I took a while to post this time because this may very well be the most personal one I’ve written yet! The more personal, the more careful a writer I am—so that's a good thing! Although this post is personal, I do hope others will find the history described here interesting or even relevant to their own lives. People travel for all sorts of reasons. Tracing a family history is just one reason, and it only applies to why I chose Germany as one of the stops during my year of deviation. I hope this post resonates with those of you who maybe have traveled for this reason before or perhaps you are aspiring to do so one day as well!
Lots of people have grandparents in their lives for a large chunk of their childhood and sometimes even into adulthood. Some are less fortunate to ever have any in their lives at all. I was fortunate enough to have two grandparents on my father’s side, Arthur and Shirley, and my grandmother on my mother’s side, Josephine, for at least part of my childhood. They all died by the time I was 12.