This one is for Grandma G.--part 7 of 10

Tuesday:

Today is the long-awaited day: DH’s return, and my first visit, to Zell am Pettenfirst, the tiny village in Oberösterreich (Upper Austria) where DH’s grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, and father spent the 10 years after World War II.  His Oma just died in August, so it is a bittersweet pilgrimage.  From her eulogy I learned that they had been living in what was once Yugoslavia; she spoke German, Croatian, Hungarian, and—after immigrating in the 1950s—English.  When ethnic Germans were no longer welcome after the war, they traveled by foot north to this little farming community.  My father-in-law was only 2 years old.  There, Oma helped rebuilt the fire house, destroyed by Allied bombing intended for the nearby railroad station; and everyday she hiked over the Pettenfirst to work the fields.  We take pictures of the fire house (seen at left from the bus stop), church, the old school building, and the place where their house used to stand.  (By the time the family visited 17 years ago, it had already been torn down.)   And of course, we have to hike up the Pettenfirst.  At the beginning of this post you can see the town from the hill at the foot of the trail; it takes half an hour to reach the summit.  Someone has created a Wald der Kinder (Children’s Wood), with interactive stations all the way up to the top, so on our way down we indulge our inner kids and goof off a little.


We eat dinner that evening with some of DH’s remaining relatives in the Old Country: Oma’s cousin and her husband, and two of their daughters.  It is my job to tell them about Oma’s death, which puts a damper on what was otherwise a happy meeting sharing news and photographs of our families. We spend the night at the house of one of the daughters.