Wednesday, 13 June 2018. Timmendorfer Strand (Ahrensfelde, Ahrensburg, Wandsbek, Travemünde)

Today, since it was gray and spitting rain occasionally, we took a drive to Ahrensfelde where my great-great-grandparents (parents of Wilhelm C. Schmidt) lived later in their lives.

It was just a cluster of farmhouses and fields. We came to a pasture with Holstein cattle grazing and a farmer walking with his sheepdog. Same as perhaps my great-great-grandfather had done?

Dairy farm in Ahrensfelde

Across the way was a field of purple flowers.

Field of purple flowers and windmills in Ahrensfelde

Then we went on to Ahrensburg, stopping for coffee and Franzbrötchen, another North German specialty.  They are like flat cinnamon croissants--totally delicious!

I had to stop in an Apotheke for eye drops, because my eyes have been bothering me. There are two types of drugstores in Germany, a Drogerie (for toiletries and sundries) and an Apotheke (for medicine, whether prescribed or over the counter).  It was hard to explain "dry eyes" in German to the pharmacist, and even harder to understand the difference between the two bottles of eye drops that she was offering me. But in the end, whatever she gave me worked.

An Apotheke in Ahrensburg

We discovered we were much closer to the city limits of Hamburg than we thought, so we ventured into Rahlstedt and Wandsbek, where it suddenly became very urban, with kebab shops and other stores on the main street, and apartments on the side streets.

A sidestreet in Wandsbek on the outskirts of Hamburg

We went back to our hotel in Timmendorfer Strand, by way of Travemünde, where we stopped for lunch at a little cafe across from a fruit and vegetable market. On the menu was schnitzel, potato salad, crepes,  croque monsieur (cross between French Toast and grilled cheese) and Frikadellen (meatballs), and many types of bottled fruit juices.  The food was good, the waitress was very pleasant, but it seemed like the town had seen better days.

A vegetable stand across from the cafe in Travemünde

When we got back to the hotel, Dan took a nap, and I went for a swim. There was a little baby in the pool named Lara. She could be Cora's twin. She makes the same baby noises (with the addition of some German umlaut sounds!) and she loves to shout at strange times like Cora. She loved slapping the water and splashing her parents.

For dinner I just went down to the Edeka grocery store and picked up some Frikadellen Brötchen (cold meatball sandwiches), Waldorf salad, two yogurt smoothies, and some Haagen-Daz ice cream cups. We ate supper on our balcony, and then, as it had become rather cool, we came inside and made hot tea and cappuccino in the room.

After dinner Dan went on ancestry.com and searched for more about my Elmshorn ancestors, and I did a small watercolor of the purple flower we saw growing in the field near Ahrensfelde.

A quick watercolor sketch of the purple flower we saw in Ahrensfelde

On Ancestry, Dan found records for two more generations of the Schmidts in Elmshorn, Peter Schmidt (a shoemaker, born in 1764) and his son Carl, who was born in Elmshorn, but moved to Ahrensfelde later in life. Carl's son is William C. Schmidt, (1854-1915, b. Elmshorn), my great-grandfather, and his daughter Elsie, is my grandmother, whom I remember very fondly.  Oh how she and my Dad would have loved to have known and seen all this!

I have done some packing, because we are leaving for Hamburg tomorrow. I am chatting off and on with Meredith, who is enroute from Barcelona to Cleveland with 24 students in tow tonight. I can't wait to see both girls and share travel stories!