[APG Public List] Who do you think you are? My days One and Two.

[Elisabeth Thorsell]

Guten Tag! Roland,

It was good to read about your experiences in London, and I am very much 
tempted to go there next year for the show. Ryan flies from Sweden too.

It seems to be a nice occasion to be able to meet with APG members, 
without having to go to the U.S., even though I hope to be able to 
attend the FGS in Springfield in September.

We do have a Swedish version of the Who-do-you-think-you-are?, and I 
have also seen the first American series, but consider the British the 
best, and have them all on DVD. Now I am waiting for series 7 to be 
available. A friend and I also share a subscription to the British 
/Who-do-you-think-you-are?/ magazine, which seems to be one of the best 
British genealogy magazines.

Well Roland, hope to see you in London next year, und ich spreche etwas 
Deutsch!

------------------
Elisabeth Thorsell
Swedish Genealogist&  Writer
Editor of "Swedish American Genealogist"
Visit http://www.etgenealogy.se/sag.htm
Utgivare av nyhetsbrevet "Vi Släktforskare"
Besök http://www.etgenealogy.se


Rolgeiger at aol.com skrev 2011-03-06 00:52:
>
> Hello,
>
> Yesterday but a week ago I had the happy chance to learn to know 
> several members of APG.
>
> Well, here in Germany we know nearly nothing about 
> Who-do-you-think-you-are? There was something similar last year in 
> German TV but I didn’t pay attention to it. Someone told me about 
> itbut … well, you know …
>
> Last November APG told about the event in late February 2011, so I 
> decided to attend. Twas a good chance to learn to know some fellow 
> members in person. And it’s a shorter way to England than to America 
> anyway. So I organized the trip, got three Q-jump-tickets to have 
> faster access to the show, bought a ticket to and fro through Ryanair, 
> booked a hotel in London – Kensington within 15 minutes walk distance 
> to Olympia where the show took place. Thursday night I rode to 
> Frankfurt-Hahn Airport in the Hunsrueck Mountains, stayed in a nearby 
> hotel and took the 6.20-a.m.-flight to London-Standsted. That was 
> funny. The wind blew the same direction as we flew, so we took off at 
> 6.20 and landed 6.10 – always local time. Thus we landed ten minutes 
> before we started. I really liked the idea. At eight o’clock I had 
> reached downtown London and took a cab to my hotel – wow, 13 Pound 
> Sterling for a taxi ride but I was bone-tired and anxious to get 
> there. Three days later I paid two pounds for the same route but using 
> the subway :-)
>
> I parked my suitcase in the hotel, got all I needed and went to the 
> event hall. I didn’t know what I had to expect. I presented my ticket 
> and was among the first visitors that Friday morning. Q-Jump-ticket 
> includes three tickets for workshops and my first was … well, actually 
> I can’t remember. I know I attended at least three lectures that day – 
> one was at 1 p.m. – Mark Herber talked about War Memorials Online at 
> Stand 825 “The Genealogist”. He produced various memorials from all 
> over Britain, explained how they got there and what information could 
> be gathered from it. Some were real monuments on public places but 
> others were found on more or less remote sites like schools or even 
> plants. When I sat down, there were two ladies sitting right near me 
> and I asked one of them in case I felt asleep not to disturb me. 
> Should I snore, please, push me with your ellbow. She recognized my 
> alien accent and asked where I came from. I guess I was the only 
> German to attend the show. I produced a booklet I had put together 
> about the relation between my hometown St. Wendel and England - The 
> Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother of The Prince of Wales - Relations 
> between my hometown St. Wendel, Germany, and England - and gave here a 
> copy (they had been planned for selling but no occasion arised to 
> really sell it so I donated about 15 of them and took the rest back 
> home). Hope she liked it. I didn’t fell asleep during Mark Herber’s 
> lecture but I started feeling the lack of sleep from last night.
>
> When I first entered the hall, I made my way to Stand 519- the APG 
> stand where I introduced myself to Paul Blake, Laura Prescott and 
> Kathleen Hinckley. Then I strolled through the hall realizing that 
> these would become three very long days (plus an additional one for 
> London itself) before I could go home. And I guessed they would get 
> extremely boring. There was nearly nothing of real interest for me. 
> All stands dealed with information about England – and there was no 
> real genealogical connection between my research in German to that in 
> England. That’s what I guessed after the first walk through the hall. 
> I forget that quickly after I had talked to several people at several 
> stands. Like Ian Hook at Stand 615 “Leger Holidays” (they provided 
> military memorial trips to France and Belgium). I gave him a booklet 
> whose second half is about a crash of a British bomber in my hometown 
> in September 1941. Very exciting talk – he is curator of the Essex 
> Regiment Museum, and he told me that some units of the Essex Regt were 
> controllers during the 1935-Plebiscite in the Saar Region. Very 
> interesting.
>
> I visited APG stand then and now and met other people like Craig Scott 
> from North Carolina, Carol Bannister from Nottinghamshire and Rob van 
> Drie from the Netherlands – uuh, it was such a pleasure to meet 
> someone who spoke German. My English is not too bad but in school and 
> later I learned something like Oxford English and during my research I 
> have been in contact to lots of English speaking people but most of 
> them American. You know Oscar Wilde’s Canterville Ghost where an 
> American family buys a British castle. When the family enters the 
> ghost watches them. And he tells about the mother she was good looking 
> and spoke but absolutely no English. Well, I got very much acquainted 
> to American English and much later I learned that the Brits’ English 
> is much different in terms and pronounciation and has nearly nothing 
> to do with Oxford English as well. I really had hard times during 
> those three days in London to get acquainted with the language – not 
> to talk about the traffic system and the currency.
>
> In the afternoon I urgently needed a coffee and bought a cappucino. 
> Once that pretty somehow red-haired girl behind the desk understood my 
> order, I ordered some piece of cake and paid 5.50 Pounds Sterling 
> which is about 6.40 Euros = 8.50 US Dollars – for a piece of cake and 
> a bigger cup of coffee. Incredible. The coffee was great but 
> nevertheless …
>
> I sat on the floor with a wall in my back and several other people 
> near me – a men to my left and a middle-aged British lady to my right. 
> We sipped coffee and listened to someone lecturing about DNA stuff.
>
> I attended two more shows that day – one was “Hiring a professional 
> genealogist at home and abroad” with Laura Prescott who reminded me of 
> our code of ethics. Well, I had read and signed it before I entered 
> APG but had I really thought about it? Ofcourse I follow that code – 
> had I been a member or not. Like the ten comandments – they are basic 
> rules for a functioning society. That lecture was great and I really 
> reflected about the code. As I did the next days when talking to 
> visitors of the APG stand when “I was on duty”.
>
> The last lecture for the day was “Ideas for research before 1600” with 
> Helen Good. Helen is a tremendous sight – a historian with very much 
> passion for her subjects. When I first saw her waiting for the 
> visitors to come along I had thought “oh, my goodness” but once she 
> started to talk and showing examples I was faszinated. She talked 
> about sources from 16th Century – id est 1500 plus. I was surprised to 
> be able to read most of the documents she presented – the numbers were 
> the same we in Germany had in that time.
>
> On Sunday I talked to her about it and produced a sample of another 
> script in our catholic church in St. Wendel and she got fascinated 
> about some letters she had never seen before. During her talk she 
> presented a book called “Reading Tudor and Stuart Handwriting” by L. 
> Munby, S. Hobbs and A. Crosby, published 2002 by the “British 
> Association for Local History” (www.balh.co.uk). It’s great and a very 
> useful help for those who deal with that period of time in presenting 
> letters and numbers in original with explanations attached.
>
> I didn’t know what to do that night so I went back to the hotel, 
> bought some food and coke in a nearby supermarked and went up to my 
> room. I had no watch with me and my portable showed our time in 
> Germany. But there was a telephone in the room and it showed the time. 
> So I went to bed at ten and at once fell asleep.
>
> I woke up next morning at 8 a.m. (telephone time), got up and went 
> down for breakfast half an hour later – to find the breakfast room 
> closed. Hm, they were to open at half past 8, now it was past nine. It 
> was then when I realised that my telefone time was wrong – the 
> difference was 1 hour and 40 minutes. I hasn’t been 8 when I woke up 
> but 6.20. And it had not been ten when I went to sleep the night 
> before but 8.20 p.m. Well, now I knew it.
>
> I went back to Olympia hall and saw the long line of visitors 
> alongside the hall and around the corner. I produced my Q-Jump-ticket 
> for Saturday and quickly got in. I said “good morning” at the APG 
> stand and went upstairs to attend Audrey Collins’ “Using the National 
> Archives, onsite and online”. Audrey had had some problems with 
> London’s traffic and the fought a hard battle with the computer and 
> the beamer. The beamer shut off several times but Audrey was an 
> experienced lecturer with cool temper. When one “slide” was to cut off 
> once more, she told the audience to memorize this slide before it 
> would cut off. And when it was gone she said: “Hope you did as I told 
> you and memorize it!” we – the audience and I – loved her coolness. 
> Finally the problem was solved and she showed us fascinating 
> possibilities on the website of National Archives of Great Britain (or 
> just England?).
>
> I was scheduled for the stand at 11 but got lost in a talk to some 
> visitors upstairs and came late. First I stood in the back and 
> listened to Marie Foden and how she made it before I dared to talk to 
> a visitor. He asked me something and I really didn’t understand 
> anything. I asked him to repeat and he used akronyms I never even 
> heard off. I asked someone from the APG stand crew for help which was 
> quickly provided. That accent really killed me.
>
> Two hours later I walked around, talked to the Military Stand members 
> (Royal Air Force) and the War Graves Commission folks and forget to 
> visit Howard Brenbrook’s “What’s in a name?” At about 4 p.m. I quit 
> and made it back to the hotel to prepare for the evening. At about six 
> I was back and met Paul Blake at the entrance to the Pizza Restaurant 
> right near Olympia Hall. APG had invited its members for a reception 
> at the Restaurant with wine and drinks. Laura made the reception and 
> asked everyone to introduce himself with name and country. The Brits 
> had the majority with several people from Ireland. After I’d spoken, I 
> got a little mad about myself. While everyone told his country in 
> English, I should have mentioned it “Deutschland” instead of Germany. 
> A little bit of Patriotism – well, I didn’t. Laura’s reception was 
> great and she thanked all those who had made this meeting possible, 
> among them Eileen M O Duill from Ireland who had organized the Stand 
> in Olympia.
>
> We sat down and ordered our pizzas and the waiters produced some 
> confusion when they brought the pizzas along and called them other 
> names than on the menu. I had ordered a Caesar salad and it was very 
> good. The wine bottles emptied and new were opened and we talked 
> together and it was really a fine chance to talk to people whom you 
> knew from the lists but never talked personally. Now some of us had a 
> face behind the email adress. Later – after most of us had left – I 
> talked to Maggie Loughran and Geoff Swinfield about several things I 
> did not understand. They knew the event very well. When the restaurant 
> closed at 11 p.m. I accompanied Audrey Collins and another lady who 
> stayed at the Hilton and went back to the hotel.
>
> Roland Geiger
>
> -----------------
>
> Roland Geiger
> Historical and Genalogical Research
> Alsfassener Strasse 17
> 66606 St. Wendel
> Germany
> phone ++49-6851-3166
> email rolgeiger at aol.com
> www.hfrg.de <http://www.hfrg.de/>
>
> => APG - Association of Professional Genealogists
> => ASF - Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Saarlaendische Familienforschung
>
> Researchs in
> => genealogy
> => local history
> => transcriptions (f.e. old German into modern)
> => guided tours through St. Wendel (day and night) and St. Wendel 
> County, Saarland, Germany
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