Museumskomplex Saigerhütte Grünthal

The main objective of this part of the trip was Seiffen, the village famous for its wooden Christmas decorations, and before that toys. Big weekend in Seiffen, their große Bergparade the big Miners' Parade with living toys (sounds scary...). I tried to reserve a room early, as in the second week of January with no luck. I cast a wider net, and ended up with the last room in pension in the little village of Oberlochmühle, about fifteen minutes away.

As a side note during planning, I saw that the village my grandmother came from, Olbernhau, was right next door to where we would be. This became a BIG THING. I had to return to meine Heimat, just like I did with Eisenach, the home of my grandfather.

Now I know next to nothing about my family history, either side. And most of what I was told was less than accurate. But according to the official paperwork I was able to find: she was from this little town along the Czech border. He came from a place in another state which isn't close, about three hours by car on today's roads, and six hours by train and bus. How they met, no one alive knows, and I was too young to think much about it, then when I was old enough, it wasn't something my aunts talked about so who knows? They came to the US in 1923 after he had been a detained merchant seaman and then a POW in World War I- a really interesting story for another time.

So we got to the town, which was kind of run down. Another former mining town, it has a great museum and giant blacksmith's hammer we hoped to get to on Sunday. It was also famous for etched glass, but that industry fell out of favor with the rise of the DDR. It never reinvented itself like Seiffen, but has attracted some mid-sized industry so it's limping along. It reminded me of the rust belt towns we have in the US.

Besides the Saigerhutte complex, etched glass, and my grandmutter Steinbrecher (nee Arnold-- and we found some Arnolds still here but didn't attempt contact), Olbernhau is famous for the Olbernhauer Reiterlein: a cute guy on a rocking horse. While similar sorts of wooden cavalry toys had been widely produced in the Erzgebirge and well known throughout Germany since the 1800s, this particular little guy was produced as a badge for the Winter Relief in 1935. They sold for twenty pfennings, and the proceeds went to benefit the poor. It served a dual purpose, in also giving work to the woodworking and toy shops in the mountain regions that had been devastated by the depression in Germany. The Olbernhauer Reiterlein, a nutcracker dressed in a Hussar's uniform, on a white rocking horse, was extremely popular selling 13.6 million units and becoming a symbol for the Winter Relief.

So we walked around. Saw the car dealership that might belong to some long-lost relatives. Saw the outside of the church where my grandmother was christened in 1900 (or 1903), visited the cemetery and found a war memorial with a remembrance of a man bearing the same name as my family. Then we went to the tiny little Christmas market in the courtyard, had some potato pancakes (called something totally different down here) and hot chocolate (had to get that cup), then back to the pension. It was cold. Frigidly cold, and frankly, we're plumb worn out.Read more

Or: We Didn't Learn Our Lesson Yesterday

On the road again, this time from Annaberg Buchholz east (like the good German I am-- Drang nach Osten) through the Ore Mountains to the tiny village of Oberlochmühle in the neighborhood of Seiffen. But first: have to stop to hike a bit through the Schwarzwassertal (the Black Water Valley), a famous hiking route in the Erzgebirge.

What's it famous for, you might ask? The black-appearing water for one. Die Teufelsmauer-- the Devil's Wall, yeah that guy has walls, rocks, even sandwiches, all over Germany. A variety of delicious and non-hallucinogenic mushrooms, if you come at the right time of year, that being September and we missed it.

So we were here for die Teufelsmauer, having eaten his sandwich in Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden last trip. Also, just the general ambience. So off we went. We knew how far the wall should be because the signage is amazing on German trails. Usually. But I didn't check the phone when we started, and I didn't set it to kilometers.

We walked along, knowing we should have reached it. Didn't see it. Nothing approaching it. So we walked at least two more kilometers before time was getting on, and we were getting hungry. We also had to get to the next place, a little pension that had very limited desk hours, by 2:30. So we turned around and headed back. We took pictures of everything that even had the appearance of something that could be called the Devil's Wall. We figured out what it was later-- the last two photos, which we took on our way back to the car.Read more