Hinck Blog

Our excursion this past year was a long planned trip to Germany.  Judy and I went there for three weeks from the end of June to the middle of July.  We went to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary, to do some wonderful sightseeing, and for me to work on family genealogy.  The third week Peter, his wife Sarah, and Bryan were able to join us for more fun and sightseeing.  We had a marvelous time.  The weather was cool and more rainy than you would really want on a vacation, but it didn’t hamper us too much. The country was just amazingly beautiful.  With the variety of rolling hills, forests, farm land and mountains, we could really understand how our ancestors would come to the midwest of the USA to settle (but those from southern Germany would miss the mountains).  Almost without exception the people we met were very friendly.  Also fortunately for us many spoke English either fluently or at least very passably.  Judy and I had intended to study and bone up on our German, but we never had the time for that.  I was able to expand the genealogy lineage on my father’s side of the family, adding three generations back from what we had known  before (so now we can trace back 6 generations before my father).  We were able to meet with distant relatives in the little village Ober Ochtenhausen from where my grandfather emigrated. We were also very fortunate to visit with distant relatives on my mother’s side in the middle of Germany and had a third cousin who was our personal tour guide for three days.

Trip to Germany