I figure that explaining the raison d’être of my trip may be of interest to you, the reader.

The first objective is to visit my cousin Audrey in the Netherlands. Audrey has spent the last year at Wageningen University & Research, in graduate school. I’m sure you’ll hear more from me about Wageningen later.

The second is to connect with my roots. The name Eva Wetzel sounds ridiculously German already. (Actually, if you Google my name, you’ll find my far more talented German doppelganger — an Eva Wetzel from Schleiz who currently plays in the 1st violin section of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra.)

And it’s not just the name! My mom studied the German language, and one of her most exciting college experiences was living with a host family in a rural part of Germany. In fact, my whole maternal side — the Hammer family — leans heavily into our German heritage. Every so often they hold a big family reunion that they irreverently refer to as “Oktoberfest,” with plenty of beer and bratwurst to go around.

My dad’s family, meanwhile, settled in a small Nebraskan town called Curtis and did not hold on to many old-world traditions. He recalls that my grandma (Joan Wetzel) would occasionally make homemade sauerkraut. However, according to family lore, the goal of the German immigrants in his family was to Americanize. His grandfather was apparently viewed with suspicion by the small town for being German during World War II.

In general, my ancestors were immigrants from Ireland, England, and Germany who came to the midwestern U.S. in the 1800s and became farmers. Apparently, many of the Germans emigrated because of famine, or to avoid military conscription in various wars going on at the time.

Eventually, they produced my grandparents, who grew up as either farm kids or middle-class rural Midwesterners. Grandpa George Wetzel was a small-town mortician and Grandpa Mark Hammer was an Air Force pilot (later a wastewater engineer, accepting whatever program would pay his loans). Both families scrimped, saved, and encouraged their children to get an education. It was because of their hard work and frugality that both families were able to send my parents, Martin and Sharon, to college, where they met.

I couldn’t imagine the drudgery of subsistence farming, or the struggle that my family went through. (One old family legend has an ancestor escaping his abusive father via train, with nothing but a suitcase and an extra pair of underwear.) Compared to them, I live a very privileged and comfortable life. (Even just compared to my mom, in fact, who recounts a childhood of Grandpa Hammer’s legendary penny-pinching.)

I can’t imagine what it was like for those first European immigrants to arrive on the vast Nebraska prairie, a world away from their homeland, loved ones, and traditions.¹ I am thankful not just to my parents, but to each of my ancestors for toiling to ensure that their children be educated and better their standing. For them, with hard work and luck, the chimerical American dream actually came true. Traveling to the “old country” inspires both gratitude and the urge to work hard.

OK, that got pretty longwinded and deep. The third reason for this trip is just for fun! And learning more about Europe. For this reason, I will cruise through Austria and end my travels by spending a few days in Budapest, which is known to be an inexpensive and lively city for solo travelers.

I have really enjoyed researching the locations I will visit, and I’ll be sure to share some of that information with you here.

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1. Of course, this land rightfully belonged to others. The opportunity for their “American dream” was opened by the conquest and attempted annihilation of the Midwest’s native tribes — a fact that should always be remembered. Historical circumstances meant that “luck” (and skin color for that matter) played a large part in European immigrants’ success.