Frizz

So the story continues, there was a black sheep in the family; one of my grandfather's siblings was packed off to America as a young boy in the 1920's. I didn't consciously know about this side until a few years ago and no one that I know has had contact with them since perhaps the 1950's. So the 'new cousin' was asking me what I knew and I had to say nothing, but there were children and grandchildren and great grandchildren leading from this branch on his family tree, but genealogists seem to 'swap' information so he didn't know them either. By the time L and I had arrived back in Berlin he had done a search, found an email for someone whose name matched a person on his tree and sent a message. Me of little faith, I thought there's no way it's going to be right, but low and behold an email arrives back, the 'new cousin' had indeed found the relation and they in turn didn't know anything about us. This is all very surreal and rather amazing. His daughter is going to call me this evening.

Yesterday, I finally joined Skype and let the programme do an automatic search for contacts and the first call I had, within minutes of joining, was from another person who is a very distant relative, actually I've no idea how, but also another genealogist (something in the genes?). The sad thing is that I've had contact with him, as has the new cousin and the branch in America in the past, but he seemed unaware that none of us knew each other and from what I can gather we are all more closely related to each other than he is to us. During the conversation he mentioned another person, this time in England and when I commented that I'd never heard of him, he said "but he's your relation". The mind boggles. He's promised to send me some details – I feel like I've opened a Pandora's box or am playing parce the parcel and the music's got stuck and I'm unwrapping all the layers.