On the first day ...

of my trip to Vietnam I started already the search for my unknown sister.

As many of you might have noticed: I also changed the main language in my blog from German to English.

This is caused by the many friends, supporter and readers I have from outside Germany. I try to make it a little bit easier for you to understand and follow me.

The journey itself was ok. I started at 9:00 am in the morning at our main station in Münster - as usual with a delay of the train so I had to change trains already to catch the flight at 2:00 pm in Frankfurt Airport.

The flight was fully booked and thanks to Deutsche Bahn I was among the last to check in and only catched a seat in a middle lane of the Boing 777-200.

Motorcyclist - The dominating species in Saigon

For a man of my size (or should I write "length"?) this was a horror trip and I could not sleep for a minute on the plane.

I took a taxi from the airport to the Au Lac II Hotel and I am sure the taxi driver was very happy to charge me 20 US$ for that trip.

My room - the chaos is already visible

The Hotel is absolutely wonderful and is located near the river and next to the famous market Ben Thann.

When I arrived in the Hotel I realised how stupid I can be: I forgot my wonderful Excel-Sheet with all the dedails of my trip including the list of contact data on my home PC. I hope that my wonderful wife will sent the list later today via mail to me.

After the check in at the Hotel I made a walk around the Hotel to get myself a first impression.

Saigon is as always: Loud with lots of motorcycles on the streets, a absoltely oversized offer of any kind of services (Hundreds of people asked me to drive me by car, on a mototbike or even a bycicle, I was offered to by anythng possilbe, get my shoes cleanded and many other things.) The people are really trying hard to make their living.

In the afternoon I went to the Cathedrial of Notre Dame to see Sister Theresa Hahn from the office of the cardinal. The offices are right next to the well known Church in the center of Saigon.

I asked a woman how to find Theresa Hahn in the big building, she could not understand my Englisch but organied a priest to come to the gate. Theresa Hahn moved some time ago to the US (a promotion I guess) and I now understand why she didn't answer my last two mails.

The priest was very friendly to me and succesed to try my best luck in meeting with the local Bishops in Can Tho and Nha Trang. Which I promised to do! :-)

So, witout any new informations I came back to the Hotel (totally tired) and wrote some mails and uploaded the first pictures to Facebook.

Tomorrow I will meet the people from the search team from the TV Station. I have many expectations about that meeting (At the end they found out where the farm was my father used to work on).

We have not fixed the exact hour which we will meet tomorow - but I thinks this is only strange to me cause I am a typical German. :-)

After I finished this post I desperedly need a nap, but I have to wait until my wife has sent the files with all the details. Otherwise I even would not now were exactly the meeting will happen tomorrow. And I would be really sorry not to attend on this assembly!

Please touch all wood for the meeting tomorrow!

Thanks.

Friedhelm

Here some other pictures I took today:

The Office building of the Catholic Churc next to Notre Dame

The well known Catholic Church "Notre Dame" in Saigon

The inside of Notre Dame in Saigon

 See all pictures at Piccasa Webalbums: 

Kein Einzelfall

In drei Wochen bin ich auf dem Weg nach Vietnam. Gestern erhielt ich eine neue Mail von einem Leser des Forum-Vietnam.de. Er hatte dort meinen ein Jahr alten Beitrag  über die Suche nach meiner Halbschwester gelesen und fragte, ob es noch aktuell sei.
Er hat eine Bekannte bei einer Sprachschule in Saigon. Ihre Eltern sind auch katholisch und kommen aus der Gegend südlich von Nha Trang wo auch mein Vater lebte.
Gerne habe ich deshalb Kontakt aufgenommen und heute schon Antwort erhalten.
Die freundliche Frau aus Saigon hat sich meinen Blog schon durchgelesen und mir u.a. von ihrem 61 jährigen Bekannten geschrieben: Auch er hat einen deutschen Vater, den er nie kennengelernt hat. Er war genau wie mein Vater Soldat der Fremdenlegion und hat das Land noch vor der Geburt des Sohnes verlassen. Seine Mutter hat alle Erinnerungen (Fotos) an ihn verbrannt. Für 60 Jahre wurde das Thema nicht angerührt und durch ihren Anruf wurde es wieder aktuell.
Wenn ich in Saigon bin, werde ich mich mit ihm treffen. Vielleicht können wir uns gegenseitig helfen. Er hilft mir in Vietnam und ich helfe ihm hier in Deutschland.
Je näher meine Abreise kommt um so näher geht mir auch die ganze Geschichte. Ich bin gespannt was ich in Vietnam erleben werde.