen
and trustworthy, so once we get back to the Zefir, we ask if he'd be
prepared to take us to Carpinis (Gertianosch) that afternoon. We
negotiate a price, which is very favorable as it will be divided between
the three of us, and head off almost immediately to Carpinis, laden with
cameras, video recorders, audio cassette recorder and a really good map
which I'd downloaded from the internet, enlarged and laminated. We make
very good use of that map during the week! We take the road towards Jimbolia (Hatzfeld) and pass through Sacalaz (Sackelhausen) and Beregsau
(Bergsau) before we get to Carpinis, where we ask the locals where a
particular house number is. We are directed to Frau Wambach's house at
number 21 and she turns out to be a wonderful lady who was a teacher
(and still teaches part-time). She lives in a typical Donauschwaben
house, absolutely immaculate, with her elderly mother and is actually a
native of Iecea Mare (Gross Jetscha), her maiden name being Jost. She
has documented every single grave in Gertianosch cemetery and gives us a
copy of two Gertianosch Heimat magazines, one of which contains the
cemetery plan. A delightful lady, she helps us as much as she can, and
then off we go to search for names in the cemetery. It is a large
cemetery, beautifully kept. Michael, our new-found friend, the taxi
driver, is keen to help us from the start. We meet with an elderly
German lady in the cemetery whose husband had died only six weeks ago
and who is keen for us to go to her house. Everyone we meet here is so
friendly, it is hard to refuse such a request, but we have to keep our
eye on the ball, as it were, and not get too distracted from the aim of
our trip. Once we get back to the Zefir, we find that Sorin (the
genealogist and historian) is there, chatting to Louise - he knew we
were coming and it is a good opportunity to meet up with him at last. We
eat at the hotel in the evening, as agreed earlier.
Tuesday
18th May - today, Louise is coming with our group, as there are names
she wants to look for in the village cemeteries we are visiting today.
Michael, our taxi driver, is early - what a blessing! - so we make a
prompt start and our first visit is back to Gertianosch to look for some
graves we had missed the previous day. Louise is dragged off by the the
recently widowed lady, who sees we are back in town! Our next stop is
Iecea Mica (Klein Jetscha), where there are builders working on the wall
of the graveyard, and we meet the local Romanian Orthodox priest there.
It's very overgrown in parts, but we have some success, and the wild
flowers amongst the long grasses are so pretty, I spend more time
photographing them instead of the graves! Then it's on to Iecea Mare
(Gross Jetscha), where I've been told to look up Margaretha Marinescu, a
German lady who looks after the church and who knows the two cemeteries
well. Again, she is a lovely lady who is more than willing to show us
around the church and to light the candles for us. She works very, very
hard keeping everything perfect for the local Catholic priest when he
comes to conduct a service, and amongst other stories, she tells us how
money the Germans received after their enforced stay in Russian labour
camps was used to buy and make the long cushions on the church pews to
make them a little warmer and more comfortable in the winter months.
Once we leave the church, she is immediately seen taking another small
group around the church, and the church bells begin to ring - what a
lovely sound! We go off in our different directions, looking for our old
ancestors' houses, and I have great luck in finding mine in Triergasse.
The house has obviously been renovated and kept up well over the past
200 years, and now has a wonderful landscape mural along the whole side
of the main building. The current occupant is happy for me to
photograph it, and I spend quite some time in the little street which
is a sort of raised, cobbled lane - I love it! Once our little group
has re-assembled, we walk up to the second cemetery in Gross Jetscha
and have a look around for our ancestors' names there - again, with some
success. Then we decide to go on to Uihei (Neusiedel) and take the small
road in that direction, but when Michael checks with a local man
which track to take, we are sent on a 'short cut' across the fields...
well, five of us in Michael's taxi, bumping over a ploughed track at 5
miles an hour, it obviously isn't going to be much of a short cut! I ask him if it would be better if we
get out and walk part of the way where the track is particularly rough.
I don't think I'll ever be forgiven for that by the other three!! We
climb out of the taxi and
off Michael drives, a whole load lighter. Unfortunately, he seems to
think we want to walk ALL the way across the fields to Uihei (which I
am quite happy to do myself)... anyway, we survive! Once we reach Uihei, I
go for a quick visit to my grandparents' old house, right on the very
edge of the village, with wonderful views across the open countryside.
The old lady who lives there is one of only two German people left in
the village, and she is away recuperating from an
illness, but her son is there and he welcomes me with open arms. The
family looked after my grandmother in her later years on the
understanding that they would inherit the house on her death. The place
is looking very dilapidated on the one side, but I manage to take
photographs of every nook and cranny before it falls down completely! 'Buyu',
the son living there, is hoping to build a new house on the site, but
other people in the village say it is just wishful thinking. I begin
having fanciful ideas of buying the place from him and his mother and
keeping it as a 'holiday home' for myself and like-minded people... Buyu
lets me take an old frying pan which I find in the cellar and which
belonged to Grandma, and he also lets me take a bed cover from her old
bed. The bedroom suite is absolutely gorgeous and obviously worth a lot
- all inlaid wood, a beautiful golden colour. Buyu says he would never
sell it, though. Back to reality, and I meet up with the others in the
village by the church and the local bar where one of the elderly locals
(many of the older Romanians in the village speak German) tells me he'll
take us to Pitzer Mari, the only other German lady who lives in the
village. We call by her house, but she's not there, so we make our way
back to the Zefir, calling in at my cousin Robi's in Sandra
(Alexanderhausen) on the way. His father is 90 years old, but he looks
and sounds much younger and has a wonderful, booming voice (probably
because he's rather deaf!). Tonight, we eat at a popular pizza place in
Timisoara with Michael.
Wednesday
19th May - Louise joins us again for the day, as Jody and Sammy are very
involved with their family in Mercydorf. We first head for Becicherecu
Mic (Klein Betschkerek), which is on a different route to the previous
two days - it's on the road to Sinnicolau Mare (Gross Sankt Nikolaus).
Again, the cemetery is full of pretty wild flowers and the cuckoo is
singing and the crickets are chirping away - we seem to have hit the
best time of year for our visit, as the weather is glorious and all the
animals and birds have their young ones around them. Then it's on to
Biled (Billed), passing by the Calvarienberg (Mount Calvary) just before
we hit the town. This is worth a stop and we take pictures of the
stations of the cross and the view from the top of the mount. Once in
Biled, we suss out the local shop and bar opposite the town hall and
then go to look for Father Bonaventura Dumea, the local Catholic priest.
He is not at home, but the church is open, so we spend time looking
around and taking pictures inside the church. When we go back to the
shop for provisions, he finds us there (he had had to take a local
person to the dentist, which is why he was not at home). A very kind and
softly-spoken man, he takes us back to his house, giving us a history
lesson on the way (which we video and record also on audio tape), and he
then proceeds to get all the relevant church registers for Uihei for us
to peruse and photograph. Not only that, but he also offers to photocopy
his own personal notes which he made in 1988 when he came to the area,
of all the Catholic residents of Uihei and details of their family and
professions. What a goldmine! It's the little unexpected touches like
this that make the trip so special. There are civilian records which we
can look at, too, which are held at the town hall and which we are keen
to see. However, we need to make our way to Periam (Perjamosch) as Tom
is looking for graves in the cemetery there. It turns out to be quite
large, and by now we are all beginning to see gravestones in our dreams,
so we don't stay for very long. Our next port of call is Bulgarus
(Bogarosch), so it's back down the small road, and across the main
Timisoara to Sinnicolau Mare road, down along a tree-lined lane where
people are actually cutting down the trees (we wonder why?). In the
centre of the village we stop at the corner shop and tell locals we are
looking for certain houses. Armed with our street plans of the village,
we go off to look for our ancestors' houses and again I have tremendous
luck in finding the one I'm looking for. The old man who owns it now
(Franz Foos, aged 71) bought the house from Kaspar Noel in 1963 and
prior to that it had belonged to the Engelmann family. He is very happy
to chat, and poses for pictures with some local children, and I manage
to get quite a bit of the conversation on tape. Back at the village
centre, we all meet up and go up to the cemetery. Being nosey, I always
like to look behind the obvious places one tends to see, so I creep down
into the mausoleum of the chapel in the cemetery and find some
fascinating tombstones and old paintings of stars on the ceiling. I
(well, Tom actually) manages to procure some bits of broken stained
glass that are lying around, as a souvenir of Bogarosch, and then we
make our way back to the Zefir, making another stop at Billed en route,
where the local shopkeepers got to know us quite well eventually! We have
to stop at a level crossing to let a train pass by - they all seem to be
double-deck trains - and we manage to get the sound of the horn on
tape, too.
Thursday
20th May - today we have an early start to make sure we are at the
mayor's office by 8.30 or 9.00 a.m.
Michael is, as always, 15 minutes early - hurrah! However, when
we get to the town hall in Biled, we are not sure which is the mayor's
office and wander around the building, feeling lost. Instead, we decide
to visit the German Forum just down the road, and Adam Csonti, who is the manager there, shows us around the place and explains what
goes on there. Apart from rooms for socialising, they have also started
to build up a museum on the upper floor, which is well worth a look
around. We don't stay very long as we are concerned that we might miss
the mayor back at the town hall altogether, so we go to visit Father
Bonaventura again to ask him where we can find the mayor. He thinks
that we have been expected an hour ago and rings through to the mayor's
office - sure enough, he has been waiting for us, but we hadn't known
which door to knock on! Back to the town hall, and we are rushed passed
a queue of people waiting
to see either the mayor or one of his officers, and are introduced to
him by the name of 'Sorin' - yes, another Sorin! His archivist had given
up on us and had gone into Timisoara on business, to do with the
forthcoming elections, but Sorin has another person who could be put at
our disposal in the archives. We are asked to write a list of people,
dates and events for the documents we wish to see and photograph, and
they would then search out the relevant books and have them ready for us
either later that day or early next morning. Travelling on to Uihei
again, we hear the church bells ringing and we split up for a short
time, me to go back to my grandparents' old house, and Tom and Marge to
look for their Beitz ancestors' houses. The wonderful cacophany of the
geese and goslings, the ducks, the turkeys, the cows, sheep and goats,
the cuckoo and crickets, and all the other domestic and wildlife, evokes
such strong memories in me, I'm immediately transported back thirty-five
years. Later, the three of us meet up at the cemetery to begin our
'project' and I see that Tom has found 'Pitzer Mari', as she becomes
known to us. This is the German lady who looks after the graves in the
cemetery for several families who now live mainly in Germany. Word has
got around fast about the two Americans and the English woman, and she
immediately comes up to me and realises who I am and is quite overcome.
Questions are fired at me, and when asked how many children I have and I
reply 'none', she tut-tuts and shakes her head!! There is a lot to catch
up on, and I explain that we are documenting all the graves in Uihei
cemetery. We have brought chalk along with us to rub onto the
harder-to-read headstones, to make them more legible, and I explain that
is why there are now some multi-coloured headstones in Uihei graveyard
(the rain will soon wash off the chalk). At lunchtime we break off as we
have arranged to see a lady, Ileana Rohnean at house number 106, who has
the key to Uihei church. She fetches her bundle of keys and, followed by
an ever-growing number of children, we have a look around the church,
the focal point of all villages. Once again, my eyes are drawn to the
nooks and crannies of the church and to the steps leading up to the
gallery and then up another flight to the belfry. Tom follows me and we
find a treasure trove of old, disused and broken bits and pieces amongst
the rubbish and the pigeon droppings. I desperately want to take
something home with me from this church, as I can just picture Dad as an
altar boy in the early 1930s down by the main altar. Tom finds what
looks like a huge, rusty old key which has been broken off, and I slip
it into my bag... there's an old confessional door lying on the floor,
too, so I say a quick penance for having taken the object! Back outside,
the number of children has grown even more and we dig into our bags for
the packets of sweets and chocolates we have brought with us for the
children. We have been invited to lunch at my grandparents' old house,
where Buyu brings out dishes of cold smoked ham and sheep's cheese,
spring onions, fresh bread, and water from the well - quite delicious!
Then it's back to the cemetery again to start the recording of the
graves and we stay there until almost 6 p.m. As we draw near the
church again on our way back to the Zefir, the church bells are ringing
again and I lean out the taxi to record them. Tom, as quick as ever,
says 'well, don't just sit there - go and ring the bells!' I don't need
telling twice, and race up the steps to the gallery where a young local
lad is pulling on the two bell ropes, Tom following with his camera, and
the lad hands me one of the ropes to pull. So now I can truly say
that I've rung the Uihei church bells (well, one of them at least... and
it was the lower one). We then figure out that this is a Romanian
Orthodox service (the church is used by both religious denominations
these days), so we stay for part of the service and record the
lovely chanting voices, even though there are only half a dozen or so
people in the congregation. Back at the Zefir, we chill out and Tom
loads all our day's pictures onto his hard drive before making a hard
copy for each of us. We are all too full from lunch still to want to eat
anything more today.
Friday
21st May - Michael is already waiting for us at 7.15 a.m.... today, we
really ARE going to get to the mayor's office at 8! The fields and
roadside verges on the way to Biled are full of bright red poppies and
we stop to take some wonderful pictures of
them. Another train passes over the level crossing - it's
obviously rush hour, or at least as near as you can get to 'rush hour'
in the Banat! Sorin's archivist has been very diligent and has all the
relevant books ready for us to peruse and photograph. As none of us had
realised that anything like this number of documents would be available
for us to look at, we hadn't bothered to bring along very many details
of our ancestors, and I am doing it mostly from memory. Civilian
records prior to 1895 are, however, held in Timisoara, and that is a
very different scenario, far more difficult to access. We spend a couple
of hours poring over the books and then carry on to Uihei, where Mari
has been working on my own grandparents' grave since 7 a.m., tidying it
up and making a flower bed all around it. We discuss how to fix the
broken cement cover to the grave (nearly all the old graves have been
cemented over since the Germans left the villages, as there are too many
graves for one person alone to tend). Mari suggests a young labourer in
the village whom she knows well, and goes to fetch him. Meanwhile, Tom
and Marge have found a discarded headstone for a baby Beitz child and
would like it cemented between two large and well cared for Beitz
headstones, which the labourer agrees to do, all for a pitifully small
sum. Another local child gets to cleaning off the lichen from our family
headstone, and then Michael and I ink in the names and dates which have
faded over the years. By the end of the afternoon, the graves are in
pristine condition again. We carry on documenting the gravestones, Tom
photographing every one with a high resolution digital camera (well, he
IS a professional photographer!), and Marge chalking all the stones
which are difficult to read, whilst I go around with my little
dictaphone, reading out every detail of every stone. One of the last
ones I come across today is actually the most important one for me
personally, as it is that of my Dad's paternal grandparents, i.e. a
direct Lambing ancestor. The stone itself is rather beautiful as it is
completely covered in lichen, being so old, and I will probably leave it
as it is and just tidy up the grass and weeds around the grave. However,
that is a project for next year! We have another visitor in the
graveyard - Dinu Hans, who had seen Tom and Marge looking at their old
family houses in his street. He's come to see who we are and what we are
doing, and we have a long chat about our families and life in the
village as it used to be. His mother was German and his father Romanian,
one of the several mixed marriages in the village. Mari's husband was
also Romanian and her married name is Cojocaru. She has asked us to go
to her house when we have finished, which we do, and she shows us around
her lovely family home where she now lives alone, and invites us to be
her guests for the rest of our stay. Her garden is immaculate and her
small plot of land is full of crops. There is no mains water, but the
drinking water from her well (41 metres deep) is delicious and we soon
get used to using the outdoor privy - though a natural reflex makes you
look for the flush button! She brings out the cakes and the schnapps
(apricot brandy) and shows us the many beautiful hand-made dolls she and
one of her sons have made over the years. We agree to spend the
following two days in Uihei again and to stay at her house overnight,
which thrills both her and us three. Then it's back to the Zefir with
Michael, who is by now part of our team. We arrange for him and his
girlfriend, Roxanna, to pick us up in the morning to do some shopping in
Timisoara before we head back to Uihei. That evening, Tom, Marge and I
go out for a meal in a nearby restaurant called the Piano Bar, which Tom
noticed on his first wander around the streets. The restaurant is very
modern and the meal is excellent, but we somehow take a wrong turning on
our way back to the Zefir and get completely lost! However, the evening
is fine and warm, the frogs are croaking, the dogs all barking, the
crickets singing, and we aren't unduly worried until we realise that we
have no idea where we are and we've been wandering around for probably
the best part of an hour. All credit to Tom, he DOES actually try to ask
someone where we are when we reach another small restaurant in the
suburbs, but it is already closed, being past 11 p.m. Not many men would
admit to having to ask the way, methinks! As luck would have it, I have
my mobile phone with me, as well as the Zefir's phone number. We ring
and Dora answers - lucky it is she who answers as some of the other
people there don't have any English. After a quick explanation and a lot
of laughter, we are told to stay where we are and she will come and find
us.
Saturday
22nd May - Michael and Roxanna pick us up around 10 a.m. and we spend a
leisurely morning in Timisoara, which is a bustling town today. There
are souvenirs to be bought, plants for Mari's garden, coffee for
everyone, and Tom finds a music shop that sells violins and mandolins -
and promptly buys one of each! Just watch out for him busking in your
local streets... when he's learned how to play the instruments! We DO
pass a wonderful busker in town, whom I record and photograph, whilst
being pestered by an unsavoury-looking group of gypsies. We then go on
to the Adam Müller Guttenbrunn House, which is also very central, and
are shown around this German meeting place and home for the elderly
Germans who have no-one to look after them in this country. There is a
wonderful museum in the building, too, and we really need to spend more
time here, but unfortunately we still have work to do back in Uihei.
Michael and Roxanna drive us back to Mari's house in Uihei, where we
drop Marge off before Tom and I return to Sandra to have a mooch around
and to see Robi again, and then to walk the 2 miles back to Uihei -
something I've always wanted to do again. We manage to recreate a
photograph taken in 1970 of my Dad leaning against the Uihei milestone,
but this time with myself and then with Tom in Dad's place. When we view
the images later that day on Tom's laptop, we notice that the tree in
the background on Dad's photo was a mere sapling and that now it is a
fully-grown poplar tree. We have arranged for Michael to pick us all up
again around 8 p.m. on the Sunday evening, as we want to attend the
Catholic service before we leave the village for good - Father
Bonaventura spends the whole of Sunday travelling to five or six
different villages, conducting services in each village church, and Uihei is always the last one of the day, at 7 p.m. When Tom and I reach
Mari's place after the wonderful walk from Sandra, we have something to
eat and drink and then carry on with the work at the cemetery, together
with Marge. We are way-laid on the road back to Mari's that evening by a
crowd of people (mainly men) watching a football match on TV at the
local 'Magazin', which is actually one of Tom and Marge's ancestors'
houses - they welcome us into the yard, where there are seats around the
TV, and it seems Tom has bought them a round of drinks! That night we
sleep in fresh cotton sheets and feather beds and awake to the sound and
smell of Mari cooking eggs for breakfast.
Sunday
23rd May - the day begins rather drizzly, but having had five or six
days of hot sunshine, we can't complain. Mari insists on dressing us
girls up in tights and warm clothing and sensible shoes before we go off
to the cemetery again, and we manage to get a whole lot more recording
done. Tom finishes photographing all the headstones and he and Marge go
off to do other things whilst I stay on to finish my bit. The weather
has cleared by lunchtime, and I make another quick visit to Buyu to
bring him some coffee and to say goodbye before we leave. Then it's back
to Mari's place for refreshments, where Robi from Sandra has already
appeared, and we spend a couple of hours chatting away, eating cakes and
drinking schnapps and hearing some wonderful stories of 'the old days',
including a hilarious one about my grandmother. As Robi put it, 'I don't
know how your grandfather put up with her for so long!'
I think that's why Dad joined the army at such a tender age (17)
- to get away from her! Towards late afternoon, we three go back to the
cemetery for a final check of the headstones, and to see if we can lift
some that had toppled over forwards. A crowd of children have followed
us and are eager to help lift the stones and to fetch water from the
pump in the cemetery to wash off the dirt so we can read the
inscriptions. They soon get the hang of it and are bringing us bits of
stones from all over the place! Walking back to Mari's for a meal before
church, the children are following us and still growing in number... and
the sweetest thing is seeing many of them holding hands in a long chain.
Mari has cooked a wonderful supper of chicken and mashed potato and
horse radish salad, which is very welcome by now. When we get to the
church, the service is already under way, but as it goes on until about
a quarter past eight, we still have plenty to video and record. Father
Bonaventura makes a special mention about us visitors from abroad who
have come to look for their roots (this was in German), and although I
have not been a Catholic since I was a young girl, I'm still glad I
attended the service. Michael, as always, is waiting for us when we come
out of church, and after a tearful farewell to Mari, with a promise to
return next year, we head back to the Zefir, laden with home-made gifts
from Mari. Of course, we can't pass through Sandra without saying
goodbye to Robi and his father. Robi hands me a bottle of his own
home-made schnapps (plum brandy, this time - stronger than Mari's
apricot brandy, apparently!). Upon closer inspection, there is more to
the bottle than just schnapps... like maybe a bit of protein?! The rest
of the evening is spent recuperating from the long, hard day and I go
straight to bed, vowing never again to eat so many cakes nor to drink so
much schnapps!
Monday
24th May - our final day. I feel distinctly unwell and just want to hang
around the Zefir until it is time to leave in the afternoon. I can't
remember what anyone else did, whether they utilised those last few
hours in town maybe - but I certainly wasn't going anywhere! Jody,
Sammy, Louise and I have all booked on the same plane leaving Timisoara
for Vienna that afternoon, and the three of them (not me) are going on
to the big Donauschwaben meeting in Ulm the following weekend. Tom and
Marge's plane isn't due to leave until very early next morning, and
after wondering where to stay for the night, they end up at Michael's
parents' home! We all finally reach home with varying degrees of success
- some have trouble with overweight baggage, someone else's baggage is
left behind etc. etc. But all in all, the trip has been a huge success
and not a minute was wasted. And I'm already making plans for a return
trip same time next year... Diana. |
