Der Drachen

Back in February, fantasizing about spending more time in Germany, S perused ads for used sailboats in the Fünfseenland (Five Lakes Region) near Steinebach. To be clear, I myself do not fantasize about sailing, ever, but S's parents met at a sailing club and spent summers sailing in Greece and Italy, and S himself grew up sailing with his parents and eventually had a boat of his own that he sailed on the Ammersee, and he's continued to sail for as long as I've known him, so it makes sense that S fantasizes about it.  

The life preserver from the Jorinde, a Drachen S's parents sold ca. 1965

One of the boats his parents owned was a ca. 1938 Drachen. The boat design dates from 1929 in Norway. These sailboats are still built today, although the all-wood design was modified in 1973 with the addition of fiberglass.

One of the boats S found listed for sail was a Drachen, located one village to the northeast of Steinebach in Weßling.

He thought: "hm, didn't Dati sell his boat to someone in Weßling? I wonder if it's the same boat." 

He sent the ad to his older brother, who also grew up sailing, and asked: "what do you think, could this be the same boat?"

His brother didn't reply, but S's nephew did: "Should we buy it?" 

S's nephew did not grow up sailing, but he values family lore. S advised against buying it, given the amount of work it would probably take to fix it up.

The next day, his brother sent a message: "We bought it."

And wouldn't you know, it's the boat S's father sold to the seller's uncle some 60+ years ago.

When we were in Germany over spring break, S and I walked to Weßling to see the boat and to talk with the seller, who was equally delighted that the boat was once again exchanging generational hands.

The Drachen will indeed need much work before it's again lake-worthy, but as S has said for as long as I've known him, "half the fun of owning a boat is fixing it up."

Visiting the boat in Weßling

I was delighted to observe that the uncle is the owner of this mailbox, which I first photographed in 2012. 

As the Jorinde life preserver at the top of this post indicates, S's family held onto to assorted sailing memorabilia. R conveniently has a letter from the Herrsching am Ammersee sailing club, written in  1974, promising him club membership if he ever wanted to return. Of course, it's unlikely that anyone at the sailing club today remembers the family, or even recognizes the official club stationary, but how nice not to need an introduction.

Meanwhile, S had the key to the sailing club door. The locks have probably been changed in the intervening decades.

After T bought the bought, S located the cap'n's hat in a storage closet. It was too small for both R and T, so it probably belonged to Helen rather than Dati.

Who will repair the boat? Will it ever sail again in the Ammersee or beyond? Tune in in another decade to find out!

Remembering

We've been spending a lot of time in Steinebach reminiscing. Google Translate is way better now than it was a decade ago, so Stefan doesn't need to help translate quite as much.

http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2010/09/detours.html

http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2010/09/reminiscence-roadtrip.html

http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2013/07/der-ewige-igel.html

http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2014/06/this-mattress.html

http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2009/07/cultural-highlights-from-bavaria.html

http://wadlstrumpf.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-eat-semmel-at-breakfast.html

Detours

After visiting the Burgruine Roetteln, we headed eastward along the German/Swiss border, skirting the southern edge of the Black Forest and crossing back and forth over the Rhine. (We started by heading in circles for a while, looking for a gas station. Through the magic that is the tri-national agglomeration of Basel, everyone in every rustic small-town sleeper 'burb owns a car, but none of the rustic small-town sleeper 'burbs have gas stations.)

Eventually, we made our way to the tiny town Ofteringen, despite Helen's don't-put-yourself-out protestations ("only if it isn't out of the way. We shouldn't go if we have to go out of the way"). Helen used to visit Ofteringen with her father every summer when she was a little girl, and she had fond memories of the sawmill and restaurant her relatives owned there. It's a small enough town that it took only about three minutes for us to find the mill. Alas, the restaurant was closed for summer vacation, but after we loitered for a while, we noticed an elderly man crossing the sawmill yard. "Go talk to him," we nudged, so we tromped over and Helen politely asked whether he had perhaps heard of her father, Otto Stoll. Ayuh, sure he remembered Otto Stoll; long time ago, though. Yep.

A road sign near the mill pointed to Erzingen, 4 kilometers away. Helen's father was buried there, in his brother's family plot, after he died too young in 1942. "I don't need to go," said Helen, shuffling her feet. "It's out of the way. The relatives there were nasty. We shouldn't go; it's out of the way." "We're going," Stefan and I said.

We were already going out of our way, of course: if you want to get from Freiburg to Steinebach, driving along the Swiss border is hardly a direct route. But in Helen's defense, distances do expand in odd ways in Germany. Stefan's family used to drive from Steinebach to the neighboring village of Auing to buy farm-fresh eggs. That the farm was an easy 10-minute walk from their house was beside the point: Auing was a whole village away, so they drove.

We did well to visit Erzingen, despite the vast 4-kilometer detour. We located the cemetery above town. Although we read every single grave marker, we didn't find the stone we sought. The closest we found was a column memorializing bones that had been moved from the old cemetery in 1964. Yet we had clearly found Stoll Central. Every other marker belonged to one Stoll or another. And we met two helpful, living Stolls: a friendly middle-aged woman whose father was also an Otto Stoll, and an elderly silver-haired Frau Stoll who, after some thought, wondered if Helen's father might have been "the American Stoll." (Otto had spent several years as an immigrant in New York before returning to Germany and begetting Helen.) Frau Stoll said "the American Stoll" in a way that suggested the relatives considered him a curiosity, if not a black sheep.

Having become comfortable with detours, we made several more the next day. I'll write about them in my next post.