I delete a lot of email without opening it, not just when they seem suspicious, but anything that looks like junk or that I can tell I am not interested in. Yesterday morning I was about to trash an email message from a sender whose name I didn't recognize, but something about the subject line made me stop. It said "Ahnenforschung." I didn't know that word, but there is a kind of ancestor table that genealogists call an Ahnentafel, so I thought I'd open it to see if it had something to do with genealogy.
The message began: Ich hoffe sie können die deutsche Sprache - da ich leider kein Englisch kann.
My German is lousy (I took it in college a hundred years ago), but I had no trouble understanding that sentence: "I hope you know German because I can't speak English."
The message was from a 39-year-old housewife and mother of three named Natascha Fida who lives in Vienna, Austria. She told me that her maiden name was Knez and that her Ururgroßeltern were Franz Knez (born in 1821) and Josefa Kubat. They are my great-great-grandparents too, so that makes Natascha Fida of Vienna my third cousin.
I had to blow the dust off my Cassell's German Dictionary to understand everything she was saying. Then I used Google Translate to help me compose a reply in German. There is no telling how stupid what I wrote might sound to a native German speaker, but I have heard from her again, and she seems to have understood everything I said. She sent me some documents, I sent her some information, and we have made a family connection. How cool is that?
I'm glad I decided to open that email.
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