The past merges with the present

Last February I got an e-mail from a woman who said she had found me via this post on my blog. 
Julia identified herself as a Provenance Researcher in Vienna, Austria.  I had no idea what a provenance researcher was, but came to learn that provenance is a “record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality.” Julia, it turns out, had been researching the provenance of some pieces from my grandfather’s art collection that came to the museum for which she works between the years of 1938 and 1945. 
Julia’s specific task, I learned, was to make sure that the pieces in question were not sold by my Jewish grandfather under duress.  It turns out that Austria has a law that states that “items from Austrian federal museums and collections, which became federal property because or as a result of the NS-tyranny, (be returned to) their original owners or their rightful heirs.”  (Germany has a similar stipulation, though it is not a law.) Because my grandfather Carl was a prominent Jewish art collector in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and because some of his art had ended up in an Austrian federal museum, Julia was charged with researching the provenance of these pieces.
Coincidentally, our family trip to Europe in May of this year included a stop in Vienna, so I offered to meet with Julia.  Remember this?

I never knew my grandfather, so any connection to him at all was a welcome one. To meet someone whose job it was to learn more about Carl was such a treat and I devoured any and all information she could provide me. I also really came to like her in the brief two hours we spent together in Vienna and we promised to stay in touch.
In June, while I was visiting my father, Julia asked me whether I thought my dad would be willing to meet with her in person, at his home in Oregon.  I was thrilled with the prospect, but had a few questions – as, of course, did my father. Our biggest question was, “WHY?”  What on earth warrants an international trip to a small town in Oregon, simply to talk with my father? The answer to that, it turns out, is fairly simple: People who lived during WWII and had significant personal experiences are dying out. My father is still alive and very much has his wits about him.  With a Jewish father and an Aryan mother (a so-called “mischling,” or “mongrel”), he came from unusual circumstances which, it seems, warrant further exploration. 
My father hadn’t talked much about his experiences over the past 50 years and I didn’t know much about my grandfather.  But my father HAD saved boxes and boxes of documents and mementos from his youth which he always hoped would someday be relevant again. Perhaps that day had come. I convinced my father of Julia’s valid and altruistic intentions and he cautiously agreed to meet with her, come late September.
I can’t yet provide details of that visit, other than to say it was productive, inspiring, and engaging for all of us.  What I CAN do is show some photos of our time with Julia both in Seattle, where she stopped over before her visit with my father, and in Oregon, with my dad as well as exploring some of the sites.
Getting to my dad’s place from Vienna requires a stop over in a big city like…well, like Seattle!  We loved showing Julia some of our favorite Seattle sites.
Snoqualmie Falls…

Wine tasting at Chateau Ste. Michele…

Pike Place Market…

The waterfront…

Our own museum, SAM (Seattle Art Museum)…

Pioneer Square…

(…where Peter and Aleks met up with us at a great German restaurant called “Altstadt…”)

And of course, at the Space Needle…

…where Kat joined up with us.
(Yes, we so missed Elisabeth, who has moved to the Bay Area to go to graduate school to become a CRNA, a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist.)

Julia can now call herself an honorary Seattleite!

Then off we went to visit my dad in Oregon!

Unfortunately, this is as close as we could get Julia to Mt. Rainier …

…and to Mt. St. Helens, during her short visit.

Finally, they meet! It was a fast and warm friendship.

They quickly got to work!

What a detective she is! 

For quite a few days, Julia and my dad worked together, exploring long-forgotten documents and discussing long-ago memories.

Once their work was finished, there was time for a quick trip into the Oregon forest and on to Crater Lake.

Of course, Julia had to fly back to Vienna from Seattle as well, so we fully took advantage of one last day together, both at our house…

…and during another quick visit to Seattle. 
The Chihuly Glass Gallery…

…and the Olympic Sculpture Garden.

This blog has brought me many new friendships and I am so grateful for each one of them.  This one, though, spans space and time, bringing me closer to a grandfather I never met and to some fascinating family history. 
It has also brought me a wonderful new friend whom I have come to love and so appreciate! 

Thank you, Julia! Come back soon! 

The Sniders’ Most Excellent European Vacation, 2014: A summary post with some new photos (and video!)

We’re back – and finally I can post to my blog from something other than my iPhone!  What an ordeal THAT was!  I could post only photos taken with my phone and all copy was entered with my fat paws using that teeny tiny iPhone keypad.  This post will be so much easier – and also likely a whole lot longer – than those posted from my phone while abroad.

Let’s review, shall we? 

Packed bags/sad dogs:

Aaaand we’re off!

Arrival in Munchen.  Guess who was there to greet us? Our “third daughter,” LAURA, who lived with us as an AFS exchange student from 2005 to 2006!  How wonderful it was to all be together again as a family!  Within a few hours of our arrival, all of us found ourselves at the Augustiner braustube:

The next morning, after our first German breakfast (oh, how I’ve missed those!)…

…some of us walked around Munich and the Englisher Garten. 

The theaterskirche was one of my mom’s favorite places in Munich.  We happened to enter the church just as beautiful organ music was playing.  That always does me in!

Then we stepped outside and – oh, the majesty!  (I can’t post videos easily from my phone.  See why I wanted to do this last summary post?!)

Munich’s Englisher Garten is absolutely gorgeous.

This spectacle is also for all to enjoy at the Englisher Garten.  For those of us from coastal environments, this is a bit odd.  But hey, they seem to be having a great time!

Our timing in Munich coincided with Frühlingsfest, the Spring version of Oktoberfest.  And by then Eva, our other adopted daughter (for whom I was an AFS liaison in 2006 – 2007) had joined us too!

This evening was most definitely a highlight of our trip!  No words are necessary.  Just join us virtually!  (Feel free to grab a beer first.  Make it a mass!)

Are you feeling the mood yet?  Yeah, it got… well, here:

Ah hell.  Let’s bring you all. the. way. there.

The next day?  Well, a lot of this…

Those of us who felt OK did some more Munich sightseeing.  I was more on a mission to find a replacement for the Bavarian candle that I burn every Christmas Eve in memory of my mother.

I finally got the second one from the left.  It should last many a Christmas Eve to come!

It was so sad to say goodbye to Laura!  But she promised she’d be back to Seattle soon.  She always has a room at our house and a place in our hearts.

Then our group split up for five days, with Peter, Kat and Aleks heading to Zagreb and Croatia (I stole their photos off Facebook!):

…and Tom, Elisabeth, and me headed to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Zugspitze:

The Zugspitze isn’t all that tall – not even anywhere near as tall as, say, Mt. Rainier – but it does feel as if you’re at the top of the world!

The region around Garmisch-Partenkirchen is beyond beautiful!  My family has plenty of history there. I could easily see myself in an alternative existence in which this is my home.

We loved the Hotel Zugspitze!  Their accommodations and breakfast were second to none!  We’ll go back to Garmisch someday just to stay there again!

One full day was nowhere near enough for Garmisch, yet every time I plan a trip there, I only give us a day.  Why do I DO that?!  (Especially this time because Tom and I got in a stupid ass fight there and neither of us enjoyed that day – or subsequent ones - as much as we should have.  Lessons learned about required extra patience and understanding while traveling. So dumb.) 

And then, on to Vienna!  This happy man was just minding his own business at the train station.  I sure hope that younger Bavarians and Austrians don’t let this traditional garb go extinct!

I’ve been to Europe quite a few times, but until now I had never been to Vienna.

One word: WOW.

Our hotel, the Hotel am Stephansplatz was, again, second to none – especially as far as location as concerned (but the service and breakfast was also phenomenal!).

There’s so much majesty and history in Vienna that it’s easy to become overwhelmed and glaze over.  And to really do the city right, I think you’d need at least a week there. Knowing that, we got out immediately on the evening we arrived.

The next morning, I had an appointment with Julia, a provenance researcher at the Albertina Museum, regarding the art collection of my Jewish grandfather.  Julia is researching the provenance (lineage and sale history) of some of my grandfather’s pieces.  If you’ve seen the Monuments Men, this is a different vein along the same topic line – that is, Nazi acquisition of art.  The goal is to make things right, even now, so long after it all happened.  I so appreciate Julia and people like her!

We also delved a bit into Tom’s grandfather’s Vienna connections and history!  On Ancestry.com I was able to find where Tom’s grandfather grew up before emigrating to the United States in 1923.  We thought we’d only be able to explore the outside of the building (just a stone’s throw from the Stephansdom and our hotel!)…

…but a resident allowed us inside.  What a treat!

This post could be miles long if I just concentrated on all there is to see and learn in Vienna, a city of such incredibly important historical significance.  Rather than botch an attempt, I’ll just post a bunch of photos of our day.  Awestruck is putting it mildly…

(Hey, there’s our hotel!)

Elisabeth’s boyfriend Danny was able to get a few days off work and joined us in Vienna.  Surprise!

What an expensive city.  Would you believe that four coffee drinks and a piece of Sachertorte cost over $50?!  (But oh, how delicious!  I so miss real Eiskaffee!)

From Vienna, we headed east to Budapest, where met up with Peter, Aleks, and Kat.  Again, we did our first discovery tour in the evening.  What a fairy tale of a city!

The food was incredible in Hungary!  My favorite of all the countries we visited.

During the next two days, we explored the St. Stephens basilica (on Segways!)….

…and wrangled everyone for a group shot.

You can’t really visit Budapest without visiting the baths!  (Though some of us did…)

Almost as famous as the mineral baths is the cat café. 

OK, I lied.  That’s not true.  And it’s a little weird.

After Budapest, another train ride, this time through Slovakia, to…....

…Prague, a city that Aleks had fallen in love with in 2010 when he studied there for three months.  I can see why he fell in love with that city!  I felt like a 21st century intruder, and wanted to apologize to old Prague for all the tourists.  That said, everyone in the world who has a chance to see this place, should!  I know, I have double standards.

Once again, we arrived late in the afternoon, had dinner…

(Czech food is almost as good as Hungarian food – certainly as hearty!)

…and explored the city first at night:

Once again, our accommodations were phenomenal.  This is the place I had looked forward to the most and it did NOT disappoint!  We had a two story apartment at the Grand Hotel Praha, directly across from the astronomical clock in Prague’s Old Town Square.  Just look at our views (inside and outside)!

Having this large apartment allowed for some really fun group evenings!

The next day, some of us went to the Prague Castle…

…while others enjoyed Old Town…

and climbed the clock tower.

(See the top window in the orange building to the left of the blue one, above?  That’s our apartment!)

We also enjoyed (?!) some unique Prague art.

Eva and her boyfriend even joined us in Prague!

  The next day, exactly two weeks after the beginning of our trip, we headed back to Munich.

On our last day in Munich, people pretty much did their own thing.  Mine was meeting Thomas during his stopover from a sailing trip in Turkey.  It’s nice to have a forever friend in him!

At 2 AM on the morning of our departure, I received an email from IcelandicAir, informing me that our leg to Iceland would be leaving Munich late, causing us to miss our flight home to Seattle.  I called customer service and was basically told, “Yeah, sorry…”  Aleks tweeted his disappointment in their customer service as well.  Oddly enough (oh, social media, I love you!), I got an email just moments later from a customer service rep at IcelandAir who was able to find us a Lufthansa (and who doesn’t love Lufthansa?!) flight to Vancouver BC, with a puddle jumper on to Seattle.  Needless to say, we were thrilled!  The Lufthansa flight was wonderful, with two hot meals, free drinks, and just all-around great service. 

After 24 hours of travel, we were happy to be back in Seattle just in time for a LONG SLEEP!

Getting back to our everyday lives might be a bit of a challenge, as for well over a year we were all planning for and looking forward to this trip.

Our hope is that this trip, which we hoped would be a “trip of a lifetime” for the kids turned out to be just that.  We are so grateful to Tom’s Uncle Ray for making it possible and wish we could share our experiences with him!