POMERANIAN ROOTS

"RUSHED, WRECKED & RELAXED"

A Genealogical Weekend in Pomorze, Poland

Day 3: Monday, April 5, 1999 - "Relaxed"

Index Of Places Visited On Day 3:

Lobez (Labes)
Belczna (Neukirchen)
Nacmierz (Natzmersdorf)
Gostomin (Justemin)
Sienno Dolne (Schöneu)
Maliniec (Hoeckenberg)
Wegorzyno (Wangerin)
Dlugie (Langenhagen)
Linówko (Klein Lienichen)
Dobrzany (Jacobshagen)

It was 03h00 and I awoke with one of those dry mouths from hell! My head was pounding like it hadn't done in years. I had no idea where I was. Débra gave me two soluble headache tablets�in soda water�which was further torture for my punished palate! Sleep.

At 07h30 Débra woke me again. We were supposed to be at breakfast already. I was a zombie as we walked downstairs to the dining room, but the hot, black tea slowly brought me back to Poland. By all accounts, Débra had lured me away from the party in Woldenburg, loaded me into the car and left town, eventually finding an hotel in Lobez (Labes; N 53°38'15.5", E 015°37'38.2"):

Hotel Slowiañski ul. Niepodleglosci 19 73-300 Lobez Tel: (0923) 730-45 Fax: (0923) 759-77

The breakfast was similar to the previous days - scrambled eggs, cold meat and bread. Our room was a cramped double without en suite bathroom for PZL 55 (under DM 30). Cheap, but at that stage, I didn't give a damn how much it cost.

From the card I got at the hotel I also found out that one could search the Internet for hotels in Poland. For example, Hotel Slowiañski's sister hotel is Hotel Ikar in Goleniów, and it can be found here. The site is available in Polish and English, and prices are quoted in both PLN and US$. Pensjonat "Pod Wozem" in Trzebiatów and Hotel Slowiañski are listed as well, but without pictures or prices.

Across the road from the hotel was a schoolyard with an interesting monument - a MIG fighter plane on a plinth! I shot a number of photographs with my 6X6 camera, drank a Red Bull, and we were ready for the road!

Maybe I was hung-over, but I would politely describe Labes as a "shit-hole" (not wishing to offend anyone, of course). No redeeming features whatsoever! It was Easter Sunday, and all around us we say boys with buckets of water and water pistols. To quote Joel Streich of the Pommern List (e-mail message, April 2, 1999):

Easter "Stiepen"

"A nice and popular custom was the Easter 'stiepen'. On Palm Sunday the boys placed a birch switch in a vessel filled with water so that the buds would form small leaves by Easter. Favourite places were cupboards and tiled ovens to aid the shoots with warmth.

On the First Easter Day the boys (and also the men) had the right to 'stiepen' (swat?) the hands and feet of the girls and women. One got underway very early in order to scare the late sleepers. With a lot of joking and laughing, things went ahead. On the Second Day of Easter, the girls had the right to 'stiepen'. Here, too, one could blow off some steam and repay doubly the blows (they were) given.

For 'steiping', one received sweets, an egg, cake or a Groschen".

Following the launch of my website, Linda Pauling of the Pommern List offered more clarity on what we had witnessed in Labes:

You mention the switching and water-dunking that you witnessed on Easter Monday. According to a booklet "The Special Blessings of A Polish Easter" by Rev. Czeslaw Michael Krysa, Easter Monday is celebrated in Poland as "Dyngus Day." It commemorates the birth of Christianity in Poland AD 966. To quote from the booklet:

"Historians place the date of the Sacramental Rite of Holy Baptism of Prince Mieszko I of Poland on Easter Monday, AD 966. With this event, Poland accenpted Christianity as the State Religion.... Thus 'Dyngus Day';, with its sprinkling of water and gentle switching with pussy willow branches, links today's revelry with a historic fact. This 'Birthday Party' combines jestful sprinkling water symbolizing the waters of Holy Baptism for Prince Mieszko I and his entire court...

The switching is two-fold:

  1. Commemortaion of Christ driving out the money changers and purifying worship.
  2. His receiving lashes from the soldiers when before Pontius Pilate.

Since the solemn period of the Lenten Fast has ended, .... now the people let down their hair and give way to spirited and emotional merriment."

This may be part of the current Polish custom in Pommern, but all we saw was a lot of mischievous lads out to saturate the girls�and succeeding!!

Débra and I drove around trying to find something worthwhile to photograph. We across only one impressive homestead and a fairly depressing memorial erected in 1972 to commemorate 700 years of the city. Time to go.

  Images of Lobez (Labes)       Return to Index For Day 3


Ronald D. Schultz of the Pommern List had asked me to visit Neukirchen and Natzmersdorf if I had the opportunity, as these are the settlements where his family originated. Armed with our maps and GPS, we took national road 148 north to Belczna (Neukirchen; N 53°43'52.4", E 015°36'21.6") . There was only one church in town, right on the main road. This is where Ronald said his people attended church. Unfortunately the sun was at totally the wrong angle, and I could only shoot a photograph from an oblique angle.

  Images of Belczna (Neukirchen)       Return to Index For Day 3


From Neukirchen we took a small dirt track that let us past some impressive straw bales, and to the farm village of Nacmierz (Natzmersdorf; N 53°42'51.1", E 015°35'32.8"). Old buildings are conspicuous by their absence in Natzmersdorf, bar some long barns at the entrance to the town, and an old red brick cottage next to an improvised football field at the other end of town. A traditional farming village where, unfortunately, too many drab communist blocks are to be found today.

  Images of Nacmierz (Natzmersdorf)       Return to Index For Day 3


We drove back to Labes and then took national road 147 westwards. Our next stop was the compact settlement of Gostomin (Justemin; N 53°40'41.0", E 015°20'59.3") that Joel Streich of the Pommern List had asked me to visit. Justemin is very quiet - the only activity we saw was two young kids playing Americans and Serbians, and a couple of old timers who were impeaching a reluctant store owner to open up. While Débra sat in the car resting, I walked through the village from west to east. At the eastern end of the village I saw a fairly impressive building through the trees next to a ploughed field. Only later did Débra tell me that (from another angle) she had seen a church there. I unfortunately missed it.

  Images of Gostomin (Justemin)       Return to Index For Day 3


Someone else from the Pommern List had asked me to visit Sienno Dolne (Schöneu; N 53°38'59.4", E 015°19'30.0"), but I don't recall who! Nevertheless, off we went! The village lies on a river at the foot of a hill, and the first things one notices on reaching the village is the road out (and over the bridge) to the left, and the cross to the right. The road there is a dirt track, and the place seemed deserted, bar the three students lazing in the magnificent sunshine to our right. So quiet was the place that it seemed impolite to go right into the village uninvited.

  Images of Sienno Dolne (Schöneu)       Return to Index For Day 3


The great-grandfather of (Pommern-L member) Alan R. Krueger came from Maliniec (Hoeckenberg; N 53°42'09.4", E 015°21'34.6"). It was a tough place to find as it was the only settlement that we had visited that had no road sign proclaiming the municipal boundaries. Nevertheless, a local road off of national road 148 took us into a farming settlement where a small red signpost revealed that this was the farming co-operative of Maliniec. The settlement of Hoeckenberg is a T-junction with a great, red brick manor house at one end. Time was against us, and we sadly could not spend much longer in the domain of the Kruegers.

  Images of Maliniec (Hoeckenberg)       Return to Index For Day 3


We once again returned to Labes, this time selecting national road 149 which took us to the south. Our first pause on the 149 was Wegorzyno (Wangerin; N 53°32'50.5", E 015°33'53.6"), a town Rebel L. Kreklow of the Pommern List had asked us to visit. Unfortunately we did not see too much that inspired me to take more than the one photo I shot off. Rebel, I hope to do Wangerin more justice next time around; all we could see from the road on this trip was a row of relatively modern farm buildings and ploughed fields.

What I will remember about the area south of Wangerin is water! There's a lot of it�lakes, ponds and streams characterise the lush landscape. In fact it's so wet in this part or Pommern that many of the fields seemed to be semi-marshland. This was interesting for me as one explanation of the origin of the surname Pautz is that it is ultimately derived from the ancient Wendish word "pust" (or Polish "pusty"), signifying "swamp" or "fen" and was thus first applied to a resident in or by such a spot. So I was thinking, "Hey, perhaps Pautz was the original monster from the bog (south of Wangerin)"!

  Images of Wegorzyno (Wangerin)       Return to Index For Day 3


The next village that Rebel Kreklow suggested turned out to be one of the gems of our entire visit to Pommern. The first thing one notices when driving in to Dlugie (Langenhagen; N 53°25'38.2", E 015°23'55.6") is the impressive stone and red brick church off to the right. It is very photogenic, and the epitome of a Pomeranian church. Unfortunately the church was closed, but we took a number of photographs, and spent about an hour in the cemetery to the right of the church. This cemetery was special in that, although some German graves had clearly been destroyed (or had merely decayed), the majority of them remained intact!

I wish that we had had the time to transcribe all the information on the cast-iron crosses, but we didn't. One that did catch my eye, and that should be of great interest to Alan Krueger in the USA, read as follows:

Hier Ruht in Gott
Luise Krüger geb. Ridel
Geb. 6 August 1851 Gest. 20 Juni 1915

Débra felt that the latter date was 1913, but I disagreed; one would be able to tell in the morning light. Although I was looking straight into the sun, I shot a photo of the grave. Unfortunately for me we found no Pautz or Schmidt in the cemetery.

  Images of Dlugie (Langenhagen)       Return to Index For Day 3


From Langenhagen we took a country road to Linówko (Klein Lienichen; N 53°25'27.6", E 015°28'20.9"), another spot that Rebel Kreklow had asked me to take a look at. The village has a winding road through its centre, and a small parish church that is currently under repair. The spire has been removed from the wooden bell tower, which is being totally rebuilt. I noted from the old timbers that had been removed that major wooden beams and supports had been joined without using nails. Wooden "plugs" had been used throughout�I unfortunately have no woodworking vocabulary! Houses are (like most we had seen in Pommern) fairly run down and dilapidated. However, on the other side of town someone (probably a German from the size and style of the building) is constructing a magnificent homestead using many 19th century design cues. As I would have been shooting into the sun, I did not take a picture of the building. Right across the road and up an embankment I did spot two partially demolished buildings, and wondered if any bits and pieces from these two buildings were ending up in the new one across the road!

  Images of Linówko (Klein Lienichen)       Return to Index For Day 3


The very last stop of our amazing trip to Pommern was the town of Dobrzany (Jacobshagen) where all I had the energy to do was shoot a picture of the road sign at the entrance to the village. My only recollection of Jacobshagen is of a fairly modern town that was larger than expected. We were tired now, and places were starting to all look the same.

  Images of Dobrzany (Jacobshagen)       Return to Index For Day 3


We reached national road 10 and turned right for Stargard Szczecinski (Stargard; N 53°20'19.0", E 015°02'05.2") where our tour commenced. We scooted around the south of Szczecin (Stettin; N 53°25'15.7", E 014°32'45.2") and headed back to the Kolbaskowo border crossing where the queue was an hour long. When we eventually got to the gate, we had the same problem we experienced two days earlier�another 60 minute wait. Oh the joys of holding a South African passport!!

The road past the bottom of Berlin and south to the Czech Republic was tiring but uneventful� bar two mega-traffic jams that delayed us by an additional hour and a half. A caffeine and burger stop kept us going, and we eventually crossed the border in to the Czech Republic, and got back to our apartment in Prague just after 23h00.

Phew!!

Three days. Fifteen hundred kilometres. New insights into my origins and the lifestyle of the Pomeranians. The simple beauty of the landscape. New friends and a great party (I think?)! What a trip!

We will certainly do it again!


  Back to the Pomeranian Weekend Index       Return to Index For Day 3