Frizz

I've had a serious family contact / finding out my ancestors sort of weekend. I met someone who knew my grandfather last week, brief conversation, which covered concerts and being chased by a colleagues husband sometime back in the 1950's, the latter I assure you nothing to do with my grandfather. Later in the week I was thinking about this grandfather again and catching up on some emails to family, which were so overdue many apologies were needed. I did a quick Google search and came up with a site, which rather amazingly had loads of my family tree on it. I'm in two minds about this, obviously it's exciting, there are many generations I didn't know about, but then it's my family tree and it's out there in the ether. I sent more emails out and received one back, which began Dear Cousin; so on the eve of going to Germany, I have found a cousin there, quite surreal. I then forwarded the email to a cousin in Israel who also wrote to him, so I think we made his weekend... I'm still not sure how we are cousins, have no idea who he is, but he knows exactly who I am, which has to be said is a little unnerving.

The family tree covers one branch of my family and goes down one particular line and this line goes very far back, quite excitingly along the way to Portugal, seemingly those listed having fled westward at the time of the Portuguese Inquisition (I have been reading up!) So suddenly I am partly Sephardic, having never been interested in the whole Sephardic/Ashkenazi thing, now I want to know more. The family tree continues going back and back - we are talking biblical names here and I don't really know if that's really possible to go back that far, but it's a nice idea and very intriguing.

Labels: Berlin