Day Two: Dear French Karma: Really?

I spent the night huddled under an extra-thick duvet and a blanket as well as in my thermal pajamas and a sweater.  So much for hotels being better than hostels.  After a disappointing breakfast (and an even more disappointing shower), I head to the train station to see when the next TER to Sessenheim was.  TER trains work like the Metra in Chicago: you buy a ticket for whenever you need to use it, and it doesn’t tell you the train number, time, or direction.  Therefore, I had to ask a SNCF person which direction and which time to look for.  The nice man told me the next train was at 10:54, direction Haguenau.  Okay, fabulous.  I had a little over an hour to kill, and as pretty as I found the Strasbourg train station, I felt like I should, y’know, see Strasbourg itself.  So I booked it to the cathedral to take a quick spin, and wow, I’m glad I did.

Outside of the train station.  No, it's not a UFO.

View down the nave of the cathedral.

Sometimes I really love my camera.

I’m not a religious person, but I like visiting cathedrals for the history and the pretty.  I love visiting churches and cathedrals early or late in the day, when slanting sunlight is at a premium.  Besides the colors thrown by the stained glass windows, upon which I’ve rhapsodized before, literally everything seems to glow, especially in the morning, because most cathedrals were built to be visited in the morning.  The Strasbourg cathedral’s organ, flanked with trumpeting minstrels, sparkled blue, red, and gold as the morning sun directly hit it — one of the more interesting organs I’ve seen, though I know absolutely no history behind it.  In fact, this cathedral, while I know it’s soaked in history, barely touted a thing.  99.9% of the plaques around the cathedral were about the religious significance of whatever it showed: the purpose of the baptismal font, a random sculpture of Christ on the Mount of Olives, what the chœur/choir represents.  The only history around was for the pulpit (erected in 1486) and the astronomical clock.

Christ on the Mount of Olives.

View of the choir/altar.  Well, I assume the altar's there somewhere.

Le Pilier des Anges.  Basically a giant pillar with statues of angels.

A monument dedicated to the American soldiers who liberated Alsace during WWII.

The rose window and organ.

I saw a similarly purposed clock in Lyon, but that was a wristwatch compared to this one.  It stretched all the way to the ceiling and took up nearly one entire wall of the cross’s short arm.  Words cannot describe how beautiful this clock was: like a gorgeous, super-sized mantle clock.  Part of me wishes I could have stayed (and paid) to watch it go off, but my schedule was a bit crunched, so I took the requisite pictures, sighed, and set off for the gare at top speed.

Bottom part of the astronomical clock.

I made sure I got the chick in the red coat on purpose.  Gives a bit of perspective, no?

Traditional Alsatian house on the cathedral square.

The square in front of the cathedral was too small to get a complete picture of it!

Rest of the square in front of the cathedral.

So the train.  As expected, I was running a bit late, and after I spotted the track for Haguenau, I ran to it and hopped on the train, not bothering to check which stops it would be making.  Bad choice.  As we chugged away from the station, the conductor made the usual tired announcements about not smoking, watching your bags, and where we would stop.

Not one of them was Sessenheim.

Oh well, I thought, maybe they only announced the big stops.  Surely when they came around to check tickets, the conductor would tell me if I were on the wrong train.  He did scold me, but only for not paying enough — as it’s school vacation for Zone A schools, the SNCF is operating on the “white” schedule, which nearly everyone on the train forgot—but nothing about my destination.  SO when they announced the last stop, Haguenau, and everyone had to get off, that familiar weight of doing something wrong settled in my stomach.  Really?  Really?  Why.

Well, at least I spoke the language.  (Somewhat.  Though I’ll get back to that later.)  I asked the nice man of the day at the SNCF counter how to get to Sessenheim from Haguenau, and he raised an eyebrow.  “Go back to Strasbourg and take a different train.”

The weight got weightier.  “But the SNCF man in Strasbourg said to take the train in this direction.”

He gaze softened into what I can only call pity.  “Well he was wrong.  I don’t know if there’s a private bus service that goes to Sessenheim, but there’s nothing through the SNCF.  Sorry.”

Damn.  That was two more train tickets than planned, a total of €8.20 to be exact.  Plus the two hours or so of my life wasted.  Youpee.

Maybe this was a sign. Maybe this was a sign I should give up this crazy quest to find and talk to some distant relation who didn’t know who I was and may not know I was coming.  Since the morning, I’d been trying to figure out what the hell I’d say to the lady at the hotel let alone André Klein, and had come up with a big blank.  Consequently, I began trying to talk myself out of trying further: ‘just go back to Strasbourg and wander around.  You don’t even know where you’re going in Sessenheim.  You have another vacation in April: go then when you have more time to prepare.’

(Never mind that I’d been planning on doing this pilgrimage since I got my placement notification.)

‘You should give this up.’

As I’m pretty good at ignoring myself, I didn’t give myself time to think: as soon as my train got into Strasbourg, I bought a ticket in the real direction, found the track, and hopped onto the train before more than a couple brain cells could engage.

Of course, I outsmarted myself: I may be on my way to Sessenheim, but that didn’t mean I had to talk to anyone.  I could walk around the town, find the cemetery my grandfather talked about, and head back into Strasbourg without much hassle.

Hopping off the train in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, I really realized that I had no idea how to get to the center of town, and surprisingly, I took only one wrong turn before I found a sign for the mairie (mayor’s office) and the churches.  Score!  I toddled away, only half-heartedly looking for the hotel/restaurant À La Croix d’Or, where my grandfather said I could get help finding André.

Sessenheim's train station.  Somehow, it's still bigger than Winfield's.

Then I outsmarted myself again.  At a roundabout where I was deciding between two different churches (having no idea how to tell a Catholic church from any other), a random glance to the right revealed À La Croix d’Or.  

BAM! Sneak attack!

I stood on the front steps before I realized it, and after trying several different doors, I found the right one and entered the restaurant portion, coming face to face with whom I assumed was the owner’s wife.

“Can I help you?” she asked in heavily-accented French.

Crap.  What was I going to say?  “Yes, actually I have a question.  In fact, my grandfather was here a couple years ago to visit some family in the area, and he said you could help me find them.  Do know if you could help or not?”  Not the most elegant speech, but from someone who almost turned back about 97 times, at least it happened.

She looked doubtful.  “Who is your grandfather?”

“Emery Wolff.”

She paused, visibly searching her memory banks.  A second, older, stooped woman hobbled in from another room and said something in an entirely different language, but one that the first woman clearly spoke, as she responded.  I caught the words ‘grandpère’/‘grandfather’ and ‘Emery Wolff’ before she turned back to me and repeated Grandpa’s name.

“Yes,” I confirmed, losing hope by the millisecond.  “He said he met a second cousin here named André Klein.”

Her entire face morphed with recognition.  “Ah, Emery Wolff and André Klein!  Yes!  I’ll call him now.”  She explained the situation again to the older woman as all three of us walked into another room, clearly the breakfast room of the hotel which was attached to the restaurant.  She called him, explained who I was, and hung up.  “He’s on his way,” she said with a smile and gestured to a long booth near the bar.  “He usually sits there.  You can wait for him.”

Great.  Now I had to make small talk, concentrate on understanding her accent, and wait for a randomly-connected relative!  My definition of an exciting afternoon.  We talked of anything and everything, from how my grandfather was doing to the area around Sessenheim to travelling to the Swiss banking system to language.  She explained that she speaks French, German, English, and the Alsatian dialect, which is more akin to German than French, though the more I listened when other Alsatians spoke, the more French words I could pick out.  She said most people in Alsace are veritably bilingual (sometimes tri), and I admitted to being more than a little bit jealous.

Just when we began scraping the bottom of the small talk barrel, a slight, old man toddled into the restaurant portion carrying two thick binders and a Blackberry and positively swimming in a worn military coat and Navy cap.  We locked eyes, and he offered a tiny grin.  André Klein, I presumed.

Andre and I.

Not gonna lie, the introductions were awkward, as predicted.  He asked how my grandfather was doing, where I lived in the States, what I was doing in France.  Apparently, contrary to everything I thought I knew of my grandfather, he had warned André that I was in France and would probably be coming to visit sometime in the spring.

“Well it’s . . . almost . . . spring . . .” I hesitated, glancing outside at the sunny but -10° C/14° F eastern France weather.

He threw back his head and laughed.

From then on, everything was easier.  He asked me to tutoyer him instead of vousvoyer, which even though we’re technically family, I didn’t expect within the first fifteen minutes of meeting.  Then began the pictures.  He tugged one of the giant binders over to us and began rifling through everything, giving me a copy of nearly everything: photos of family “reunions” or meetings just like this one with explanations of who everyone was and how they were related; birth certificates; family trees; pictures of him during his military tour of duty in Algeria (when it was still a colony; or was it during the war?); anything and everything having to do with the Wolff or Klein family.  My great-great-grandfather had married a Salomé Klein, and André was the son of one of Salomé’s brothers or sisters, so I have no idea what official relationship we have, but there you go.

It was all spectacularly researched, and I asked him when he found the time.  He said that after retirement, he wanted to occupy himself somehow, and so why not research the family tree?

We ended up talking for nearly 2.5 hours, with only brief interruptions for the bathroom (me) or a cigarette (him), and the conversation flowed rather naturally for two strangers of entirely different generations, cultures, and languages.  The most interesting factoid surfaced when I asked him whether he thought of himself as French or German.  He hesitated, squinting into the sun behind me, and I hurriedly added, “Or Alsatian?”

“Alsatian,” he confirmed with a short nod.

Strange!  When my great-grandfather hopped the boat to America in 1918 from Sessenheim, it was still under German control.  After Germany was carved up as a result of World War I, and after Charles de Gaulle officially made the Rhine the border as a result of World War II, the Alsace-Lorraine region became French.  Hence the different languages, but also hence the ethnic/cultural identity crisis.  My grandfather says we’re German; the map says we’re French; and my long-lost fourth cousin four times removed (an estimation) says we’re Alsatian.  Try explaining that identity crisis to anyone who isn’t American.

He took me for a little walk around the town, basically to the two churches (Presbyterian and Catholic), and then I asked to go to the cemetery.  Divided between the two Christian sects, all of my family was on the Presbyterian side, and he kept stopping at graves, saying that so-and-so was a cousin’s grandmother’s sister’s favorite dog walker or something.  He showed me the graves of ten or so Australian fighter pilots that crashed in the town during World War II, all of whom clustered around the age of 21 and some of whom still had family that visited their graves yearly.

The Presbyterian side of the cemetery. Blogspot won't let me upload any of my other photos, so this is it.

After such a cheery sojourn, he left me to occupy myself at the hotel/restaurant while he went home to shower and grab even more family artifacts.  I was reading at the table when two older men, clearly regulars, sat down at the table as well, chattering away in Alsatian.  I thought the best thing to do would be to ignore them, which promptly backfired when they turned to me and said . . . something.

“Sorry, I speak French,” I answered in French.

“So you didn’t understand anything?” I understood after two repetitions.  I shook my head.

“So you’re French?  Where are you from?” the younger one, who sat next to me and was either naturally effervescent or a little drunk already.

I hesitated.  I hate telling people that I’m American — well, not “people,” just creepy people that could be trying to pick me up.  But I figured they’d find out eventually.  “Actually, no.  I’m American.  I’m from Chicago.”

“AL CAPONE!” they immediately responded.  I had to laugh.  Finally someone knew something about Chicago!  Again, conversation flowed smoothly, probably lubricated by Younger Creep’s beers: we talked about languages, the grammar difficulties between French and English and, surprisingly, Thai.  They brought up the subject of their ethnicity/cultural identity all on their own, with the older guy saying that he was neither Alsatian nor German but 100% French.  Younger Creep popped my personal bubble with a resounding smack and whispered in my ear something unintelligible, but what I think meant German ‘cause they’re more manly.  Or something.  I blocked it out while it was happening.

André blustered in again so we could eat a quick meal together before I had to catch the last train to Strasbourg.  He tried to get me to stay at the hotel in Sessenheim instead, but all my stuff was in Strasbourg, I’d already booked the hotel for the night, and I had an early morning train to Stuttgart the next day, so he gave up the argument.  We wolfed down some tarte flambé (basically flatbread pizza with white cheese sauce), which is an Alsatian specialty, and half a bottle of Alsatian wine.

Tarte flambé. And Alsatian wine.

I thanked Anne, the hotel lady, profusely for letting me invade her space for the day, promised to see if I could return sometime, and then André and I set off for the train station: him on his bike and me literally at a run.  He offered to pay for my ticket, but as he’d already paid for a hot chocolate and dinner, I couldn’t in good conscience accept, and as soon as the ticket popped out of the machine, the train showed up, so he bisous-ed me four times, gave me a giant hug, and waved me off.

Sigh.  A little rushed towards the end but otherwise light years beyond the welcome I expected out of this half-though-out quest.  I would expect most people to be more than a little leery of some random American girl showing up in this Podunk town and claiming to be some distant relation.  I couldn’t have been happier that I’d ignored myself and pursued this crazy idea to find my family history.  He’d promised to keep in touch, taking down both addresses (in France and the U.S.), my email, and phone number.  Plus, he seemed genuinely happy to meet me — the exact opposite of expectations.  I stepped off the train in Strasbourg with a springy bounce.

Even though I just wanted to head to the hotel and crash, I felt I should profiter a bit more since I was only technically in Strasbourg proper to sleep plus a couple hours.  So I went to the movies and saw J. Edgar in VOST: version originale sous-titré/original version with French subtitles.  I’d wanted to see it since the hype began in the summer before I left, and I wanted to see it in English, as I dislike dubbed movies, and I doubt it would ever be in La Flèche in VO.

Hey, I was profiter-ing — I was in a big city!  No judging.