Finally in Ostpreussen

We made it! We arrived at the Kaliningrad airport on Tuesday afternoon and were met by our tour guide Alex who drove us about 30 kilometres to our beautiful hotel on the Baltic Sea where we were reunited with our brother. Instead of postponing that day's tour we simply washed our faces to brush away some of the jet lag and at 5:00 pm set off for a seven hour tour down the coast to Pillau and back up. Starting late was not a problem because the sun does not set here until 10:30 at night!

The only delay in starting the tour was Klaus. The four of us had gathered on the hotel terrace and with the tour guide we waited about 20 minutes for Klaus to join us. Hans ran up to the rooms (which are right beside each other) to look for him but the rooms were both locked so he ran around to the beach but couldn't find him anywhere. We waited another 10 minutes and finally Rosie decided to check the rooms again. She banged on each door and from her room could hear Klaus calling out "let me out!" He had been locked inside the room and without a key on the inside could not let himself out.  Finally our tour could begin.

The first day included a tour of a German cemetery where thousands of civilians who had perished during the height of WWII in the spring of 1945 are buried. There are monuments engraved with the names of all the refugees buried there and white stone crosses in groups of three are scattered throughout  the massive burial ground. The names of several "Fischers" are engraved on the memorial stones and we will be doing some research to determine if they belong to us.

We stopped in Pillau which was a major port for Konigsberg but is now a run down village whose purpose seems to be mainly for the storage of old unused Russian military equipment such as tanks. It is also the administrative centre for Kaliningrad.

We stopped at several places along the coast to admire the view and watch the sunset, being fairly certain that our mother had watched that same sun set over the same horizon. We stopped at the mine where amber had once been mined but is now filled with water.

On the second day we started out at about 11:30 and spent the day discovering the Curonian Spit. What a beautiful nature escape. The first stop was at the old fishing village of Sarkau where mom used to go with her parents for day trips to the beach. We scoured the beach for amber and were able to find two small pieces, which along with some beach sand and other small rocks, will be taken back home to be placed on mom's grave.

We hiked up two sand dunes and if you have ever visited Sandbanks you haven't seen sand dunes until you've seen those on the Curonian Spit. No wonder our mother loved to spend a week every summer at a cottage overlooking the dunes at Sandbanks.

We stopped for lunch and had a tailgate picnic with smoked fish and beer.

Today is a leisure day. Heading out for a long walk on the beach.