Days in Glandorf

There was a severe thunderstorm at night. It just blew over the Ohio plains. When I looked out the window, there was grey-brown light, the trees were bent in the wind, and lightning was relentless. At home I'm used to there being a strike of lightning, then maybe ten to twenty seconds pause, then the next one. Here it was five to ten strikes a second, a constant stroboscope. Rather extreme. Germany is a little protected island of calm, I guess. We don't have really destructive storms, earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, or any of that stuff. Some river flooding is probably the worst it gets. Here, it's different. And I think I'll have to get used to paying at least some attention to the weather forecast.

I had some nice days here; I was even a bit sad to leave. I stayed at Don and Pat's. As I found out, in the late seventies they also had taken part in the mutual visits between the two Glandorfs. In the context of their visit they also had been in Munich, and even met my parents! In one of their photo albums, I then found a few very strange 70s pictures of my parents. Of course I photographed them, and I will hold them under my parents' noses and question them about their fashion choices.

My hosts' headstone on the right.

We did a little walking tour of Glandorf, seeing the church, the local monument, the school and so on. On the cemetery you can see all those northern German names, and some of the older headstones even have German inscriptions. Several of the families' names I recognized. One interesting quirk is that half the headstones were for people who are still living... Here people prepare their own graves, so that their families won't have to deal with it. I wonder what you think and feel when you do that.

Their neatly manicured garden.

I could see a lot of German Glandorf in American Glandorf. Nothing except the church directly resembles its counterpart, but in its neat and tidiness, in the way everybody cares for their home and meticulously keeps it in shape, in the peace and quiet of the place, I recognize a lot of good ol' Glandorf, Niedersachsen.

Here we go: My family,
back to 1667.

I brought my hosts a copy of our family tree. It goes back to the mid 1600s, and on it they can see the feller who emigrated to Ohio and started it all for the Jostpilles there. He was Don's great great grandfather, Johan Theodor Jostpille, born 1821 in Glandorf, Niedersachsen. This length of record by the way seems to be not too uncommon in farmer villages. Isn't it amazing that the only families that can present family histories comparable in length to those of nobility or aristocracy are, of all people, farmers from the middle of nowhere, where nothing ever changes, nobody ever moves somewhere else? You just dig out the records of the local church that has been around for centuries, and there it is!

Inspecting stuff.

Later we visited Dale and Elaine on the Jostpille farm. Some really impressive machinery there. What is the big tractor on my family's farm in northern Germany is the small tractor here. It was another reminder that some things are just on a different scale in the States. Or take the trucks. At home, an X5 is one of the bigger cars. Here, it looks tiny next to for example a Ford Super Duty. Which is what Dale is driving on the farm, by the way.

The barn.

He also showed me an old Welsh barn on his land. It is thought to be the only one of its kind in Ohio. It is not clear, however, whether it has already crumbled beyond restorability. It probably would be way too expensive anyway. I suggested that maybe some conservationist society could handle it. But a really beautiful thing, this.

Now I'm heading south towards Florida. I'm curious how I will take the heat in all my gear. So far it seems I'm the only biker in America wearing that stuff. The others around here ride in t-shirts and shorts, and don't even wear helmets...

Great people.