Wasserburg

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Wasserburg, Marianne's Roots?

November 10, 2001

Dear Friends and Family,

On Saturday, we left Bad Reichenhall in the light rain and snow and drove northwest. We passed a number of picturesque villages, towns, lakes and rivers. Well, they'd be picturesque if it wasn't so nasty out. Too bad. No pictures. The other disappointment on the trip was stale bakery goodies. We've become addicted to fresh sweets but on this Saturday, everything seemed to be day-old leftovers. And people think we don't suffer.

A month ago, we visited John's roots in Balsfjord Norway, the birthplace of his grandmother. Now we were going to visit Wasserburg, Marianne's birthplace. Her parents had fled Hungary at the end of World War II and reached Wasserburg when Marianne decided it was time for a debut. Maybe this makes Wasserburg more sprouting garden than roots but it has a special place in family history.

Wasserburg is an old walled city located on a peninsula almost surrounded by the Inn River. The outer wall of buildings faces the river and it's easy to imagine that they have done this for centuries. Inside is a pleasant, modern, Bavarian town, a real hometown rather than a tourist destination.

Our first destination was the apartment building where Marianne was born. Actually, I suppose she was really born in some sort of hospital but at the time the little family lived on the second floor of one of the buildings that faced the river. It seems this place has not changed much in the last fifty-some years. It's still pleasant.

For the rest of our Wasserburg tour, we started at the Tourist Information center. It's interesting that we've found TI's in almost every town we've visited. Usually we have three standard questions: What should we see in a one-day visit? Where should we stay? And, Where should we eat? Today, we could skip the first two and focus on restaurant recommendations. Predictably, we received good advice and the recommendation was picturesque with good Bavarian sausages and "wurst". Not diet food.

After our light lunch, we did the standard tour-of-a-church. Right across from the restaurant was the church where Marianne believes she was baptized. Outside it was plain and sandwiched between other buildings. Inside, most of the church was closed off by iron bars which made the already dark interior almost foreboding. After our eyes adjusted, we saw that the bars were protecting a large assortment of silver candelabra and other altar and church decorations. I wonder what the story is behind such opulence?

At the other end of the large, dark and opulence scale we ran into our smallest church so far. Inside, it was as bright and charming as one could imagine and could provide eight to 12 people a quiet little Bavarian retreat.

We took the long way home, past the Chimsee (lake). In principle, the lake view is wonderful: quaint villages and farms in the front and the Bavarian Alps in the background. Today, it took some amount of imagination to see past the clouds but I'm sure it's all there somewhere.

Our final extension was through the ski town of Reit im Winkl. This has to be one of the best town names so far. It also had one of the best town poles so far. The explanation on a sign by the pole said this was originally an indication of what shops and services were available in each small town. Today, we had to take this on faith because we failed to find any shop or service that was even open. I know we are travelling in the off-season but this is getting a little extreme.

So, we headed back to our Bad Reichenhall retreat after a very pleasant drive, even with snow, rain and clouds. Then we finished up with a dinner treat - Greek food. It must be time for us to move on because we both agreed that we could not order another sausage, wurst or snitzel.

Take care and think about where you were born.

John and Marianne

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Created November 19, 2001.

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