Here we are in December again…already. Quite the year, wouldn’t you say? But it also means it is time for the 2025 (and 33rd overall) edition of the Weissler Holiday Gazette, our annual year in review.
Happy hour in Wrocław 
With Maureen at the Tucson Festival of Books 
Rachel and Elliot! 
With Rachel, Elliot, Rod, and Vivian 
Robert at Sachsenhausen concentration camp 
Wolfgang at the ceremony in Magdeburg 
Stolperstein for Friedrich Weissler 
Robert, Sławek, and Wolfgang in Pszczyna 
Robert at work in Osoblaha, PL 
Walking with Madalari and Dakota (and Rachel 🙂 
Wine tasting with Margaret and Micah 
First Waymo ride, in SF! 
Bob and Pam Deichmeister 
Wine tasting in the Swan Valley, Western Australia 
Chocolate tasting, Swan Valley 
Pesky flies = bug nets! 
“No photos!” 
Robert at Bremer Bay, Western Australia 
With family for the holidays
In family news, the highlights of the year were the wedding of niece Rachel Weissler and Elliot Powell, and the birth of their son Dakota Harris. We were fortunate to be able to spend a week with the family in Tacoma in late summer. We continued our family history research in Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland with Robert’s cousin Wolfgang Weissler, where our time there included attending a ceremony for the installation of a “Stolperstein” memorial for Wolfgang’s grandfather Friedrich Weissler (and Robert’s great-uncle) in Magdeburg. [The Stolperstein link is in German, but your browser can translate it for you.]
In Poland we were quite lucky to meet Sławomir (Sławek) Pastuszka, an historian and cemetery restoration expert. Sławek not only gave us precise directions via text to graves in one cemetery, but met with us later that day, accompanied us to a cemetery in Mikołów to see five recently restored Weissler headstones, and put us in touch with (new to us) Weisslers in Israel – Danny and his cousin Daniel – whom we subsequently “met” on a zoom call and have kept in touch. A spur-of-the-moment text message to someone (who actually answered!) resulted in a lot of new family information for us.
Parting ways with Wolfgang in Poland, we continued on to Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria (story in the Germany link above), combining sightseeing with a little more family research and enjoying some of the regional specialties such as Pressburg Bajgels in Bratislava, goulash, and schnitzel. Needless to say…we didn’t walk enough to work off some of the good food and drink.
Our other big trip of the year was birding in Western Australia in October. We took two back-to-back tours out of Perth with Inala Nature Tours, one going north into the wheatbelt and back along the coast of the Indian Ocean, the other south to the coast of the Southern Ocean. Lovely time birding and we enjoyed the spring weather there, even if the flies did get a little annoying at times. (They didn’t bite, they were just persistent.)
Stateside besides Washington state to see Rachel and family, we were in southern California to visit Liza’s family; Prescott, Arizona to visit cousins Bob and Pam Deichmeister; and San Francisco to see niece Margaret and husband Micah Solit. (We even snuck in a little family history in SF, finding the graves of Robert’s great-aunt Lilly Wendt and her husband Emil Albert Bringman in the SF National Cemetery at the Presidio, and exploring the (now dicey) neighborhood where a more distant Weissler lived while working as a cantor at a synagogue.) We also had a visit in the spring from niece Maureen and her partner John; Maureen was participating in the Tucson Festival of Books including promoting her book His Girl Hollywood.
Next year we are surprisingly unplanned – usually we have two or three things booked by now. Possibly we will return to Australia, specifically Tasmania. We hope to return to Europe, this time a visit to Amsterdam, which also figures into the extended Weissler family history. Closer to home a driving trip or two may be in the cards to get to a couple more national parks/monuments. And of course California and Tacoma, Washington for family.
Wishing everyone a safe, happy, and healthy 2026!
Also check out…
The Adventures of Buddy Bison!
Liza’s food blog, Liza’s World Kitchen
Ancestry.com: Liza Weissler
Follow us on Instagram! lizaweissler, rweissler, bbisonw, and lywbirds