We're getting hitched!

Hello all,

I thought I'd use our blog as a means to communicate to everyone (via email, Facebook, or otherwise), that Lindsay and I are officially engaged! I proposed to Lindsay yesterday during our trip to Madison, where our families met up for the day. It was the perfect timing to get everyone together, and, after our three years together, the right time for us to make this decision.

Lindsay and I met in July of 2005, through mutual friends. We communicated via email for a few weeks and got together on July 22nd. On our first date, I picked her up at her apartment, having no idea what our first date would eventually bring. We went to an African restaurant, Fasika, in St. Paul, to a movie and out for drinks at the CC Club, where we got to know each other more. Lindsay described what she did for a living at the University and Medtronic - it wouldn't be the first time I wouldn't understand all of her jobs - whatever they are (I'm still learning). We ended our first date late, and I walked her home. As we parted, she stepped onto the first step leading up to her building and turned around. Now looming over me, we exchanged a firm handshake and called it a night.

The very next night, we happened to get together again. Before we met, we discussed how we both liked the movie Wet Hot American Summer, and it just so happened to be playing as a midnight showing at a theater in our neighborhood. So, we got together again, breaking the first rule of dating, to wait at least two days before contacting one another again...

One week later, Lindsay was off to NYC for a week for a wedding, and I left for California for a week the night after she got back... for souvenirs, she bought me some handmade soap from her favorite soap shop in SoHo, and I bought her some unique handkerchiefs from an outdoors outfitter in Santa Cruz. Strange gifts perhaps, but it represented our strong comfort level with one another early on in our relationship.

In the fall of 2005, I was on a project at work that required me to put in long hours over a long string of days. During these few weeks, Lindsay was there for me in what little down time I had, and I looked very much forward to seeing her after work, and it was at this point in our relationship that we became much closer. We moved in together in May of 2006, after it became less and less reasonable to pay two rents as we spent more and more time together. Our mutual interests blossomed as we spent more time together, from our taste in music and movies, to getting our hands dirty in the kitchen or our garden. When we weren't in the cities, we were traveling to faraway places.

We started small in our travels with one another early on - first to Wisconsin to meet my family, and then to Dallas to meet hers at Christmas. After that came NYC, Toronto, Jamaica, and Iceland. Most importantly, we had the opportunity to live in Switzerland for three months, where we visited Germany, England, Italy, and, of course, Liechtenstein.

There's no one I'd rather be with, and, since Lindsay said yes to my proposal, I guess she feels the same! I look forward to more shows, more movies, more cooking, more gardening, more traveling, more whatever-it-is-we-take-on-next, and simply more time being with together with her.

Right now, I think we're still trying to digest the weekend... We've got no date or location picked yet, and have gotten only so far as a brief discussion on whether or not we'll be making any name changes.

All I know for sure is that I love her to no end, and am happy to proclaim that we're getting married!

Zermatt - Matterhorn

Lindsay and I reunited on Friday evening, and after a brief shower and shave, we were off to her co-workers house for dinner. Dinner was fabulous, her co-worker lived in a simple house on a hill outside a small town. Her co-worker Funke (from Nigeria) lived in the house with her husband (from Zurich), and their four year old daughter, Jordan. Another of Lindsay's co-workers, Kristina and her husband (both from Germany), were there as well. We had a couple drinks, and Jordan entertained us by showing us her 'pet' frogs in their little pond, and showing us the fat slugs around the garden.

Despite being inland a little ways from Lake Geneva, we could see the lake, the mountains across the lake in France, and Mont Blanc. You can't see the mountain from Lausanne for whatever reason, but it certainly lives up to it's name - in mid-June, it's not only one of the last mountains with snow on it, it's completely covered in it. The mountain stood above the rest of them, and as the sun was setting, turned from white to pink to gray as the sun set. Not to be outdone, as soon as the sun set, a nearly full moon made an appearance. It was quite a nice way to relax after a long day of traveling.

Lindsay and I decided that for the weekend, despite my sore feet, to go camping and hiking in Zermatt, gateway to the Matterhorn. Zermatt had been at the top of the list of places to visit in Switzerland from day one, and only now did we really have a chance to visit. The drive was about 2 1/2 hours from Lausanne, through some of the most beautiful countryside in Switzerland, in my opinion. The highway we took is situated in a large mountain valley along the Rhône River. We travelled through the canton [state] of Valais, where it happened to be apricot season. Pledging to get some on the way back, we carried on, and got to the campsite in Randa that afternoon. We set up camp, and carried on to Zermatt for the evening. There are no public roads to Zermatt, so we had to ditch our car in the town of Täsch and take a train to the town. We didn't do a lot in Zermatt that evening other than browse the shops and figure out what hiking trail we were going to take on on Sunday. There were gondola's from Zermatt to virtually every mountain that surrounded it. We headed back to Randa in time to have a quick bite to eat and watch the Netherlands-Russia match with a bunch of other vacationers. The Netherlands had been playing incredibly well in the EuroCup, and were heavy favorites over Russia. In the end, Russia beat them right at the end of overtime.

Sunday morning, we decided to take a gondola from Zermatt to the Schwarzsee Paradise, and hike down through Zmutt back to town. The gondola ride was a pretty exciting experience - just when you thought you were done, you'd pop over a ridge, and the gondola would ascend again, out of sight. We ended up climbing about 3000 feet in 15 minutes. It turned out to be about a 3-4 hour hike back down the mountain to Zermatt. The view of the Matterhorn was fabulous!!!

We drove back to Lausanne soonafter we finished our hike. It had been pretty hot at the lower elevations, with temps near 90 degrees. We never did get our Valais-ian apricots. A stand with a load of them called us just as we were to hop on the highway. We passed it and turned around to get some, only to get stuck behind a tourist bus, which unloaded with enough people to buy out the lot. Boo.

We had a wonderful time in Zermatt. The area had enough hiking areas to keep one busy for the entire summer, nevermind skiing for the winter, which is certainly the greater draw to the area. Though it was certainly a tourist town, we didn't get the feel like we were in a tourist trap. Lindsay and I talked openly about coming back for a winter holiday here.

Old shacks - few, if any of these seemed to be used for anything... maybe a holdover from the pre-tourism days? At the bottom: In the middle: At the top: Lindsay Bockstedt: Adventurer The Matterhorn: Zmutt:

The Ancestral Stomping Grounds: Part Two

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I met with Chris at the train station late Sunday night, and we wandered around town for a bit, drinking a Kölsch beer, and catching up on our lives from the past six years. Turkey had just won a match in the EuroCup, and all the Turks in town were out on the street celebrating.

On Monday, while Chris had to work, I went down to the city of Koblenz, about an hour south by train, to go to the 'Landeshauptarchiv', the state/civil archives for the region. The information I obtained filled in some gaps in my tree... by Tuesday, I was able to find nearly all of the incomplete information. It was an interesting search... I still have to translate some of the records (if I can read them at all). Monday night, I headed back to Köln to watch the Germany-Austria match with Chris.

Statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I at the confluence of the Mosel and Rhine rivers:

The archives:

On Tuesday, while I continued my research, Chris took the camera and explored Koblenz... he hadn't been there before, and took a boat ride down the River Rhine during the morning. Chris discovered an amazing vegetarian/vegan buffet restaurant, Salat Garten, where we ate for lunch.

Statue representing one of the symbols of Koblenz, the Rascal: Views around Koblenz (courtesy of Chris):

In the evening, we headed towards the 'homeland', bound for Kaisersesch, the only proper town in the area. We rented an apartment for the night from a woman with a furnished basement. We dropped off our things, and headed out to find some dinner. After passing on the combined Italian/Chinese joint, we found a pizzeria with a flat-screen TV to watch the France/Italy game - a rematch from the World Cup in '06. I wandered around town for a bit during half-time to see what the town was like. Being the 'big' town in the area, it was quite small (only 1500-2000 people, tops). The older buildings were nice, and the church was quite interesting... for one reason or another, the steeple is both crooked and twisted. It almost looked like a wizards cap.

On the train:

Our apartment for the evening (through the sunroom on the right):

The streets of Kaisersesch:

On Wednesday, Chris and I wandered around Kaisersesch a bit more. We toured a couple cemeteries to look for familiar names... I found some that are in my family tree, but no Kalsch's. There is supposedly a time limit on gravesites in Germany... if sites aren't tended to, or after a certain period of time, they get excavated. I'm not sure what happens to the remains... so much for an eternal resting place. Ultimately, there were no sites older than about 40 years or so, with the exception of war veterans. We also checked out a Jewish cemetery on the edge of town... most of the headstones were no longer legible, though the latest burial date at this particular cemetery was 1929, well before WWII. It was all but abandoned, aside from some lawn maintenance.

The main cemetery. Bleser is a name in my family tree. These people might have been distant cousins. The Jewish cemetery on the edge of town. We checked this out more out of curiousity than for anything related to family research:

After touring Kaisersesch, we walked 3 km towards Masburg. Masburg is where my grandfather's grandfather lived before moving to Chicago in 1881. It was a small town, with a nice church and school. As Chris was leaving back for Köln that afternoon, we enquired for a room at the local hotel. Unfortunately, they were full... there was also no designated camping area in town, but the hotel owners said that if I were only sticking around for one night, I could put up a tent on the edge of town, and no one would really care.

We made relatively short time of Masburg, as we had to get to another village so Chris could catch his train back to Köln. We walked another 2 km to Urmersbach, where we grabbed a beer and snacks and killed some time. I saw Chris off, and wandered around town a bit. Again, I visited a cemetery, but again, only newer gravesites existed.

The view of Masburg from a hill in Urmersbach:

From there, I headed towards Dungenheim, another ancestral town, at the edge of where my relatives spanned. Again, the town and it's old buildings were beautiful, and the town quaint. I grabbed dinner, and before I could pay my bill, the last bus of the day passed the restaurant by. I was able to catch a ride with a local back to Kaisersesch (from a guy named Dirk, who was a electronics technician in the Army). From there, I walked back to Masburg, and took the hotel owner's advice, and set up my tent on the edge of town, in a stand of trees in between farm fields.A view of Dungenheim: A view from my impromptu campsite. Farmers wrapping rolls of hay. It was a pretty interesting operation.

Full moon over Kaisersesch:

The next morning, I wandered through Masburg some more before taking a bus to Kalenborn. This is the town my grandfather's grandmother was from. It was a pretty unremarkable town, save a few older buildings. I would say that the population couldn't have been more than a couple hundred people at most. The monument for the soldiers that died in WWI and WWII paint a pretty grim picture of the losses these small towns faced in these wars...

I walked through the towns of Eppenburg and Laubach on my way towards Mullenbach, where I had a large number of ancestors born and raised.

Eppenburg: Laubach had a number of houses that utilized slate for the sides and roof... Mullenbach, just down the street, had a large slate mine, where a number of my ancestors worked. Overlooking the town: Home of the 'Alte Schule', or Old School... it's now a museum dedicated to slate mining history. I decided to wander around the old slate mines before ending my trip. One ancestor, named Peter Welling, owned one of the mines, according to some of the information I obtained. I held a glimmer of hope that there might be some info on him along the trails, to no avail.

The placards at the trailhead mentioned that some forms of wildlife lived in the valley. I saw a couple small lizards scurrying about, and came across a small pond with baby salamanders. I had only seen them once in my life before, and now there were hundreds of them. It was a pretty cool experience.

The slate mine was more interesting than I had expected, especially with the remains of mines and buildings on site. Not surprisingly, I was the only person on the trail (I didn't expect slate mining would draw too many tourists), but nevertheless, to have the trail to myself was quite nice.

With the EuroCup quarterfinals going on later that evening, I was just able to catch a bus from Mullenbach to Kaisersesch in time to watch the game with Chris (With my cell phone dead, I was unable to reach him, and just so happened to run into him as he was leaving to watch the game.) Germany won a great match to advance to the semi-finals. Somehow, the fervor of the Germans after the match was paltry compared to the Turks from the other night. Exhausted from a long, long day of hiking and traveling, I was eager to hit the hay.

The next day, I had to catch a relatively early train in order to get back to Lausanne in time for evening plans with Lindsay. Having not seen any of Cologne, Chris gave me the nickel tour during the morning. We wandered around the Cologne Cathedral (Kolner Dom) and took a couple bridges across the Rhine.

Visiting these towns was a fantastic experience. I was able to see a part of the world that I would never see otherwise.  I've spent a lot of time tracking down these towns and the branches in my tree associated with them. Hovering over them on Google Earth, I tried to envision where my ancestors might have lived, what the towns looked like from below. To finally be there was very rewarding, the countryside was gorgeous. And while the towns don't stand alone as being special, they were towns that had a unique meaning to me, and as a tourist, to have them entirely to myself made the experience even more worthwhile. 

Moreover, it was fantastic to have this opportunity to visit Chris again. It had been over five years since we partied all night long on my last night in Melbourne. It meant a lot to me that he was able to come with me to Koblenz and to Kaisersesch, and that we were able to hang out as much as we did. He is a wonderful friend, and I hope we can visit again soon.