Family, Bern, and the Cruel Swiss Soldiers

We took time this month to visit family.  For those that do not know, both my mom and my dad are from Switzerland and come from very large families (I had 22 aunts-uncles, 7 have passed away, 4 are living in Canada).  Of the eleven living in Switzerland, we have visited eight.  In addition to this, I have 73 cousins (65 are living in Switzerland, we have visited 13).

To visit the Muller family (mom’s side of the family), we have traveled to Arth-Goldau, Zug, Bern, and Frinvillier.  There is a possibility of further travel to Aldorf, Wilen and Unterschachen.  To visit the Pfenniger family (dad’s side of the family), we traveled to Root, where there was a small but fun cousin reunion!  To communicate, they speak a Swiss-German (which I can understand to some degree) and I speak a broken Swiss-German/English/French –they call it talking with your hands and feet (and yes, for those of you know me, it is the same way I speak English!!).  For the most part we talked about family, current events and played Jass (a Swiss-German card game, pronounced “yas”).

Ten years ago, when I was in Switzerland, I also had the chance to visit almost everybody (aunts-uncles and cousins) thanks to two separate Muller and Pfenniger cousins reunions.   In visiting family (and others) I have not seen in a long time, I am often amazed at how they remember me.  Humbly, I am not the engineer turned doctor going to Africa to work for two years.  I am, instead, the 8 year old boy banging on the breakfast table with my sister screaming “I am hungry”; I am the 8 year old boy wearing a bed pan on my head thinking it’s a helmet; I am the 30 year old man cooking bratwursts on the grill barking out orders like I was a short order cook; I am the 30 year old man who fell asleep on the train and almost ended up in Italy; and I am the 30 year old man leading 10 pigs down a mountain saying “Here piggy, piggy, piggy.” (To those of you laughing, they were following me, that is until the hail came, and then they ran back up the hill knocking my sister over and making my uncle laugh.  And yes he is still laughing when I met him this month.)

I am often confused when people are taken back by what I say from time to time but slowly I understand why.  There is a gap between what I think I am –which is defined by today, and what they see me as –which is defined by moments of time since birth.  As a child I used to cry easily and was referred to as “Baby Fredy,” maybe this is why my mom still reminds me to dress properly when visiting family! 

Of the towns we have seen so far, Bern is the most fascinating for multiple reasons.  First, the old village of Bern was established late in the 12^th century.   Local legend has it that the founder named the city after the first animal he killed, a Bear.  Every year since then, the city has had a bear in captivity, except for a few years when it was occupied by the French around 1798. (One wonders if the French tried to demoralize the citizens of Bern by taking their bears –the pettiness of war!)  Second, Bern is where Einstein lived, worked, studied, and met his first wife.  She was actually taking some of the same courses Einstein was at the University.  We visited his apartment and learned that he had a daughter with his first wife out of wedlock that he never saw. (The daughter was raised by his wife’s parents in Hungary.)  It was here in Bern while working at a patent office that he proposed his theory of relativity.  And third, Bern was one of the “old eight” cantons that formed the backbone of the Swiss confederations.  Until its declaration of neutrality, Switzerland was known for its fighting ability and for supplying mercenaries.  One quote we came across states “Swiss soldiers were once the cruelest in Europe, killing their prisoners as they fought.  This is a fundamental part of Swiss history.  The country probably became peaceful because it had such cruel past.” Go figure!

God Bless