Continental Drifting - Introduction

My mother, Erika Schink-Cooney-Featherstone, was born in a small village in East Prussia then called Guwöhnen. It lies to the south of the Russian city, Kaliningrad near the town of Domnovo previously known as Königsberg and Domnau. She was born in 1939 as the second world war started and her life was defined by the history of that bloody conflict. After living the first few years of her life in a rural farm community her life changed dramatically. As the Russians invaded the Baltic states they took retribution for the atrocities committed by the Nazis earlier in the war and Germans ran for their lives. East Prussia was evacuated by the Nazis between January and March 1945. So as a 4-year-old child my mother became a refugee. With her mother and siblings she began a walk across Northern Europe that ended in a concentration camp in Sweden. My grandmother led the way. Like a lot of German refugees she had to survive without the help of her man. My grandfather was a farmer and his occupation was protected so he initially avoided being a soldier but he was sent to the Russian front after criticising the Nazi regime. My mother's sister's sweetheart, Franz, a Pole, was also sent to fight for the Nazis. Miraculously everyone survived. My family were reunited and Franz married Ursal. After the war, still not even 6 years old, my mother was repatriated to Germany. She grew up in a small town called Hitzacker which lay on the river Elbe on the Western side of the border between east and west. Hitzacker was not her home. My mother never had a home. She was a restless, bitter soul and maybe the answers to her enigma lie in her origins like so many of us.

This blog isn't about my mother but it begins with her. I inherited the feelings of being a lost soul from her and have always puzzled over my origins. Where am I from? Where is my homeland? I was born in a town called Prescot but I never felt at home there. So I resolved to go to my mother's birthplace to see with my own eyes the place that is partly my origin. I need to understand myself. Maybe the answers lie there. At the age of 30 I resolved to make the trip. Ursal, my mother's sister, had been. She told me it was unchanged from her memory. She took a peak through one of the windows of the house in which she was born and it still had some of the original furniture in it. Her brother, Ewalt, went to see. The apple trees that used be his were in fruit and he stole an apple for each of his siblings. They were after all the family's apples. He and his siblings could at least have a taste of home. My family are not alone in this psychological rootlessness. Over 12 million Germans were repatriated from places in Europe to modern Germany after the war. Thousands of them, like me, ponder their origins. Thousands of them are going back to see where they came from.

I failed to make the trip at the age of 30 so I resolved to go at 40 but failed again. This year I am 50 and on my way. East Prussia was dismantled after the war and the area my mother was born in is now Russia. It's not easy to drive to Russia. As well as visas you need to complete import and export documentation for the car and insurance has to be organised at the border. At the time of writing no English insurance company will insure a car in Russia.

My son, Kit is with me. I thought, if we go to Russia then we might as well see a few other places along the way so the trip to my mother's birthplace has turned into a road trip taking in 18 countries in 17 days. I never wanted to go to my mother's birthplace, have a look and then just leave. I want to feel the distance of her journey. And when I get there I want to leave something of myself. But what to leave? Of course, the answer is a song! A song leaves energy in the ether. It does not leave scars. Then I thought if we sing a song in Russia, why not sing a song everywhere we go? We shall leave a song behind us in every country we visit.

Hearing of our adventure an internet friend in Serbia sent me a message saying it was a shame we couldn't go there too. Of course, it only took the thought. Serbia, it turns out, is almost as difficult to drive to as Russia and that made us all the more determined to go. What follows is a chronicle of our adventures. There are bound to be adventures.