First we want to wish our cousin Kaia a happy belated birthday!! She turned 3 on May 25th! We have been having a wonderful weekend of making family connections in Leipzig. Cornelius Schröder, Martin’s second cousin, has been our host. The boys stayed at his apartment while Lisa + Martin stayed in a hotel. We ended up being here Pentecost weekend, which for many Graefe relatives includes an annual get-together to celebrate the music of the Leipzig area, centered for the family each year around concerts of medieval church music. The final concert took place on Sunday afternoon in an old church in Wechselburg; it was packed to standing room only which included about forty people, relatives and friends, connected to the Graefes. In the Biergarten afterwards, with everybody sitting at one looooong table, Andrew said it best: “I always had thought our Graefe family was small!” It was truly amazing to all of a sudden be in the middle of so many relatives; the boys met three third cousins; Martin met two descendants from his great-grandfather’s brother! To top it all off, we ended up going to one more concert, on Monday and heard a concert on Saxony’s oldest organ, recently restored last fall, accompanied by a violin. Christian even talked with the violinist and got to play a few notes on her 400 year-old violin. It was all around quite impressive and a great way to top off a weekend with family and truly exceptional music. Before we left Leipzig, Cornelius showed us the highlights of the city itself, including the Thomaskirche, where JS Bach is laid to rest; the Nikolaikirche, credited with facilitating the peaceful revolution that led to Germany’s unification in ’89; and the Coffe Baum, Leipzig’s oldest café, which was in the family for about 100 years, starting in 1798.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
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