Alvah Thomas Strickland. Tom to the world. "Alvah" was a relative
he was named after, but it's easy for me to remember since Thomas Edison's name was always Thomas ALVAH Edison.
He's a cousin of my generation that Mother re-discovered a few years ago and who she has visited twice in Hawaii. His mother's father and Mother's mother were sister and brother, and we have the same great-grandfather. If I get it right, he's Mother's great nephew, or he might be her second cousin, too; I can't figure out all this relationship stuff.
He's been travelling the world for over a year now, but was in Germany for several months. When he went through Atlanta months and months ago and visited Mother, he said he'd be in Germany; she suggested he contact me, and he did.
So after back-and-forth correspondence, last weekend he drove up here from Stuttgart with his girl friend (I somehow misunderstood when we first talked about the visit - I had the mistaken impression the friend was a guy!) where he's been staying since arriving in Germany. The two of them did a lot of driving for this very short visit, but we had a wonderful time and I'm so glad they did it.
Friday evening we met Tom and Gila for dinner at the Strandlust, a nice hotel here in Vegesack right on the river. (A great dinner - they'd booked the Romantic Weekend that included the three-course dinner they invited us to share. Yum.)
Saturday they came to our place after breakfast and we looked at old pictures -- the ones Mother had gathered for the family history album for Michelle's wedding. He had tidbits to add and we both enjoyed it. Werner and Gila entertained themselves speaking German to each other !
Of course we went into Bremen since neither had been there. Here we are at Roland in the old town square. We looked at the usual monuments and neighborhoods, had dinner at home -- sesame-crusted ground lamb balls with couscous and - by request - pecan pie for desert!
Nice getting to know new relatives!
Below: Tom and Gila, Tom and me.
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