#my great grandparents on my mom’s side immigrated from germany

[witchy-batsquatch]

Things my immigrant ancestors have said to me regarding current events through my work making contact with them

• hide your valuables and money somewhere nobody will ever find it

• don't discuss your immigrant status

• blend in by speaking English only

• give the children a little whiskey to make them fall asleep so they remain quiet

For some context my great grandparents on my mothers side came from Finland to America to escape the soviets my German great great grandparents on my dads fathers side left Germany to escape Hitler and my Scottish and Irish great-grandparents on my fathers moms side one left Scotland because of English oppression and one left Ireland because of English oppression and they met on the boat to America

[kissedbyaphrodite]

I just made a family tree for a Sterek idea I had the other day, and fell down the rabbit hole regarding Stiles and his polish ancestry. So, I thought I'd write it down to 1) Make sure I don't forget anything I just found, 2) To also maybe help anyone who wants to write a Polish Stiles fic, 3) Someone who is actually polish could help me, because even though I am of Polish descent, my great grandparents were Polish and nobody in my family knows the language/culture. So if you're Polish and I made a mistake, please let me know.

1) Stiles' name. The whole show we hear slightly jokes about how Stiles' name has too many consonants, how it's hard to pronounce for Americans and how, as a kid, when Stiles tried to say his actual name, he could only say the word "Mischief". When Stiles is taken by the Ghost riders, Sheriff Stilinski reveals that Stiles name is Mieczysław. But, the name doesn't seem so hard to pronounce? Like, obviously someone who isn't Polish would butcher it and pronounce it as "Miech-Sis-lau/Miech-sis-law" but you could kinda make out it's pronounciation just by reading it; obviously, none of those is correct, since the ł letter is actually pronounced as a W rather than an L, so the name is actually pronounced "myeh-CHI-swaf" . So, while obviously hard for non-Polish speakers, it's not unpronounceable, and while it does only have three bowels, you can use them as a guide to try and pronounce the name; plus, the pronounciation isn't really similar to the word "Mischief". I looked for other names, and found the name "Mścisław" which has less bowels, looks harder to pronounce (Again, for non-Polish speakers) and it actually does sound like "Mischief", since it's pronounced "Mshchees-waf". So, to summarize, in my heart and head, Stiles name is Mścisław.

2) Noah's and Claudia's last names. Now, this one is actually very interesting since both last names, Stilinski and Gajos, are highly similar to Polish last names, Styczyński and Gajdoš. With the last names I wasn't looking into as deep as I did with Stiles' name, because this is something I've seen a lot in my country, we have many immigrants from countries like Poland, Belgium, Germany, etc, so I am no stranger to anglicised names, my grandparents on my mom's side and great grandparents on my dad's side are immigrants and I had a teacher who's grandfather was an immigrant, and they all had to slightly change their last names + names to fit in. And so I find it believable that Stiles' grandparents/Greatgrandparents anglicised their names to make sure they fit in with everyone. The Styczyńskis changed it to Stilinski, which is easier to sound out and say than Styczyński and the Gajdoš let go of the d and the š and switched it to Gajos. I do headcannon that both Claudia and Noah's great grandparents were immigrants and then they had Elias and Claudia's mom/dad in the US, since the more drastic changes to names and surnames that I've witnessed usually happened around the 30s until the early 40s. Like, my grandma immigrated here in late 1940 and she simply had to change the pronounciation of her name, but my great grandparents, who came here around 1930 or so, changed their last name drastically.

Again, this is all just from what I could find online and my experience as the grandson/great grandson of immigrants, if you're Polish/son of Polish immigrants and closer to the culture and language, feel free to add anything you want

[brashzine]

My college essay

My name is Lola Ray Battenfeld. I was born in the Portsmouth Naval Hospital, VA, on October 31st, 2004. I am the oldest daughter, and my sister is 2 years younger. My father was born in 1982, and my mother was born in 1983. For most of my childhood, I lived in Ocean View, VA. My great-grandparents on my father's mother's side were immigrants from Ireland. My mother's father lived and passed in Berlin, Germany. My grandfather was there when the Berlin Wall was torn down. I have chunks of the wall in my attic. So, I am very Irish and very German. My family, for better and for worse, made me the person I am today. My name, Lola, in German, is short for the word Aloisia, meaning "Sorrows." I was named after the 1998 experimental German film "Run Lola Run," Which is about the profound impact that small, spontaneous decisions can have on life. Being named after this movie was a harbinger of events in my life. My earliest memory is being in my childhood home's backyard and watching my dog, Blue, jump feet into the air to maul birds flying into the tree hanging over our fence. Not long, the birds decided to defend their nests and start attacking Blue. I watched in wonder until my father finally noticed what he was doing and ran out with a shovel to swat the birds away; the whole time, Blue had one in his mouth. It was pure Absurdity. My favorite author, Albert Camus, defined the absurd as the futility of a search for meaning in an incomprehensible universe devoid of God or meaning. Absurdism arises from the tension between our desire for order, meaning, and happiness and, on the other hand, the indifferent natural universe's refusal to provide that. I think about this philosophy when I ponder my childhood. Growing up in Ocean View was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is a colossal suburb, and the Bay is within walking distance; on the other hand, it is devoid of community. Most people there are working-class people with more significant issues than what their kids are getting into. This is unfortunate, but it also makes me incredibly grateful that my mother was invested in ensuring I had all the skills I needed to make it in the real world. My mother was my entire world in a wrong and reasonable way. She was bipolar and unmedicated until I was 13. People with that disorder often have "favorite persons," which means their entire mood is sometimes dependent on that favorite person's mood. I was her everything, but I was also a child who could not regulate or even understand their emotions like an adult could. This led to a lot of abuse. It also made me an incredibly empathetic and understanding person. My relationship with my mother got better after I was 13, and every day, I wish I could relive those good memories; sometimes, I miss her so much; I miss her yelling at me. She passed my first year of high school. It was sudden, an accident, Absurdity. After my mom passed, I decided I wanted a family and that I wanted to be a teacher. I want to love my children and for them to love me, too. Motherhood is something you can only understand when you lack it. It gave my mother purpose. Now that I am older, I know why my mother was like that: the pressure on her shoulders, the pain that was built into her and ricocheted into me. Sometimes, I have been regressing into more immature behaviors as the years have passed. Missing the girl that was so wise and controlled for her age. Then I remembered where I was living and what I was living through, which never allowed me the chance to approach and experience my life as a teenage girl. I was forced to expedite my maturity to be able to survive peacefully. Now that I am older and more separated from that, building my own life, the teenage girl inside me climbs out of my jaw at every chance she gets. She scrapes her fingernails in my throat and digs her heels into my tongue in moments when I know I should control myself, screaming, "I'm not done here!"

[sunstonespells]

i've been working on tracing my ancestry and building my family tree. i've managed to trace back to my fifth great-grandparents on my mom's side and to trace most of that side back to their immigrations from germany. i connected with a cousin who lives in tennessee. i've been able to find a lot of final resting places including cemeteries and grave plots, so maybe in the fall i can get to baltimore and visit a few of them.

[bobemajses]

One side of my family is from Lithuania & Ukraine, my mom's grandparents immigrated to the US in the early 20th century. Our last name is common in Jewish communities in south Africa who immigrated from the same part of Lithuania, but unusual anywhere else.

The other side of my family is from Germany and Poland. We actually received a letter from the descendants of the people who brought my grandfather's family food and supplies in the late 1930s so they didn't have to leave the house to run errands. They were the only Jewish family in their village.

The synagogue my grandmother went to as a child escaped being completely destroyed during kristalnacht. We attended the rededication of it several years ago, they still hold services to this day. This side of the family came to the US after WW2.

Hey, I actually have a Jewish friend who was born in South Africa with grandparents from Vilnius. Being largely descendants of Litvak Jewry, South African Jews are a fairly homogeneous group, unlike those of the United States of America.

I think it's very interesting to look at the early Lithuanian migration to South Africa. What caused the Jews to leave to a place so far away, geographically and culturally? Despite the hardships of life in Lithuania the very thought of breaking the bonds of family and community was to the Jews in the 19th century a major tragedy. Contrary to popular belief, these Jews of Lithuania were not ‘wandering’. They hoped to spend a few years in South Africa, save up sufficient for their rehabilitation at home, and go back to the village for which they had a nostalgic longing. In the end, however, the lure of South Africa was too strong for many and they only came back take their families with them.

In common with the rest of the immigrant population during the diamond- and gold-rush period, there were occasionally black sheep among the Lithuanian Jews, men who forgot their families at home, succumbing to the temptations of a new gold-crazy land. As late as 1904 the proportion of males to females among Jews in South Africa was around 26,000 males to 12,000 females. Sometimes a bride would be sent out to a single South African immigrant whom she had not met before.

By 1884 a Hebrew correspondent from the little Lithuanian town of Neustadt-Sugind, was able to report that extensive emigration to South Africa was taking place from the towns and villages of Lithuania. In 1884, there was already a number of Jews who had come back to their homes either on visits or for good from the fabulous South Africa. Many of them, he wrote, "returned to the land of their birth bringing with them sizeable fortunes." He went on to say, in the flowery Hebrew style of the day:

"These migrants gave me mighty and exciting news about South Africa, that it is a land blessed and happy, where nature bestows upon its inhabitants its bounties with a generous hand, and with great and generous abundance. Every man attends to his labours diligently and finds a reward for his toil.

Most of our brethren who come there by the skin of their teeth, naked as on the day of their birth, are being shown mercy by the existing Jewish settlers the moment they put their foot on the shores of Africa. With the help of this generosity they acquire a few pounds’ worth of goods and little trinkets and they begin to trudge round the towns and villages with their merchandise. The natives who own the lands are by nature very human and love everybody. After they (the Jews) save a little sum they turn from peddling on back to trading on a bigger scale, travelling in wagons drawn by ten oxen, from place to place and from village to village. They buy ostrich feathers, sheep and cattle."

Last image: Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital was known to the Jews of Lithuania as “the Jerusalem of Africa”. The road leading there was nicknamed Der Yiddishe Gass.

[rawrsatthetree]

Personal rant ahead, I’ve just been think about this a lot and really needed to get my thoughts down!

*****************

I have so many weird feelings towards the devorak’s especially with all the discourse involving them recently. Ok so some back ground on my family is my name is Ilona, I was named after my grandmother who like all of my family on my dads side immigrated from Germany. Now I know what a lot of people are think is shut up white girl your American. Like ya but my family are very recently American. Following my fathers maternal side I’m only the second generation to be born here and every other side except my mom’s mom’s father I’m the third. The really crazy thing about all of this tho is my family isn’t even German! One of my great aunts isobsessed with genealogy and discovered that my great grandparents that immagrated from Germany where origanly from areas like Romania and Estonia but at some point they changed their names to common German names and immigranted to Germany! Now considering the time period we all believe this is highly suspicious. And it’s just so weird to have these characters that look like they could easily be part of my family (red hair, fair skin, freckles, blue eyes, bumped and hooked noses) whose names are like mine. Like I pronounce Ilya like I pronounce my name and no one will take that from me! It just makes me wish I knew more about my family but everyone I could ask is either dead or very secretive and private! It’s not like I can just show up at my Oma’s house and be like hey so why did you and Opa change your names to Paul and Mitsy!? Any family secrets you want to tell me Oma? Maybe Ilona would’ve told me! But she died BEFORE I WAS BORN! We all have some theories but you know some actual closure would be nice! So as far as I’m concerned Ilya and Pasha don’t really know much about they’re family either except some vague ideas about where they might be from seeing as their parents were world travelers. I really relate to how Portia instantly cling to her long lost Aunt like that’s exactly how I feel about my great grandparents and my other great aunt wanting desperately to be close to them when they’ve kept us at arms length for what ever reason! It’s just so weird to relate to characters that seem so familiar that everyone else is so sure about who they are when you don’t even know why they’re so familiar to you!

[alatismeni-theitsa]

One thing I love about your account is that you challenge all of what I thought being Greek meant. Like growing up, I always felt bad about myself because my skin was pale, and I was always told all Greeks have olive skin. I never liked my nose because I felt it didn’t look like what the media portrays Greek noses to look. Like even looking at my mom and papou’s noses, I just have a different one. I’ve always just been insecure, feeling like I could never look Greek enough.

Ya su! :D Big answer incoming, brace yourselves! 

From your question I understand you are a Greek of diaspora and your mother was a second generation Greek immigrant. I have received plenty of messages here from Greeks of diaspora who have told me “I am pale/I have blue eyes/I am blond and I don’t feel like a Greek!” Really, I should make a tag! It’s so strange how foreigners make us feel like we don’t belong in our own ethnicity! North Europeans and Americans make even us, who live in Greece feel like our heritage doesn’t belong to us! “You can’t possibly be the same!” they say. No, we are not the same. However we come from a long continuous line of people who tought the Greek heritage to their children for centuries. We speak the same language, we have many same traditions, we get inspired by the same nature. The antiquity doesn’t exist in a vacuum and it never stopped being a part of us. 

That’s why I encourage proper representation of Greeks, especially on American media, so false images stop being circulating. It’s not exactly racist what’s happening but it has resulted in many Greeks straight up being told “you don’t even look Greek, why you speak on Greek issues?” That enrages me EVERY.FUCKING.TIME.

Because to tell you the truth, Greeks couldn’t be further from the stereotype  “dark olive skin with curly black hair”! The majority, especially in the north, is pale, many times with big weird ass noses. 99% of us look white with the first guess. Of course there are some occasions where the stereotype is true (I don’t pretend there are no darker Greeks!) but those are rare. An American friend once saw a documentary about modern Athens and she was very surprised about how white we looked and asked herself “is this Germany??”

Even in the ancient art all over Greece we see pale/white people all over the place. I have been to museums all over the country and always seen them (where the colors are preserved) and I have posted some in my tag #ancient greek art as well. The Americans go “oh, those are fake because Greeks idolized white skin”. Sure, Jan, all Greeks all over the country made art with Caucasian white people because they were all in a secret white supremacy pact. Of course figures are beautified sometimes but it’s crazy to assume Greeks did everything in their power not to depict their own people accurately. I have this post (link) where I discuss that ancient Greeks weren’t that different from us today, with sources of studies showing our DNA hasn’t changed much. It’s to debunk the “ancient Greeks were darker than the modern ones”, which is used to depict our ancient gods and people very dark in modern art.

Foreigners also focus on the mixes with other people Greeks had in order to justify how we are dark. “But they are close to Africa sooo...” No. This argument doesn’t make much sense and people who use it know jack shit about our history and demographics and don’t have any common sense. It’s true though that mixes have played a part in our history and our appearance so it’s good to speak about those.

Greeks in the North (Athens and up) have mostly been mixing with Slavs and Germanic people because it’s easier for us to go to each other’s country by foot, and we just are close to each other. Plus, the history of the Balkans is very interesting and full of mixes and immigration! We also have mixed (I don’t know to what extent) with the Turks, who are Mongolic in nature and come north of Greece as well.   

People from the Peloponnise can be darker but still they look hella white (as I was told by Peloponnisian friends and as I have noticed myself). People in the south islands are more likely to have some Arab DNA but generally no one has observed that they look different than the rest of Greeks. (I haven’t seen it or heard it ever in my life. Other Greeks, correct me if I am wrong). You can’t tell which person comes from just by looking at them. 

Your struggle is understandable and I would like to give some suggestions to overcome it and be more comfortable in your own heritage. Perhaps you do some of these things anyway but there is no harm in listing them!

1) Search historically important Greeks and see their portraits. Seriously, do it! You may find yourself looking a little bit like them. You will surely have one thing common with them since they are usually pale :P Sometimes they may have non Greek names (Karlota, Suzanna, Emilia) but it was a trend for the rich families of the 19th century to give such names to children. I mean if you find a non-Greek name investigate if they are Greek or not because they actually might be. In my tag #Greek people you will find photos and portraits of Greeks from old times!

2) Read the history of Greece. All of it, not just from 300 BC to 100 AC as most foreigners do. Preferably, find works that have someone Greek as a writer or supervisor (because Greeks usually try to depict accuratelly what happened), or writers who truly feel Greece, like Richard Clogg. Read about Greek old allies and old enemies, about who we trade with, about where we immigrated, where we went to study to see what are the most likely mixes. Obviously, every kind of mix can happen but for numbers that matter you got to know the historical trends. It’s gonna be a journey that will help you feel your Greek side more and have answers ready when someone claims you don’t look Greek.   

3) Learn more Greek. The Greek language is logical but also stupid and funny, expressing the spirit of the people who made it. Learning Greek means learning how Greeks think. We have 20+ weird phrases to playfully say someone is gay, like “he flogs the dolphin”, “he shakes the pear tree” etc. We have phrases that stem from war and pirate raids and... hating the Turks, our colonizers :P We have many Mediterranean expressions like calling a mole “olive” or saying “I am in an open sea” (”πελάγωσα”) when we feel lost, or saying “he pressed my oil out” when someone tires us. I am very passionate about Greek so you can message me any time with any question about it! 

4) Learn where your family comes from. I mean the exact place/town, the geographical compartment. Learn the specific dances and traditional costume of that area from youtube videos or a Greek community in your area! See if the people in your area were great warriors, great merchants, great wine producers. See if there are any Greek heroes of the 1821 revolution coming from your place! Learn the song “Πώς το τρίβουν το πιπέρι” and the weird ass dance that comes with it, which Greek archeologists didn’t even hesitate to dance in a Mycenaic tomb!

5) Meet more Greeks! Through groups on insta or fb, through Tumblr blogs etc. Watch youtubers of Greek diaspora as “Greek in Town” or the comedian Basile! Maybe there is one Greek community near you area and you can pay a visit for festivals! 

6) Cook Greek food. If your grandparents and mum know recipes, take them as if they are gold. It’s a great way to get familiar with the local Greek ingredients and the Greek palette. Replace your soul with feta if you can xD 

7) Read Greek modern literature, even translated. Elitis, Sahtouris, Seferis, Venezis, Papadiamantis, Mirivilis, Delta, Empirikos, Zei, Kazantzakis are only a few of the literary gems Greeks have to offer. Enjoy good writing, the Greek perspective, and get to know the newer Greek society in a unique and authentic way. Here is a list with more of them (link).

8) Be proud. Be proud of a people who endured earthquakes, wars, genocide, famine, occypation, slaughters and slavery and can still stand. In every anniversary of ww1, ww2 and grecoturkic war, in our schools we sing prideful songs and hang posters with our war heroes, always standing proud. The students and the army parade in the streets, the small childrean wearing traditional costumes. Being proud is one key element of being Greek. 

Of course I don’t mean in a nationalistic/facist tone! We also celebrate the fall of the Greek junta of 1967 - which was financed by the US - and we are proud for it! And we fought German nazis. So no such ideology is welcome. Because we have so many things to be proud of (such long history!) foreigners equate our pride with nationalism. That is not the case for a healthy Greek mind who knows Greek history.

Ok, that’s all! Thank you for making it this far and reading what I had to say! I wish you a great cultural journey and I remind you that my DMs and Asks are open if you ever need anything! 

[letslearndeutsch]

Why Learn German?

Why learn German? My choice to learn German is a truly personal one. Ever since being assigned a family tree project in high school, I have had an interest in genealogy and my family's history. My mom's family, on both sides, immigrated from Germany during the 1800's (at different times, of course). However, our family's German language was lost along the way. During WWII, my grandparents and their families were part of the 12 million German-Americans living and working in the United States. My great-grandparents were told they were not to speak German in the home. Additionally, schools were told not to allow any German in the classroom. In the end, my grandparents grew up without a huge part of their heritage.  Now, in their 80's, my grandparents have books and letters, written in German, that they can not read. These items are key pieces to my family's history and their secrets are yet to be unlocked. 

Why does all of this matter now? In recent weeks I have come to a very simple, yet profound, conclusion. I've always been, and will always be, (half) German. It's who I am. It's in my blood- literally. Certainly, that should not have come as a surprise to me. Right? In many ways, it didn't. However, living in a global pandemic and worrying about the health and safety of your elderly grandparents will shine a huge spotlight on what truly matters. Once your find yourself without work or income, facing empty store shelves, and are left to quarantine away from your loved ones in your home for a month or more (a month and counting at the time of writing), your perspective begins to change. 

Now, to be fair, I've wanted to learn a new language for quite some time. In fact, one item on my bucket list is to be bilingual by my 40th birthday. However, I've wasted a lot of time going back and forth about which language I would study. In addition to German, I have considered Spanish, Hebrew, and Chinese all for different reasons. Many of those reasons were centered on where my life and work were in that moment. However, the one thing that will never change is my heritage. The history of my family will always remain the same. So, here I am. I invite you to follow my journey.

Let's Learn Deutsch together, shall we?

[icebabey]

Here we go...

Swedish and Norwegian:

On both sides of my family I have heavy Swedish and (as we recently learned) Norwegian ancestry. My ancestors on both my mom's and dad's sides of the family immigrated from Sweden to America in the mid-late 1860's. Makes up most of my ancestry actually.

German:

My Great-Grandmother's grandparents immigrated from Germany to America.

Irish:

On my dad's dad's side, I have Irish ancestors who immigrated to Virginia. Thats all we know about them.

English:

Idk where it came from, but I know that I'm a bit English.

So yeah. I'm mostly Scandinavian with a little bit of German and Irish and a tiny bit English.

[elumish]

I live in a pretty religious area, and my great-great-grandfather led a group that kicked the priest out of their village and then founded the 'Free school', the first non-religious school in the area. It still exists today.

Anonymous said:My great uncles and aunts, and cousins on my dad's side that my family rarely talks to is from a very small town in Ohio. They are definitely rednecks. One time it was a family birthday party and my cousin (who I'd never met before and looked like uncle sy from Duck Dynasty) threw some guys chainsaw in a lake right beside the pavilion we were in. Then, I went with some other cousins to go see this statute of Mothman, which is an urban legend in the U.S. There's even a movie about him.

Anonymous said:My mom tried to move to New Zealand 30 years ago. It didn't work, because their landlord recommended them an immigration lawyer, but the lawyer didn't recognize his name. This was because when the landlord had been a high NZ government official, he'd been involved in smuggling weapons to another country during their civil war, and then he was found out and had to change his name and go into hiding. He was a good landlord, though. Always gave people their change when the washing machine ate it.

smallhomerepairsviking said:My grandfather's name got changed when he was about 8 years old. My great grandmother Nina, who was Jewish, had him out of wedlock, probably with a Gentile who no one talks about, and named him George (???? Why George? weird). After emigrating to China from Russia (bc pogroms), Nina met and married David, who was a US Navy officer, and they changed George's name to David also.

Anonymous said:My great-grandfather, a factory worker in Nazi Germany during WWII and also a communist par excellence, came this close to getting shot by the Nazis for literally going like, ''Well Stalin gon kick his ass now lmao'' in the workplace when Hitler invaded Russia. Lucikly, he was saved at the very last moment by this 4'10'' tall bamf who would later become my great-grandmother.

Anonymous said:My grandparents lived through the parition of 1947 between what is now India and Pakistan and my paternal grandfather witnessed 7 out of his 8 sisters be killed in front of him and the last sister and him only survived because they hid beneath the corpses of their siblings 

frenchtoastpanda said:My great-great-great-grandfather invented a yacht race. (Back when yacht meant sailboat). I think people still race in it today.

Anonymous said:My great uncle once joined our country's Defence Force bc he wanted the coat

[dirk-dreamer]

20 Questions~!

i was tagged by @ofgodsandllamas thanks lovely!! <3

Name: jessica

Nicknames: jessy, jess

Zodiac sign: taurus. idk i never really thought about it when i was younger but i definitely think traits of taurus fits me? i really do love my sign now though. (i’m stubborn as fuck, i love order and i hate, hate hate change, introvert to the max, sometimes can’t see that something else is better because i am so focused on things staying the same, very loyal.)

Height: 5′4″ fun fact i was convinced for like 10 years that i was 5′6″ only it turns out i’m not

Orientation: ace who likes girls

Ethnicity: lmao who knows. mixed african american-caucasian, with some hispanic. and probably german/russian too bc my great-grandparents immigrated from germany to russia and then to kansas.

Favorite fruit: mmm i’m kind of basic but i love oranges, strawberries, grapes, bananas, and apples. the fruits like kiwis and mangos and shit are to much for me

Favorite season: summer/fall, the period of time where it seems like everything is timeless and happy and the weather is excellent and perfect and it’s just good times and late nights

Favorite book series: YOOOO BOY @lilithpleasant got me hooked on the “all for the game” series by nora sakavic and i like the raven cycle series even though i have yet to finish it. my all time favorite series is the circle trilogy by nora roberts bc it involves vampires and witches and the world ending and it’s just so great ok

Favorite flower: dude honestly idk i like lavender

Favorite scent: i think it’s called white diamonds or white pearl or something?? my mom used to wear it all the time when i was a kid and it’s like a instant nostalgia trip to a happier time in my life and i absolutely love it

Favorite color: purples, but especially soft, light lavender shades that i like to use obsessively in my themes and such. it’s the perfect pastel color.

Favorite animal: again i’m basic i love cats. just cats man.

Coffee, tea, or hot cocoa: mmmm my boi i love a cup of godiva coffee but my absolute favorite thing is tea. tea is so good for the soul.

Average sleep hours: i used to have awful insomnia and it got to the point last year that i was sleeping like 2 hrs a night and going to work and i wanted to die but now i get a good 6-8 hrs which seems like it’s never enough i could probably sleep 24 hrs and be happy honestly

Cat or dog person? CATS they purr and do the thing with their claws and snuggle and purr

Favorite fictional characters: for fucks sake why would u ask this of me do u want me to suffer

honestly i have so many i can’t think right now but i would think it’s safe to say all of the leda clones from the show orphan black is a good start <3

Number of blankets you sleep with: bc it’s winter in this barren ass state, i have a comforter but i also have 2-3 blankets that i use or toss off at will during the night. i also sleep with a fan on me.

Dream trip: dude hmm i’m torn between england, which i’ve always wanted to visit and soak up the culture and some place with not as many people so i could breathe. maybe alaska or someplace like sweden or iceland or somewhere to see the northern lights???

Blog created: it’s been almost 2 years on this blog, but in all honestly i’ve had simblr for closer to 5 or more years, i think. i moved dirk-dreamer to a separate email account 2 years ago because it was originally a side blog under my personal. i’ve been here too long. :O

Number of followers: 2035!!! oh my goodness and i can’t believe it you guys are a blessing and the best and thank you for sticking around with me, even though my actual gameplay pics are few and far in between and i am often overwhelmed by real life. thank you for everything. <3

i tag @lilithpleasant @simper-fi @ove51 @aveirasims @robotfishes @thecrimsonsparkles @ciruelabob @ofpixels @chalkmetal @boolparty @berry-pixels @kiinuu @mayberries @keoni-chan + anyone else who would like to join :)

[retireearlyandtravel]

New Post has been published on https://www.retireearlyandtravel.com/ancestrydna/

AncestryDNA How I Discovered an Amazing New Family

AncestryDNA

Do you ever wonder where you came from? I mean beyond the stories told to you by relatives. Do you wonder where your ancestors were living 500 years ago? I became very curious after my parents died. I was the youngest of four children. My siblings and I were going through our parent’s house deciding who got what. Instead of arguing over china or crystal I had my eye on something else. There were a lot of really old photos and a bunch of papers written in  German that we found in my parent’s attic. I told my siblings that I would like those. No one else was interested, so they were all mine. Before this house was my parents, it was my grandparent’s home, so some of the papers and photos were very old.

My siblings and I in 1999

Finding Something that Peeked My Curiosity

I had some of the more interesting of the papers I found in the attic translated from old German to German and then to English. It is difficult to find someone who reads old German. Those papers turned out to be the emigration papers for my mom’s great-grandparents and their children. The papers gave the family permission to emigrate from Prussia (Germany) to North America. After finding these papers, I began a search for more information. In the 1990’s there wasn’t a lot of genealogy information online. I had to post questions to internet boards (sort of like an online classified) and hope that somewhere in Europe just the right person would see my post and answer. Well, it took a few years, but I finally got a reply from someone who knew of my family. He said that there were people with my mother’s maiden name living in town, and it was the town my family had emigrated from.

  Getting Help from a Friend I Met on the Internet

My contact in this small town talked to my distant relatives. After emailing my contact in Germany back and forth for a couple of years discussing genealogy and my family, we finally decided to visit Germany. My husband, son, daughter and I took this trip in 2006. We were able to meet with long lost cousins in Eastern Germany. I still had family with my grandfather’s surname living in the same house that my 9th great grandfather bought around 1520. This part of my family was very involved in the church. Most of them were priests and later pastors. Because the church kept such good records, we were able to find lots of information about them.

The house in eastern Germany that my family owned since the early 1500’s (circa 2006)

Inside the gates of the house (circa 2006)

A Visit to Germany

While we were in Germany we visited the Churches that they were pastors of.  We found most of their graves. They lived very close to Martin Luther (leader of the Reformation), in a neighboring town, and were followers of his. My great maternal grandmother was from the same area, and we were able to find the house she lived in as a child. We even found old paintings of my relatives stored away in one of the churches. The trip was amazing. My kids even found visiting cemeteries fascinating because they knew they were related to these German people.

One of the graveyards of my ancestors

Keith and our son bringing out one of the paintings of my ancestor in church storage

My German cousins poising in front of paintings of our distant grandfathers.

These church records contained handwriting of my distant grandfathers

We tried to find information about my dad’s family, but to this day we have not found anything. My maiden name was Radermacher (which means wheel maker in German). What we knew of my dad’s side of the family was that my grandfather’s family came from Germany and my Grandmother immigrated to the US when she was 13 from Austria. This German/Austrian ancestry is important to know because of what I’m about to tell you.

The Best Christmas Present

Fast forward to 2014. My husband is trying to think of a good Christmas present for me when he sees an ad for an AncestryDNA kit. He thought wow, Tina would love this. It will show her exactly how much of her DNA is what ethnicity. He was right, I loved the DNA idea, and I sent in my sample a few days after Christmas. We were expecting my results to show that I am 90% German or Eastern/Western European.

It’s now February, and we are sitting on a plane in Los Angeles waiting to depart for a trip to Guatemala. My husband’s phone alerted him that he got an email. He quickly looks at the sender and sees one is from Ancestry. He looked at the email and it was my DNA results. Keith read the email.  He said,  “this is weird; you are more Greek or Italian than anything else”. Of course, I was puzzled.

Before the plane took off, I called my brother. He and I are the only remaining siblings alive out of my parents and four children. I told him my results and asked if we bought a kit right now and had it sent overnight to him would he do the test so we can see he’s the same? He said sure. We sent him the test, he took it, sent it back to AncestryDNA, and then we waited.

My Brothers Results

After about seven weeks, the results were in. My husband and I looked at them together. My brother was 88% Eastern/Western European. He had no Greek or Italian, but more importantly, he did not share enough DNA with me to be my full brother. I was shocked. All kinds of things started going through my mind. My oldest sister was 19 when I was born, so I wondered if I was hers and my mom and dad raised me as their own. My brother swore this was not the case as he was 16 when I was born. He saw my mom pregnant and remembers the day she went to the hospital to have me.

    At the time a friend of mine’s husband was the head geneticist at UCLA. I asked him to look at our results. He said that we shared one parent but did not share the same two parents. My mom was my mom. That left my dad. No one in my living family knew anything about this, so I had no leads. For the next two-plus years, I searched for who my dad might be, but I was unsuccessful. I wrote to the families of my mom’s friends, to find out what nationality they were in search of that one Italian or Greek. All of this lead nowhere!

The Email That Would Be the Start of Something Great

Then last year my husband logged into our Ancestry account and found an email waiting for me. Emails are not unusual. Because we have such a large family tree publically posted, we get contacted by distant relatives when they see we are a match. However, this email was different. It wasn’t a family tree match but rather a DNA match. As soon as I looked at the DNA match, I knew this was big. The person that wrote me was Cheryl. We shared the same amount of DNA on the same number of DNA segments as my brother and me.

First Communication

When you email someone on Ancestry, they do not get your personal information, unless you give it to them. In my first reply to Cheryl, I gave her my email address and hoped she would email me instead of messaging through Ancestry. I didn’t want to scare her and have her stop communicating with me which is why I wanted her email. She did email me back. It took a lot emailing back and forth before I showed her my brother’s DNA results next to hers. At first, she thought we were first cousins. She had done her DNA looking for her grandfather’s family since she never met him and did not know who he was. As soon as she saw the results, she said are you telling me you think we are sisters?

  Cheryl and I were/are the same age. She also had an older brother and an older sister. She broke the news to them. They were very receptive. The AncestryDNA test is not a legal paternity test so just to be 100% sure, we decided to submit our DNA to a lab that could show if we all shared the same father. Again, there was waiting, almost two agonizing weeks. When the results came in, they verified the AncestryDNA findings. Our family instantly doubled. I had two new sisters, one brother, ten nieces, and nephews and a great-nephew. I knew for sure the identity of my biological dad.

My biological father

Putting the Pieces Together

It took a while to put the pieces together on how my mother and biological father knew each other. Their family moved around a lot. But when I was conceived, they lived in the same small town my family lived. Their father was 24, and my mom was 40. My mom owned a restaurant that my new family always thought their grandmother owned. So far, record searching does not show they ever owned or worked at the restaurant. After seeing a picture of my biological father, my brother thinks he knew him but does not remember him working at the restaurant. The oldest two new siblings remember going to this small restaurant often with their dad. My mother’s name was Caroline.

My new siblings said there was always a rumor in their family that their dad’s step-brother had got a girl in town named Carol, pregnant but that she was married. We now realize it was a made up story because my biological father was also married when I was conceived. Therefore the step-brother was helping cover up what would have been an extramarital affair.

My New Siblings Lived in Several Areas Growing Up

My new siblings lived in several states when they were young, but as the younger two entered high school, the family decided to settle down permanently. They chose a neighboring town to mine. They moved back to Michigan where they would be closer to their mom’s side of the family.  My siblings always wondered why they did not go back to my hometown since their parents met and married when living there. We assume that he wanted to make sure the two families did not run into each other.

My biological dad died at age 51 of cancer. I would have been 27. My mother died the following year of heart disease. I would have no idea if my mother knew my biological dad had moved back to the area let alone that he was sick. At the time he was struggling with cancer my mom was struggling with emphysema and heart disease.

The Big Day

When we found out about my new siblings, my husband and I were scheduled to be in the US for three weeks, visiting four states. One of my new sisters still lives in the area where they grew up. Keith and I would be visiting Keith’s dad and my brother both of whom live within 25 minutes of my new sister. We were scheduled very tight trying to see all of our existing family, but we managed to free an afternoon to meet all my new family in person.

On May 2017 I met my new brother and two sisters along with a lot of my nieces and nephews for the first time in person. My new found siblings and their kids have always been very close, so it was easy for them to get the family together in one place on short notice. My sister Cheryl had made me a photo album covering the 56 years I had missed out on. The title is Life’s Little Surprises. My sister Susan got me a flower arrangement that said, “It’s a girl.”  We talked about their childhood, and they told me about my dad. My brother Freeland was worried about what kind of person I would be.  In minutes those worries were gone.  It was an emotional day and a far too short of a visit.

The Wonders of Social Media

Many of my nieces and nephews reached out to me through Messenger as soon as they got the news from their moms that they had another aunt. It is one thing to find a new family but quite another to find one that is so close to each other. I am so blessed to have found such a wonderful family.

Tina playing with her new great nephew

Before meeting my siblings in person, I had seen many pictures of them and their families that they sent me. They also sent me numerous pictures of my dad. I did not think I looked like my new siblings until we took this picture in my sister Sue’s backyard. When we went back inside the house to look at the picture I was shocked at the resemblance. I looked more like them then I did in the family I grew up with.

My first picture with my new siblings

The family I grew up in (circa 1972)

This is Not Unusual

When I called Ancestry to ask questions about Cheryl’s and my results, they said that this happens more than you think. If my dad knew he was not my father, he accepted it and raised me as his own. He always showed me, love. My brother said he always thought I was dad’s favorite. He was there to play with me and to care for me, so he was my dad. Finding my biological dad does not replace my dad or make him any less important. I just know now that I had two dads. Finding out that I have three more siblings is awesome. We all wish we had known each other a lot sooner, but this timing might have been for the best. They do not believe their mother ever knew about me.

In the two-plus years, it took to find my siblings; AncestryDNA results got more detailed. I now know that I am Italian, specifically from Sicily and Southern Italy.

My new siblings and I have two dreams. The first is to find our paternal, fathers’ family. Our father’s mother never married our father’s dad and never told our dad his fathers name, but she did give my sisters a name before she died. That name has not appeared yet on any DNA matches, but we are always watching. Our second dream is to visit Southern Italy and Sicily together. Unique memories that we can make together and will last forever!

Sicily

  A Dream, to Travel to my New Found Heritage

In the beginning, AncestryDNA led me to visit Eastern Germany to explore my roots, then I took an AncestryDNA test and now I want to visit Sicily and Southern Italy. With AncestryDNA able to trace your origins to 350 regions around the world – 5x more regions than other DNA tests – it lets you discover your ethnic origins, and can inspire you to visit the countries of your ancestors for a more meaningful, authentic travel experience. The next trip you take can be more than a destination – it will be to explore your history.

Do you have a similar story? Have you done your AncestryDNA and found out something you were not expecting. I would truly love to hear your story. Please use the comment section below to tell me.

There is a great AncestryDNA promotion that is running now through April 29th. You can purchase a DNA test for only $59 (regularly $99) by clicking here. This promotion is restricted only to the U.S.

(This post was produced in part as an affiliate partnership with Ancestry)

[anglenews]

How a white supremacist learned to leave hatred behind

December 23, 2017 | 10:16pm | Updated December 23, 2017 | 11:01pm Christian Picciolini had gone to sleep just after midnight when a noise outside his window woke him up. The 17-year-old had started many fights and beaten up a lot of black people, anti-racists — pretty much anyone who wasn’t just like him. He had also recently acquired an arsenal, including an AK-47, a 9mm pistol, a rifle and a sawed-off shotgun. Thinking one of his victims was out for revenge, he grabbed the shotgun. Taking a deep breath, he put his finger on the trigger, flung open the curtain, and found himself pointing the barrel directly into the face of his mother. “She sank down into the bushes weeping and quivering,” he writes. “‘Why do you have a gun? What life are you living?’” Piccolini was living a life of violence and destruction, he writes in his new memoir, “White American Youth” (Hachette Books), out Tuesday. Between the ages of 14 and 22, he was first a member, then a leader, of the white power movement in America, spreading the white supremacist and Nazi doctrine, and hurting anyone who disagreed with him. Picciolini was born in Chicago in 1973 and grew up bouncing between the suburb of Oak Forest and town of Blue Island, Ill. His parents, both hairdressers, were recent immigrants from Italy who worked long hours, leaving him with his grandparents during the day. He would later blame his embrace of hate groups and violence on his feelings of abandonment. Relentlessly bullied in school, the one bright spot in his childhood was the birth of his brother, Alex, in 1983. “When my mother came home from the hospital with Alex, my heart swelled with pride,” he writes. “It was as if I’d known him my entire ten-year life. He was a part of me, and I was a part of him.” The two played together all the time. When Alex was two, Picciolini gave him a doll called My Buddy. From that day forth, the two called each other “Buddy.” “Buddy filled a huge void in my life,” he writes. “I felt I had a family member who wanted to spend time with me.” Picciolini was 14 when he met Clark Martell, the 26-year-old founder of Chicago Area Skinheads (CASH), the “first organized white-power skinhead crew in the United States.” Picciolini was smoking a joint with a friend when Martell, emerging from a car, stormed over to him, grabbed the joint and stomped it out. “Don’t you know that’s exactly what the Communists and Jews want you to do, so they can keep you docile?” he said. Martell then launched into a speech about Picciolini’s regal ancestry and the greatness of Roman warriors, especially Centurions. He wrote “Centurion” on a piece of paper, instructed Picciolini to research it, then told him to “come find me and tell me what you’ve learned about yourself and your glorious people.” Picciolini saw Martell as the first adult to discipline him for good reason — the first to care. He swore off weed and hung around Martell every chance he got. He absorbed his beliefs as well as his fashion sense, dressing in Doc Marten boots and suspenders and shaving his head. But in early 1988, Martell was arrested for beating a woman who had left his group and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Picciolini never saw his mentor again, but he was lured in even more by the danger of the scene’s criminal element. As he went to racist rallies and concerts, developing a love of white supremacist music and its teachings, he noticed that Martell’s absence created a void. Without a leader, the gatherings usually erupted into beer-fueled chaos and infighting. At just 15, Picciolini decided to fill that void. He rented a post office box and began communicating with skinhead, Nazi and racist groups across the country. When one group sent him a piece of white power literature, he immediately copied it and sent it to other groups, becoming a conduit for white supremacists nationwide. “I missed no opportunity,” he writes, “to market the ideology of white supremacy.” He also embraced violence, seeking out fights. In school, when a black student deliberately bumped him, he split open the student’s nose with his fist and slammed his head into the steel doors of the school’s lockers. After he was expelled, he returned and spray-painted ‘Ni–ers Go Home’ in two-foot-high white letters across the school’s front doors, he writes in the book. Life at home, meanwhile, grew tense. His mother started snooping through his things and found a T-shirt emblazoned with a swastika, which led to a horrible screaming match. His mom brought in Buddy, then 6, to try to appeal to Picciolini’s warmer side, but her older son slammed the door shut. When he heard further knocking, he threw the door open and screamed, infuriated, “Leave me the f–k alone and stay the hell out of here!” Christian and Buddy But it wasn’t his mother knocking. It was Buddy. Picciolini tried to comfort him, but Buddy ran away sobbing. As Picciolini burrowed deeper into white supremacy, he distanced himself from his beloved brother, treating him as a nuisance and pushing him away. A leader in the movement by 17, Picciolini formed a white power band of his own. First called White American Youth (WAY), then Final Solution, they became the first American white power band to play in Germany. That same year, Picciolini met Lisa, a “nice little Irish Catholic girl” and a non-racist, through school friends. Aware of Picciolini’s reputation and disliking his views, she nevertheless fell for the charismatic and good looking teen. Making out in his car early on, she noticed the shadow of a swastika etched into the condensation of his car window. “Can I ask you something?” she said. “Of course,” he replied. “Why do you have so much hate inside you?” she asked. Caught off guard, he lied. “I don’t hate anyone,” he said. “I just love what I stand for so much that I’m willing to protect it from those who want to do it harm.” “I knew my answer was bullshit,” he writes. “It was a common practice within the movement to always spin our hateful agenda and wrap it up in a pretty little ‘white pride’ bow for the general public to consume. The truth was, we hated everyone who wasn’t like us.” Still, Lisa probed deeper. “But then why aren’t you doing anything positive,” she replied. “All you do is say such horrible things and get in horrible fights and hurt people. When you’re with me, you’re so caring and gentle, but all I can wonder is, which one is the real you?” Over time, Picciolini kept his racist activities out of her sight, and her feelings for him overrode any sense of disgust or confusion. Picciolini proposed marriage in December 1991, just after his 18th birthday, and they were married the following June. They moved into their own apartment and had two sons in short order, with Picciolini working full time at a pizza place to support the family. Meanwhile, he began to have doubts — “the first rational thoughts I’d allowed myself in years,” he calls them — about the movement. In September 1992, he attended a massive white power rally in Pulaski, Tenn., that drew far more counter-protestors than participants. The protestors reminded him of people from his past, including one friend’s gay brother and some black schoolmates, people who had treated him well. “I suddenly felt guilty and out of sorts,” he writes. “I was starting to question what this struggle was about.” In an effort to better support his family, he opened a record store selling white power punk. But these bands weren’t plentiful or popular enough to sustain the store, so he also stocked anti-racist punk and other music as well. “This was a legitimate business, after all,” he writes. “I needed a diverse inventory that would bring paying customers.” He was shocked to see the same anti-racist punkers he used to feud with enter his store and buy music from him. Some even became loyal customers. One day a man he called “Black Sammy” came into the store with “three of his minions.” Sammy was the co-founder of a local anti-racist skinhead group called Skinheads of Chicago and the sight of him left Picciolini shaken. “My blood froze when I saw him in the doorway,” Picciolini writes. “We held each other’s stares for a territorially awkward fifteen seconds.” Sammy had formed his group in direct opposition to Martell’s. “I think you might be in the wrong place, Sammy,” Picciolini replied, his hand “hovering behind my back, near my [9mm].” After an awkward back and forth, Sammy asked about a few bands. Picciolini said he didn’t want any trouble. Sammy asked if he took credit cards and the tension slowly dissolved when they began discussing the actual music. Thirty minutes later, Sammy and his friends spent over $300 on records, making it Picciolini’s largest sale to date. “Before I knew it, we were shaking hands, and a bizarre smile was forming on my face,” Picciolini writes. “What could I say? The ideological delusions that had led me so far astray were crumbling right before my eyes.” Over time, his racist beliefs were no match for his everyday reality, which found him interacting with a diverse assortment of people on a daily basis. He stopped selling white power music in the store and no longer considered himself an activist for the cause. But a white power concert in Wisconsin in August 1994 was the final straw. Less than an hour after it ended, an acquaintance he’d spoken to at the show was murdered in “a skirmish with black youths.” “I could no longer deny my growing disgust with this miserable existence I’d created,” he writes. “This life wasn’t for me anymore.” Still, certain parts of his life couldn’t survive his past. He and Lisa, fighting constantly, divorced when his second son was four months old. He moved back to his parents’ basement, but Buddy, now 11, ignored him. Any warmth between them was gone. Picciolini decided to rebuild his life. He got a temp job at IBM, which after a year and a half, became a full-time position in marketing and operations. Meanwhile, he used IBM’s tuition assistance program to attend DePaul University, where he got a degree in international business and international relations in 2005. Christian Picciolini in 2017AP His IBM colleagues never learned about his past, but he told his story for the first time publicly in 2002 while at DePaul. “I did it as part of an essay that I read aloud to [a] class,” he wrote in an email to The Post. “I broke down sobbing during it.” He expanded that essay into a graduate thesis, which became the first draft of this book. In 2009, he co-founded Life After Hate, an organization dedicated to helping people leave white supremacy. He participated in interventions, won an Emmy award for a PSA he produced for the group and left the organization earlier this year to focus on “building a global extremist intervention network for all types of extremism.” He and Lisa remained friends, and he is active in the lives of his sons, now 23 and 25. In 2002, he began a romantic relationship with a woman named Britton who worked in a different division of IBM, and they married in 2005. He also made peace with his parents, apologizing for the years of trouble and grief he caused them. One relationship, however, could not be repaired. Buddy grew into an angry teen. He drank, hung out with street gangs, and was arrested for marijuana and gun possession around 2001 or 2002. Offered community service, he demanded jail time instead, “to prove he was tougher than me,” Picciolini writes. He tried to talk to Buddy about his choices, but his own actions had removed any authority he might have had. “Who the f–k are you to tell me what to do? It’s not like you even remembered I existed until now,” Buddy countered. Buddy added another crushing blow. “My name is Alex,” he said. “I ain’t your buddy.” A year later, while driving around with a friend looking for weed one night, Alex was mistaken for members of a gang’s rivals and shot twice in the passenger seat, with one bullet hitting him in the femoral artery. He died just one month shy of his 21st birthday. Picciolini, now 44, still blames himself for Alex’s death. “I felt that his death was divine retribution for all the violence and hate I’d projected into the world,” Piccolini writes, “for the pain I’d inflicted on others for the color of their skin, and my misplaced idea that by hurting them, I could save myself.” Share this: Source http://www.anglenews.com/how-a-white-supremacist-learned-to-leave-hatred-behind/

[trekwithtaylor]

Country #36 - Germany

The Rain

After a few days at home, I’m on the road again! I’m going back to Europe for about a week where I’ll be visiting Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and France. I flew from Birmingham to Dallas this morning and then went to eat lunch with my Aunt Donna and grandparents before my flight to Frankfurt. Everything was going great until I got to the restaurant and realized that it now looked like I might not get on my flight to Frankfurt. I was flying on a family pass again, which if you have been reading the blog you know comes with its own source of stress. I’ve decided from here on out though that I’m only going to use them to fly out and then buy my tickets flying back to the U.S. to avoid getting stranded in a foreign country again (i.e. Italy)  as much as I can. Using a pass to fly out of the U.S. is also ideal because if you are lucky enough to get business class the flight out of the country is the one you need to sleep on.

All of that aside, I panicked at lunch attempting to find any other way I could get to Europe. Flights from Dallas to every other American Airlines hub in the U.S. all looked bad, so I was stuck flying out of DFW. I finally found a flight that looked okay, from Dallas to Amsterdam where I could then take a train to Frankfurt from. The problem was it was an hour earlier than my Frankfurt flight, so I had to leave lunch right after ordering and only just saying hi to everyone.

I got to the airport and went to the Amsterdam gate, by which time the direct flight to Frankfurt started to look like I would make it again. I asked the gate agent for his advice because it was such a toss-up situation, and I decided to, after all of that, just try for the original Frankfurt flight. Which, it turned out, was the right decision. I made it on and the person in the middle seat next to me ended up being a no-show which was so nice on such a long flight that was otherwise almost completely full.

I tried to sleep as much as I could and arrived in Frankfurt to a brand new Taylor Swift song - if you know me you know that this was a really big deal. I definitely had mixed feelings upon my first listen of Look What You Made Me do after a nine-hour flight while walking through the Frankfurt airport, but after a few listens it grew on me substantially and now I know all of the words so all is right in the world. Anyways, Taylor Swift news aside, I easily went through immigration and customs and took a bus to the other terminal where I then took the train into town.

After a short train ride, I arrived at the central station, which thankfully was within a five-minute walk from my hotel, Le Meridien Frankfurt. When I arrived I was greeted by Christina, who I had communicated with via email to arrange my stay. She was so kind, and we sat and had coffee (I had OJ) while waiting for my room to finish being prepared. I really enjoyed talking with her! I then met Anouschka, who showed me to my room along with Christina, and she was so sweet as well! She gave me a great introduction to the city that was so helpful for when I explored later in the day. While we were walking to my room they let me know that there was a surprise in the room, and I had no idea what to expect! The room itself was beautiful - it was huge with a TV that swiveled to face either side of the room, a giant sitting/desk area, and a great view out at the city as well. I still didn’t know what the surprise was, but then we entered the bathroom.

I was floored! Someone who works at the hotel is an artist, and she drew a map of the world on my bathroom mirror, with the countries that I had visited so far colored in and Germany highlighted. It was so thoughtful I couldn’t believe it! After an incredible introduction to the hotel and everyone who worked there, this was the icing on top of only the beginning of my stay. It was so sweet, and I am so thankful to them for everything. Thank you so much, again, to Le Meridien Frankfurt for sponsoring this night of my trip!

After the great introduction to my room I then promptly fell asleep for a few hours. I know it’s not the best thing to do after a flight, but it was very necessary to help me get through the day. I had a great nap and then set out to explore the city! I walked to the Main river where there was a really cool festival going on all along the water! My first stop for the day, though, was the Städel Museum. It had art from the 1800s to modern, which is my favorite range. I especially loved the modern art floor. It was my first art museum in a while (not counting the Vatican which I don’t because it is a whole different situation) and I was so excited to just relax and spend time walking through.

After the museum, I walked along the river through the festival! It’s things like this that just make me fall in love with Europe - a picturesque festival set along a river that I was not expecting in the slightest. I found a bratwurst for dinner before making my way to the main bridge, Eiserner Steg. From Eiserner Steg I took tons of pictures of the town as well as the river. I could tell that it was about to start pouring rain at this point - I called my dad to load the radar because mine was not working and he gave me a few minute prediction. Literally the second I put up my camera it started to pour. I found a ledge to stand under while I got my rain jacket out of my backpack. Here’s a tip - always carry a rain jacket in Europe, because you literally never know when it will rain and it allows you to keep walking. Mine also takes up less space than an umbrella and it’s not going to fly away.

It wasn’t just rain, though. After a few minutes of the pouring rain, it started to lightning as well. I made my way across town in spurts, stopping every few minutes to go in a store or stand under a large awning. I headed to Zeil, the main shopping street in Frankfurt. As it was almost night time shopping centers were really my only option for something dry and open. I stopped at Galeria Kaufhof Frankfurt An der Hauptwache. It was kind of like a Harrods or Saks with lots of floors and a food hall. I walked up to the panoramic top floor, but it wasn’t really an option to look out at due to the pouring rain.

After a few minutes of walking through I made my way next door to MyZeil. It was the coolest mall ever! I honestly have no idea what stores were in the mall, but I was just amazed by the architecture. It was curved glass and really hard to describe but here is a picture to help. I never thought I would think a mall in Frankfurt would be so cool but here we are! It was awesome, especially with the rain falling on it.

Eventually, the rain let up enough for me to walk to the idyllic old part of town, Römer. Römer is what a lot of Frankfurt looked like before World War II. It’s such a picturesque area and amazing to think what the city used to look like when it all looked like Römer. I also walked by the Frankfurt Cathedral which was obviously closed but very unique from the outside. From there I walked through the financial district of town, which Frankfurt is known for, on the way back to my hotel. I was still sopping wet from the rain, but it was definitely worth it to be able to see more of the city.

I arrived back at my hotel and after a long day and a lot of jet lag fell asleep pretty easily. I have a 7am train tomorrow to Luxembourg, but I had a great day exploring Frankfurt for the first time! I have a very mixed track record when it comes to visits to Germany, so I was very glad to have such a great trip to Frankfurt. I visited in the fifth grade on a choir trip with my mom and only remember good things about Germany, but my only other trip to the country was to Berlin with my brother last year. It was an absolute nightmare, and if you want my advice I would never visit Berlin if you have any choice in the matter. It is the only city in Europe I have truly had a horrible time in from start to finish. Not that it matters now, thankfully, because I had an incredible time in Frankfurt!

36 countries down, 161 to go.

For more information on Germany click here to read my guide.

To learn more about Le Meridien Frankfurt click here.