A Long Way from HOME!

We have now started the "business" of this trip over the past few days. We have started visiting the HOME villages of our companions of which most are in Poland. We arrived in Poland on Wednesday and have been hard at it visiting every town that people have had relatives come from.

I (Chris) have had more history lessons than you can poke a stick at lately! And now it is the Polish history that I am trying to get my head around.

Polish to German to Russian back to Polish. (Briefly!)

Whist German there were many Lutheran churches around, but once back in Polish hands, all traces of German people and their "stuff" have been obliterated, and most of the churches (once Lutheran) are now Catholic.

We visited a number of villages. This is Mazurowice (Polish) or Maserwitz (German) which is where the Winter family orginated from (on the Rohde side). Nothing to look at except a (modern) sign, but looking around the town you can "sort of" imagine what it might have been like a couple of hundred years ago. Many of the buildings have not been repaired for many decades and there are newer buildings of course, but many a time there are old buildings in the back yards of these newer buildings and they are used for stables, barns, chook sheds etc.

My great, great grandmother's (on Dad's side of the family) home town!

 We also visited Lisowice (Polish) or Leschiwitz (German) which is where the Pfitners (also on the Rohde side of the family) originated from.

It is quite sobering to be made aware of the journey that our forebears made to come to Australia. They left behind family and homes and made the arduous journey across Poland (get out a map!) from a little port just out of Zielona Gora (Grunberg/German) and got onto barges which travelled along the Oder River under a bridge where people threw rotten tomatoes at them (why??) travelled through the spreewald (Spree River) and across the country of Germany on the Elbe River and caught ships out of a port in Hamburg. Then travelled many, many months to Australia on these ships. The trip was perilous and many people died on board and were buided at sea.

Leschwitz - where the Pfitzners originated from
which is not far from Maserwitz (Winters came from).
People married from the same village or ones very
close by. (No public transport!!)

Original "Fachwerk style" of architecture used on German buidlings
back in our forebears days.

So many of these buildings dotted everywhere and in every town we visited! This was found in Leschwitz. Could it have been
the home of one of our forebears???? Romantic to think that it could be!!

Chris and Margaret (Brooks) who share
Pfitzner forebears and the original
Lutheran Church.

The original Lutheran Church that serviced our relatives
 back in the old days! Still operating today as a Catholic Church).



Inside the Lutheran Church (now Catholic) that many a marriage was performed
in "those" days. (1800s)