K-Team Travel with a tiny bit of Family History

[Have you ever been to a place and had an immediate affinity with it? Well, that’s how it was for me when the T-K Team on their Swiss adventures visited Murten. Loved the place. I’m sure, now, that it wasn’t just the perfect weather, the picture postcard views of the lake and the charming medieval architecture so perfectly preserved. There was something more, which I was to discover recently.

Of course, my younger son would insist on putting a dampener on my dreams—’How can you be related? You’ve got no Western German in your ethnicity,’ he harps on and on about that point. Anyway, we will put that matter aside and I’ll take it up with My Heritage.

All I can say, is that there must be something in the connection I felt with the place. While doing my family history, I came across some ancestors, the De Bons, who lived in Murten, my five times great-grandfather was a protestant pastor in Murten. There were Huguenot connections in the family. And note the museum, where I mention that the Celts lived in Murten. According to my DNA results from My Heritage, my ethnicity is 25% Celt.]

Murten/Morat

Thursday, August 21, 2014, even earlier up as we planned to drive across the country to Bern and beyond, near the French part of Switzerland. Granny excused herself as the last two days had exhausted her and besides, she really needed to catch up with her uncle and auntie.

I might add here that Granny and her family, being Swiss German, were not fans of the French part of Switzerland. The feeling, I’ve heard, is mutual. (Thanks to Nepoleon, the French part of Switzerland only became thus in the early 1800’s. So, when my ancestors were living there in the 1700’s, they would’ve identified as French.)

In Murten, the people speak French. So, when P1 spoke Swiss German to the Museum attendant, she was not amused. We almost didn’t get a Museum pass.

Back to the timeline, and some photos.

Despite Tomina’s (Tom Tom) and my under par navigational performance (early morning—yawn), we arrived at 11.30am in Morat/Murten and relished a day of summer, eating lunch by the lake, exploring the Old town and its buildings garnished with flowers, the museum of Stone Age, Celtic, Roman and Medieval relics spanning 10,000 years of human settlement around Murten. Followed by a visit to the Roman ruins in Avenches, the ancient capital of the Roman province of Helvitica.

On our return, we suffered the frustration stuck in peak hour traffic, and Granny suffered stress worrying about our late arrival “home”.