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German Roots Trip 2003 - Contents

SEEKING OUR GERMAN ROOTS

Chapter IV

May 23-25, 2003

TRIER and REIL
Butzen Family History

Reil, Saturday, May 24

When we descended from the little "environmental" train in Reil, there was a pretty young teenage girl waiting for us--the daughter of Richard and Martina Arns. But, we quickly realized that we had read something into Martina’s words, "we will meet you at the train" that wasn’t really there. We expected that we would hop into a car and be driven down to the Arn’s guest house. Nope. Apparently if you grow up in Reil, you wouldn’t think of wasting gas on a four-block walk from the train station. Instead, the girl just said "follow me" and led us down a little dirt path, some steep steps, and then up the paved street to her home. Not the ideal route for our rolling suitcases, but they bumped along behind us.

The Richard Arns live almost at the "outskirts" of town in a hillside home (but then, ALL homes in the village are hillside!). A very warm interior, with lots of light wood paneling. The daughter escorted us to our room on the upper floor of the house. The Arns apparently occupy the main floor, and the guest breakfast room is on the lower, daylight basement level. There appeared to be four guestrooms on our floor. We had a river view deck, shared with the room next door. Very pleasant, roomy and a lovely bath.

When Martina Arns came back from a shopping trip with her son in Trier, she greeted us, showed us the breakfast room on the ground floor and said breakfast would be served there at 8 a.m. each morning. She also said that her father-in-law, Rainier Arns, was looking forward to meeting with us, and when we were ready, her daughter would escort us to his home.

Rainer and his wife, Hannelöre, live above the family winery, where the sign on the front door says "Rainer Arns & Son."

We climbed up the stairs to the family quarters on the second floor, and out to a large and very pleasant covered deck, overlooking the river below. Rainer’s home is about 4-5 blocks from his son’s house, more in the center of the village.

Even on their deck, we were aware that this was the home of a winemaker--wooden crates for holding wine bottles were stacked all along the wall of the deck.

Rainer and Hannelöre were prepared for our family history questions, and they had two sections of a typed book called "Familienbuch Reil" that listed all the genealogical information for Reil, back into the 1600’s. It took some time, and some comparing of family charts, but we ultimately determined that BOTH Rainer and Hannelöre are related to us! And, it turned out that Hannelöre is the closer relationship, as her great-great grandmother, Anna Barbara Butzen was the sister of Walter Butzen, my great-great-grandfather. Rainer’s connection to the Butzens is one generation prior. Rainer said there are still some people living in Reil with the surname Butzen, but none of them seem very interested in family history, and he doubted they would add much to our genealogy information, so we didn’t press the matter of meeting them.

When all these relationships became clear, we mutually shook hands and greeted each other as relatives! We also were treated to some of the Arns’ product--wonderful Riesling wine.

Later, Rainer also gave us a tour of the winery, on the ground floor.

We also saw the Arns’ powerful little tractors with narrow gauge axles--necessary for negotiating the narrow roads that run through the hillside vineyards above the village and across the river.

And then, down we went, into the wine cellar caves that must be carved into the hill behind the house.

Rainer commented that it’s difficult to run a winery today because of the competition from South Africa, Chile, Spain, and Portugal. For Mosel vintners, it is hard to compete, because they cannot use machinery on the steep hillsides above the river. All must be done by hand. The wineries can only make it here by making very high quality, exclusive wines and selling them to a specialty market. Wine gourmands who really know good wines are the ones who come here to buy wine. Most of the Arns’ wines go to customers who have been buying from him for years. While Richard is the only son living in Reil and running the winery, other Arns children are involved in wine-making and one son teaches viticulture in Trier.

Back at our room, we decided that with a two-night stay in Reil, it was a good time to catch up on our washing. No outside clothes lines were in evidence, so we draped our laundry all over the bathroom and even snuck a few socks out to the deck, to dry on the back of a chair.

We walked back in to town, with the intent to find a place to eat, but our route passed just behind Rainer Arns’ home, and there was Rainer! He cordially offered to give us another guided tour--this time, we went to the 300-year old house owned by Hannelöre which contained a tasting room and REALLY old wine cellars. The Arns aren’t using this for wine storage, and they rent out the house above. Maybe the reason they gave up on these wine cellars is the terrible floods on the Mosel in the winters of 1993 and 1995. Hannelöre’s house and cellars are much closer to the river, and apparently the cellars were filled with flood waters at that time.

These cellars seemed to go even farther back into the hillside and were eerily empty, except for some dusty old wine bottles resting in a niche of the cellar wall.

In one of these "caves," Rainer pointed to two stone "rails" that ran the length of the cellar. He said these were constructed during Roman times, to facilitate rolling the wine barrels through the cellar. We really stepped back in history in that wine cave! Rainer’s own family has been growing grapes and making wine since 1600.

Before we left, Rainer invited us to join him tomorrow morning to hear Mass at a church in Springiersbach, a few kilometers away. After being reassured that our traveling clothes were appropriate to go to Mass, we agreed that he would pick us up about 9 a.m. tomorrow morning.

Strolling on into town, we were now getting seriously hungry and it was almost dark. We spied a pizza restaurant with an ice cream stand just outside. Perfect! Or, so we thought. Being Saturday night the place was busy but our pizza came hot and tasty after a little wait.

While we were dining, we heard loud rumbling outside, followed soon by a lot of lightning flashes that lit up the dark sky. Then, it started to rain….no, it started to POUR. And, it seemed that it would never let up! Sheets of rain were still coming down when we had polished off the pizza. It was a pleasant May afternoon when we left our guest house, now, it was pitch dark, raining cats and dogs, and our umbrella was back in our room, nice and dry. We asked the hostess if there might be a taxi in town? Nope, but she said she would drive us back if it didn’t let up soon. Luckily, it did break off, and we walked through darkened Reil, with enough light from street lamps to get back to the Arn’s guest house. We needed our little penlights to find the lock at the front door though!

Red star indicates Reil Bullay at top of map, Springiersbach is west of Reil

 

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