Oct. 22 - More Ancestors, the North Sea, More Ribe

Typical readability on old stones

Easy to read/hard to find in this condition

We asked our host about cemeteries here in Ribe and whether they might hold people from smaller surrounding towns since this is the main city in the county. We were directed to the old cemetery about a block away. After walking around and finding a few old stones, many of which were barely legible or worse, Jim found an old section. While some of the names were similar to those we were looking for, there were no matches so we went to the tourist office to ask more questions.

There we found out that the body of water closest to us is not the North Sea, but a branch of it called the Wadden Sea (or Mudflat Sea in English) which extends from Esbjerg (north of here) all along the coast south to Holland. To find the real North Sea, we had to go north of Esbjerg. But first things first, we set off to find another of the main villages here where my ancestors were born, married, or died: Tjaereborg.

Sneum cottages. Dike is on right blocking the Wadden Sea.

There was also a location called Sneum that the tourist office said no longer existed though there is a Sneumvej (Sneum Way) on our car map. Tjaereborg is just past Store Darum, where we were yesterday, but our route was closer to the sea. When we saw a road for Sneum, of course we turned off. About 1-2k off the main road, there was a little village of cottages that looked like a resort community, all along a dike and the Wadden Sea. There is a bike path on top of the dike which runs all along the coast here. We stopped long enough to take a few pictures, but there wasn't much to see.

The view at Sneum

Homes in Tjaereborg

Tjaereborg Church and Cemetery

Next was Tjaereborg -- as we neared the town, I saw a square steeple like yesterday, and after wandering around town, trying to avoid the new asphalt that was being laid on the roads, we managed to locate the church and its cemetery.  I ended up only taking one photo of the village because it was all so sparkly and new, and we didn't see an older section. The church was lovely inside, but no one was there to ask about anything. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed. This time as we wandered in search of headstones of known ancestors, we kept seeing the same names from later times over and over again. It was actually kind of overwhelming realizing that this village is probably full of my distant cousins. Again,  there was a separate section of really old tombstones, but they were horribly difficult to read. I took a few photos hoping to be able to process them into something., but most seemed only to be candidates for rubbings.

Old section of the Tjaereborg Cemetery

Interesting wind vehicle on beach

Then we headed to Vejers Strand and the North Sea. This is a tourist town that has pretty much shut down for the winter. We had brought a lunch but hoped to eat there and save the sandwiches for dinner. No such luck! We did go to the beach -- long and populated, but WINDY. It reminded Jim of Padre Island in South Texas where you drive on the beach and park there and it stretches on forever. For me, it was just like 90 Mile Beach on the North Island of New Zealand. We collected some sand and looked for shells and stones to create yet another glass pyramid of sand from around the world -- very few shells except for some strange elongated ones like short cigars and LOTS of crab shells and a few small pieces of waterlogged driftwood.

Jim at the North Sea

Lynn in front of a LONG stretch of beach

Park in Ribe

There was one more potential place to look for ancestors, Tinning, near Aarhus, on the east side of the Jutland peninsula. When we fed the name into Alice, she couldn't find it, so we tried Aarhus and got an estimate of 117 miles and 2 hours for one direction. Since locating Tinning was now a long shot, we gave that up and went back to Ribe where we looked for a self-service laundry (none) and then wandered around town some more and found a lovely little park by the river with a large colony of mallards.

Mallard near wooden bridge

LOUD waterwheel in old town Ribe

One interesting challenge here is that we have to pay for the hotel in cash and they don't take Euros. We arrived Monday after the banks closed, so we used an ATM and ended up having to take out $100 more than we needed. Meals were so expensive that we charged the first one, and now were looking at how we could spend about $80 worth of Danish Krone. Most of the restaurants were over that budget, and we finally settled on an Italian place and manged to use up all but about $10, which we can probably clear out with a stop to the local bakery before we leave tomorrow. This IS the land of the Danish pastry after all!