Following Footsteps

One of the many excursions this semester was to Bremerhaven to see the emigration center there. I thought it

was going to be another museum that was only slightly interesting when you're tired from traveling there, but it turned out to be far more than that. If you ever find yourself in Northern Germany, I suggest you go here. It's fairly spiffy.

Not let me take the rest of the blog telling you why it was so spiffy.

Our tour was all in German because we're all here to learn that language, but you can request someone to talk to you about the exhibit in English. You even get a little card that activates little phone things around the museum and you can listen to accounts of specific travelers.
Even if I can't always understand everything they say, I always try with these things. Maybe I'll be able to understand them by the time they leave. We'll see.

It's not like a regular museum though, you seriously follow the footsteps of the people through the whole

Sorry for the blur, it was a little too dark to
take good pictures. 

journey. You start out boarding a boat with all sorts of wax figures. They also hat luggage set up so you could see what they would have brought with them. Most people had a few odds and ends, but all had clothes. Just a few changes of clothes.
Can you imagine leaving for a whole new country, whose language you don't really speak, with only a change of clothes and a picture of your family?

After that we entered a room where they had stats of all the people who went, where they went, how many went in what years. I looked around at some of the specific people, but I enlisted Alex to help me look for Popkens or Holzheimers. Sadly, we didn't find any, but that's fine. I'm fairly sure both sides of my family left from Hamburg, so I'll just have to check there.

After that goose chase, we got to board to the boat we saw from the view of the wax figures. In the boat they have recreations of the different time period and then different class quarters. It all seemed so crowded and miserable. Even the first class people seemed to be crawling all over each other in their quarters.

After that experience, we got to get more information about where they all went. They built a mini Grand

I may have started singing the national
anthem at this point.... maybe....

Central Station to represent the HUGE amount of people who went to America. It was an odd feeling to walk from one room that was very much in Germany to another that felt very much like home.

After that I found my way to a "research center" to look up my family and see if they came through here.

Sadly, their entire room was just computers with Ancestry.com pulled up.
For those of you who don't know, I already have an account there and have found as much as I could. That's how I know WHEN Peter Popken and Andrew Holzheimer left Germany and even which port they left from.

I'll keep looking, however. I would LOVE to find family in Germany. :)