Tomorrow, August 1, is Swiss National Day. The K-Team who hail from Switzerland are coming to our place to celebrate a fondue dinner.
I’m so glad I have discovered I have some Swiss ancestry too, although, mine’s not the German part, but the French part–from Lausanne.
Anyway, in the spirit of celebrating Switzerland, here’s a re-visit of the K-Team’s adventures in Switzerland, 2014.
Last night, August 1, my husband’s maternal family hailing from Switzerland, we celebrated Swiss National Day. My husband’s mother was born in Basel and then grew up in Zurich. Her mother came from Wattwil, St. Gallen.
So, the family gathered at our home and enjoyed a firepit fire in the backyard.
Then we consumed loads of cheese and bread which is the traditional Swiss cuisine called fondue.
Now, while, for many years my husband received the accolades for being half-Swiss, when embarking on my family history journey, I discovered a solid Swiss connection and ancestry in my family tree. Not only did some of my Trudinger third or fourth cousins settle in Basel, Switzerland, (that fact I already knew from the family tree constructed by my uncle), but I found on my father’s side, a noble line stretching back in the French part of Switzerland, in Lausanne. (Familie Schammer © Reinhold Becker 1922) Although, I have to admit that Vaud, or Savoy, where those ancestors come from, only became Switzerland after Nepoleon’s invasion and influence, which was at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century.
When I asked my husband where fondue was “invented”, he said that fondue comes from the French part of Switzerland. In winter, the poor farmers used their cheese and bread to make a meal—fondue.
So, in memory of all things Swiss, here’s a revisit of an earlier post when the T-K Team travelled to Switzerland in 2014.
Welcome with Alphorns
Sunday, August 17, the real fun began—and so did the early starts.
Up by 6am to race to Zurich Airport to meet the rest of the K-Team, Hubby’s family: his mother (Mum K) brother (P1), niece (Miss K), our son (Son 1) and his fiancé. Drove into the airport car park where Hubby became confused and drove out again and then in again. After finding a park we made our way to arrivals where an English man chatted to Hubby.
‘We’re from Australia,’ Hubby said.
The English man nodded. ‘I can tell.’
A young woman accompanied by a man dressed in Swiss costume who’d been standing next to us spoke to us. We soon established that we had been standing next to Hubby’s second cousins.
We then waited together for the K-Team fresh from Australia to roll through the arrival gate. Tired of waiting, Hubby wandered down the hallway and there near an alcove of shops, he found our weary travellers.
Must be the atmosphere in Zurich, or just jetlag as after greeting us, they stood around for at least an hour discussing what to do. Hubby and I took custody of their luggage and had a coffee while they lingered in the hall in suspended animation apparently organising the lease car and then debating how to change Australian dollars into Swiss Francs.
Just as I pulled my diary out to write, movement, and then we were on our way to the farm near Wattwil of Toggenburg in the Canton of St. Gallen.
There Alphorns, and cow bell ringers, and the stunning green hills and blue mountains of the Santis greeted us. Mum K shrieked and cried and hugged her relatives. Our niece exclaimed, ‘It’s all so beautiful!’
Willing members of the K-Team tested their muscles swinging the huge cowbells, or their lungs playing the Alphorn. Some had more success than others. I escaped the test by recording the event with my camera.
Then a banquet of kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake) on a balcony with the view. Perfect…until Miss K said, ‘Ugh! I have a fly in my plate.’
‘Is it doing backstroke?’ I asked.
‘It’s on its back and struggling.’
‘Oh, you have a fly!’ Mum K stabbed the fly several times with a knife. ‘There.’
‘What did you do that for?’ Miss K asked.
‘I put it out of its misery,’ Mum K said.
‘You murdered it.’
After the insecticide incident, our hosts showed us our rooms and one of our cousins gave us instructions about the bathroom and how to place the flywire in our windows to keep out the “fleas”. She meant flies.
Mum K went missing. Found her in the dairy—yes, we were on a dairy farm that is still owned by the family. I was amazed that Swiss farmers have as few as ten cows and yet they make a living! Wouldn’t happen in Australia. And our hostess promised us fresh milk, dare I say it, raw milk, straight from the cow the next morning. Ah, the advantages of living on a dairy farm in Switzerland!
‘Actually,’ Hubby stated, ‘the Swiss Brown milk is known for its high fat content, so the milk is used for making cheese.’
As the T-Team talked to their dairy-farmer cousins, in this barn for the cows, I held my nose and edged towards the door. The up-and-personal experience with the cows and their calves in their enclosures, proved too much for my senses, and I suggested, ‘Let’s go for a walk to the forest.’ I moved out of the barn, sure that my bovine-close-encounter would be used in what was at that time in 2014, a future story—The Lost World of the Wends.
From the barn, the K-Team took a ramble to Mum K’s beloved forest—a smaller forest than one she remembered from her youth, but one she recalled vividly in a novel she wrote, A Teenager Long Time Ago.
© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2014 (original); updated 2017; 2024
Feature Photo: K-Team heads for the pine forest © Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2014
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[This postcard of the Basel Minster (German: Basler Münster) was delivered to its recipient in 1899. Theodora Bellan, the recipient was my Great-grandmother’s house maid. Imagine! Those were the days when ancestors had house maids. My grandfather who was my Great-grandma’s son-in-law, collected postcards and so, ended up with this one. I wonder if he considered, back then, probably some 80 to 90 years ago, that, one of his descendants (me) with the K-Team would visit the birthplace of my husband’s mother? Would he have envisaged the changes to this city and the challenges the K-Team faced visiting this city of Switzerland?]
Not so early, for once, on this particular Saturday morning, Hubby’s brother P1, Granny K, Hubby and I headed for Basel. We regretted not rising early. Near Zurich, cars on the autobahn came to a virtual standstill and continued that way till Basel.
Having taken twice as long to get to Basel, and then taking time to squeeze into a very narrow car park in the middle of the city, once released from the confines of the car, Granny went in search of toilet facilities. She found some close by only to discover they took her Swiss Franc and failed to deliver relief as she couldn’t open the door. We hunted down the street in search of a toilet. Migros would surely facilitate the desperate. No, only if you patronise the establishment do you get the code to get into the room of relief. The Rathaus? No, joy there—closed for business. Ah, MacDonald’s! Off Granny and I ran. By this time, I was becoming a tad desperate for a wee break. I had a plan. Buy some McChips and a McWrap and get the Mac-code and we’re in business. Had to line up, though. The men waited outside. We waited. They waited. Finally! Service and the sacred code of the Holy Mac-Grail, the toilet.
When we eventually emerged, much relieved, Hubby said, ‘You took your time. We’ve been waiting 25 minutes.’
‘It’s not like Basel’s flush with them,’ I replied.
‘I guess that’s why I haven’t seen many people walking around with bottles of water,’ Hubby muttered.
We fought our way through the Saturday shoppers and holiday crowd over the bridge and to the Kleine Alstadt to find a bench to sit and eat our lunch. Ironically, free benches were the Holy Grail there, but toilets, now we didn’t need one, were in abundance, including open air urinals!
We did find some ratty old seats near a playground and some youth nearby with a ghetto blaster booming out Spanish hip-hop! Oh, well, it was a seat and I enjoyed watching the people and the happy ambience of the sunny Saturday afternoon.
But P1 slouched in his seat and pouted.
‘What’s wrong?’ Granny asked.
‘We haven’t seen anything,’ P1 mumbled.
However soon enough we did see some sights. We saw the outside of the Rathaus with its mural artworks—the inside still closed for a meeting! Approaching the cathedral known as the Basel Minster, I exclaimed, ‘Ah, I’ve been wanting to see inside this cathedral with the tapestry roof for ages. Last time when we were here in 1998, we didn’t have time to look inside.’
‘It was Sunday, then and the Cathedral was closed for a service,’ Hubby said.
‘Oh.’
We entered the Basel Minster and marvelled at the simple beauty of the sanctuary. A service was starting in half an hour, so we had to be silent and not take photos. But I did take some anyway…
After a while, Hubby found me and asked, ‘Have you seen P1?’
‘No.’
Granny came up to us. ‘Have you seen P1?’
‘No, he must’ve climbed the tower,’ I said.
Hubby texted P1 and he replied he’d been asked to leave as a service was about to take place. It just hasn’t been P1’s day.
After meeting P1 in the square, we then walked through the cloisters next door to the Basel Minster and then marvelled at the vista of the Rhine, the city and the mountains in the distance. Hubby pointed out the Blauen Hoch, the mountain we’d climbed while in Badenweiler.
On our way back to the car, we walked through the Altstadt to the Kunst Museum. Too late by this time to explore but Hubby and I hoped we could return next weekend to see the museum. Never happened…Maybe next time???
And finally, Granny asked Hubby to drive past the church where she was baptised. Unfortunately, it was only a drive through, more road works and nowhere to park. At least the church bells started ringing as we crawled past to the delight of Granny.
© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2014; updated 2020
Feature photo: Postcard of Basel Minster Front and Back © 1899
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