Even though Grandmother Redetzki had nothing good to say about Lithuanians, it's clear from our genealogy that they were closer than Grandma let on. My father’s homeland is in the portion still occupied by ethnic Russians. In the 1990's I considered a visit to the Russian area, Kaliningrad Oblast, with my East German cousin, Horst. Our fathers were brothers, worked the family farm and tavern in Groß Sodehnen (Grenzen). We each hoped to have some sort of cathartic experience by visiting our ancestral land. On the other hand, both of us were born elsewhere as a direct result of the war and ensuring upheaval.
Travel to the Russian part and my father’s village was totally out of the question. Too many obstacles, crime, AIDS and high risk. The only way to get to Kaliningrad Oblast, the former East Prussia, from Germany was to drive directly across Poland, making sure the car wasn’t stolen from under us enroute. Car rental companies cut the conversation short if you even breathed a hint of going to Poland. And it would be a long drive, not like taking the U.S. Interstate across three time zones in one day. More like two to three days just to drive across Poland! Then there are complications about crossing the Poland-Kaliningrad border - long waits! Days long! And the Klemm villages were mere memories, barren fields.
Now back to the internet and Lithuania. Browsing around one day I encounter quite a few web sites on accommodations and sightseeing. My decision to see Memelland was made. I wanted a sense of my roots, inspiration from a landscape that called up primal feelings of belonging, see the homesteads of my forefathers, make a connection with a past known only through a few small black and white photographs. And there were the stories told around a table filled with mother, father, aunts, cousins, smoke, pinochle and cognac. Okay, I’m getting old and just wanted to see where my ancestors lived. I never experienced a home with grandmother and grandfather or saw where my parents grew up. I didn’t even know my own birthplace; it was the 1960’s before we even had a picture of the house in which I was born. This is the legacy of being displaced; you move to areas where you have no history, no geographic connection. Over in this mysterious Baltic land, five generations of family, on both sides, lived, laughed, loved, and died.
Were I to go alone I wouldn’t know the backstories on the places. I'd have factual information but no memories to make them significant. It would be ordinary tourist sightseeing. So in spite of swearing never travel to with Mom again I asked her if she’d like to come along. My father died fourteen years previous.
Mother responded hesitantly, but in the affirmative. This had never been a possibility. Her concerns tied in to her memories of the country she was fled in the January winter of 1945. What was left to see?
“But the roads will be terrible.” "What kind of hotels can we get?” Unspoken was her concept that Lithuania was very backward and not German civilized.
Even more alien to her was the concept of the internet. I can look up hotels, find a car rental, read a current sightseeing guide, and find a bed and breakfast right near her old village! She found it incomprehensible. Computers were complex enough without trying to understand the internet. She doubted my findings and information sources. I had my own doubts, too.
Nevertheless, I plunged ahead with complete faith in this new medium called the internet. It was still the early days of using the Web, with more honesty and less dubious information. People were wonderfully naïve with the new technology. I booked airplane tickets through a consolidator, reservations made for the Bed and Breakfast, got a hotel for when we first landed, reserved a rental car with a local company (rates much better than Hertz) and checked out info on where to eat and what to see. Lithuania already had a ‘Rough Guide’ out there!
We are set for a September departure from Detroit after high season and the weather will be mild. It's 2001. There are three separate legs on our flight itinerary, accommodations in place, ‘Rough Guide’ read, but this will be the most unprepared I’ve ever been for a trip as far as knowing details on background info and important sights. But what preparation do I really need – I have my mother.
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