Tour of Poland, part 5

The last day of my Poland trip dawned on Saturday, 22 June.  After breakfast with the Janzens and goodbyes to the folks on the tour, I left my luggage in Lena’s room and we drove to the Warsaw-Modlin airport to drop off the rental car.  This was about a 30-minute drive to the north-northwest.  We returned to the central train station, right next door to the Palace of Culture, and set off walking around Warsaw. 

We walked around the Palace of Culture just a little bit but them made our way to Warsaw Old City, maybe about a mile to the north-northeast of the Palace of Culture.  It was another hot day.  We came into the old city via Castle Square, in front of Sigismund's Column, and walked towards Old Town Market Square where we ate pierogi at the same restaurant where I had dined with the tour group several days earlier.  Lena said the pierogi at this restaurant tasted very similar to the verenika her grandmother made and it was very nice to sit in the market and watch people.  It was a very nice meal and cost even less than McDonalds would have at home.

 

View in the Old City Market, Warsaw

View in the Old City Market, Warsaw

After this we visited a lot of the shops, walked around the narrow streets, had a horse-drawn carriage ride, and ate ice cream.  We visited St. John's Archcathedral, where Stanisław II Augustus, the last king of Poland and famous pianist Jan Paderewski are buried.  We also stopped in at the next-door church of the Gracious Mother of God.  We watched street performers including a woman beautifully playing a bandura (a bandura is a traditional Ukrainian instrument similar to a zither or a lute).

 

Bandura musician

The last goal I had on the whole trip was to find a Wedel Chocolate Café somewhere.  In the mid-19^th Century, Poland’s most famous chocolate confectionary was founded by Karl Ernst Wedel.  Wedel was an immigrant to Poland at the time from extreme northeast Germany.  While he was not a Mennonite, his last name was common among the Mennonites at Przechowka and would be very recognizable back home.  In fact, my great-grandmother’s maiden name was Wedel.  It’d look really good to come back home with a bunch of Wedel chocolate. 

 

E. Wedel Chocolate shop

Karl’s son Emil opened a chocolate salon in Warsaw towards the end of the 19^th Century which sold hot chocolate by the bucket load.  The company’s signature product, Bird’s Milk (Ptasie Mleczko) became THE standard confection item in Poland.  After just a bit of wandering around we were able to find a Wedel chocolate shop and I was able to buy a bunch of Ptasie Mleczko to take back home.

As we walked back in the direction of our hotel we stopped and looked in several huge churches including St. Anne's Church, the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and of St. Joseph (aka the Carmelite Church), the Church of St. Joseph of the Visitationists, and the Church of the Holy Cross (where Chopin’s heart is buried).  Finally, we decided to return to the Golden Tulip and call it a day.  Done with adventure, we stopped and ate dinner at the McDonalds in the Warsaw central train station. 

My trip to Poland to find the places where my ancestors lived was very successful.  I wanted to see as many of the places as possible which are/were associated with my Low German ancestors; this includes villages, cities, cemeteries, etc.  I also wanted to learn more about Polish culture and history and see how my Mennonite ancestors fit into that.  

This is my family tree going back to my great grandparents.  Of course, from this tree, my mother's ancestors were not Low German Mennonites.  Rather, they were of Swiss origin and therefore none of their ancestors lived in Polish Prussia at all.  My paternal ancestors, however, all were Low German and could all trace their ancestors back to Polish Prussia.

With the information currently available, I was able to build these family trees tracing back the roots of my paternal ancestors.  Andreas Ratzlaff and Susanna [Wedel] Ratzlaff were my dad’s paternal grandparents and Peter P. Penner and Margaretha [Wiens] Penner were his maternal grandparents. 

My Ratzlaff and Wedel ancestors

My Penner ancestors

My Wiens ancestors

After building the family trees, I needed to place these folks in locations.  I knew they all came from Prussian Poland and were members of various gemeinden there.  Using the GRANDMA database, as well as a lot of other records and traditional family information, I was able to place almost all of them in their respective gemeinden as well as identify which villages they lived in.  The most helpful thing for me was to actually place the family trees on maps of the Vistula delta-valley area so I could get a visual of where the ancestors lived. 

 

Ratzlaff family (with Wedel, Buller, Voth, etc) locations in the Vistula River delta-valley

Penner family (with Wiens, Lohrentz, etc) locations in the Vistula River delta-valley