We "smell the blood of our ancestors"

One of the evenings that we were in Dittweiler, and I think it was the night before our tour of our ancestral birthplaces, we were treated to "Donnerwetter." I can remember from my early childhood many vivid things about my great grandmother, Eva Fickeisen. Whenever we would have a summer thunderstorm in Marietta, Ohio, she would proclaim, slightly under her breath, and in her old German dialect, "Donnerwetter!" Well, the night of Aug. 19, 2000, Dittweiler was treated to a royal thunderstorm. It lightninged (Blitzen) and it thundered (Donner), and the rain poured down. We had to close all the windows on the sunroom except for a crack at the top. It was a display like I've seldom seen, but I "knew in an instant" that this was the Donnerwetter my great grandmother was referring to.

The next morning when we got up in preparation for our tour to Niederbexbach and the area around Kusel, the air was lovely and fresh. You can see above the view from our landlady's sunroom. Below is the way the Dittweiler street looked in the fresh morning air.
You can also see to the left the fabulous breakfast that our landlady put before us. Cold cuts, three kinds of cheeses, Brötchen, butter, pickles, coffee and tea. We got to know a little about her.

To Niederbexbach

Back to Europe

She had a son and a daughter, now both out of the home. Just a couple of years before she had lost her husband. A loving picture of her husband in his hunting clothes, and others of her children and grandchildren hung on her walls. Pictures, mementoes of a trip to Paris years before, decorated another room, along with a beautiful collection of pewter plates and ceramic beer steins.