Switzerland 3: A Choir in Geneva, and a Cousin in Weiach

After exploring Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday, April 29, 2023, we returned to the home of Kelly & Maria Stotts in Geneva.

Kelly told us that every home in Switzerland is required to have its own bomb shelter, and he showed us theirs.

Notice how beefy that door is.

That evening we got on Zoom and watched the funeral for Dale Kartchner, the father of my brother-in-law Roger. It was touching and very uplifting.

When that had concluded, Maria called to say that she was finished with her first choir performance. So we headed out of their automatic gate and made our way downtown to meet her.

They have a long driveway (shared with a few other people) that is enclosed in a tunnel of trees.

We rode the bus downtown, and there was a little girl on the bus that was adorably sassy. We practiced French with her (like eyes, ears, nose) and she was so fun to watch.

The waterways around the city looked beautiful at dusk.

Kelly, Linette and I met Maria at a Thai restaurant. 

Linette was fascinated by the napkins folded into intricate flowers.

After a delicious dinner, Maria told us some of the history of Geneva as we walked around. This is the Fontaine de L'Escalade, which celebrates the pushback of the troops of the Duke of Savoy in 1602, after they had climbed ladders to scale the walls and attack the city.

The protestant troops were victorious, and this milestone in Geneva history is celebrated every year for a whole weekend in mid-December, culminating in a torchlight procession by some 650 people in period costumes.

The lights were pretty at night. (And I was grateful that my latest iPhone has a "night mode" that uses a slow exposure to take nice pictures at night without needing a tripod. Probably using magic or something.)

Sunday morning I looked out and saw that Linette had found a nice place to "gazeeb" (read scriptures in the morning). I had used that spot a couple days before.

On our walk to church, I loved the purple flowers growing along this house. (Wisteria floribunda? That sounds like a Harry Potter spell.)

We walked through a nice path on the way to church. Kelly and Maria said that when the grass gets long, they bring in sheep to mow it.

Kelly and Maria attend an English-speaking ward, made up of various expats who work for various international companies or government agencies. It was fun to talk to people and find out what brought them there. There happened to be a BYU Law School study abroad group there that week as well. I also had fun talking to a Korean fellow and his wife, who also spoke English just fine.

Maria got to hold someone's new baby while we were there.

That afternoon, Maria had to go to one more choir practice before her choir's final performance that night at an old church downtown. Kelly took me and Linette into town a little later, and took us up the elevator at the building where he worked.

From the balcony outside of his workplace, there was a nice view of the iconic "Jet d'Eau" (pronounced "jjeh-doh", which means simply "Water Jet").

The Jet was first installed in 1886 as a pressure relief safety valve for a hydraulic power network. In 1891, they realized it looked cool, so they moved it to its present location to celebrate a gymnastics festival and the 600th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation. The present Jet d'Eau was installed in 1951 to use lake water instead of city water, and since 2003 has run during the day all year long, except when it is shut off in the case of frost (making the nearby walkways slippery) or heavy wind.

Kelly showed us some of the regional products that PepsiCo makes for the international market that he works with.

Soon it was time to go to Maria's choir concert. The concert was held at the Church of Saint Germain (Église Saint-Germain). An early Christian basilica was built here in the 800s, followed by a Romanesque church in the 1100s. The current building was built in the 1400s as a Protestant church. After the French invasion and resulting agreement between Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte, the local authorities were required to allow the presence of the Roman Catholic Church in the city. So this church was converted to a Catholic church in 1803.

I asked Maria if I could get a picture of one of the "famous people" singing in the choir.

They sang pieces from Handel and Bach, in German and Latin. Maria printed out translations for us so we would know what they were singing about.

The church was small and simple, but still very pretty with its Gothic arches and stained glass windows.

The choir was accompanied by a small orchestra, including a bass, cello, some violins, an organ, and sometimes a harpsichord and alto recorder, among other things.

The choir was beautiful to listen to.

The concert went an hour and a half or so, and I enjoyed the whole thing. I loved how it reverberated a bit in the church.

Here is a 40-second video showing an excerpt from the ends of two songs.

At the end there was much applause.

Nice job, Maria!

After the concert, we dropped by a little reception where the choir members celebrated their performance, and then explored the Old Town a little more.

Maria told us that there was a point in Switzerland's history where some people suffered from limited access to water, so the government set up two water systems: one is the normal one that feeds taps and such. The other is a network of gravity-fed water from pure natural sources that comes out at thousands of fountains all around the country. Apparently you can drink from most water fountains in Switzerland unless they say "Eau Non-Potable" or have an "X" over a cup. This one explicitly says the water (eau) is potable.

One thing this does is provide water security during a time of conflict, because while you might be able to attack a water treatment plant, it would be difficult to stop thousands of independent water sources. The water was really great.

Sometimes when a building is demolished to make room for a new one, some of the address stones are incorporated into nearby steps or something as kind of a memorial.

Switzerland is known throughout the world for its precision watches, so Geneva celebrated that distinction by creating a huge clock out of flowers. The clock changes colors as different flowers are used throughout the year.

We walked down by the lake and saw the Jet d'Eau again. The sailboat next to it helps show its scale.

We walked by a store that had this peach dress in the window.

The price list next to it shows that the silk scarf is 350 Francs, the sandals are 1200, and the cotton dress is 2800 ($3100). I mean, I like peaches, but...

As we took the bus home, I liked how this house had vines growing all up one side.

We passed by the entrance to the United Nations "Palace of Nations" (Place des Nations), with rows of the world's flags. There is a monument out front called the Broken Chair, with one of its four legs torn off. It symbolizes opposition to land mines.

That evening, Kelly and Maria introduced us to Raclette. You put raclette cheese in little trays, and these are melted until bubbly hot by a heating element. The same heating element makes the surface hot so that you can grill pepperoni, sausage, peppers, jalapeños, mushrooms, bread or whatever else on top.

Then you pull a bunch of stuff off of the grill before it burns, and put it on your plate, and then pour a container of melted raclette on it. You put some more cheese in the cup, more stuff on top, and try to eat it before it's time to pull more stuff off before it burns. It was really fun and extremely tasty.

That night we did a video call with the kids. Jared and Sienna were in Austria, so it was good to see that they were still alive. Erika was outside with Mabel, and Kelsi and Chase were on their way back home from somewhere.

We could tell we had allowed the conversation to get a little dull when Jared and Katelyn resorted to Jared's traditional sad face filter.

Weiach

Before our trip, I looked on FamilySearch to see if I had any Swiss ancestors. It turns out I did.

As I was growing up, my g-g-g-grandmother Elizabeth Baumgardner Powell's picture sat on our fireplace mantel. We always joked about how stern she looked (although back then, they avoided smiling for pictures so they wouldn't move and make them blurry).

Her great-grandfather, Heinrich (Henry) Baumgardner, was born in 1695 in Weiach, Switzerland, which is a bit northwest of Zurich. (Weiach is pronounced "VAH-yak" in German, or "WHY-yak" in English). Heinrich immigrated to America in 1743, started going by Henry, and died in Hanover, Pennsylvania in 1763.

I used my little relationship chart demo to show the 8 generations from me to Heinrich Baumgardner. Then I showed how Heinrich had 20 ancestors who lived in Weiach from about 1530 to 1700. (You probably have to click this image to see the details).

Weiach is a tiny town, and I searched Find-a-Grave and saw that there were still Baumgardners being buried in Weiach up to the present time. So I thought it would be fun to visit this "ancestral town" and maybe even bump into a distant cousin there, especially since it was only 30 minutes out of our way, as we headed to eastern Switzerland.

I looked to see if I could contact anyone in Weiach via Facebook or something. I found a town web page with a form I could use to e-mail the mayor. He eventually got back to me and said there weren't a lot of records from back then. But I saw that there was a little museum there, so we thought we'd drop by that.

But then the night before we left for Weiach, I happened to check my e-mail and saw that there was a message from a very nice historian named Ulrich Brandenberger, who apparently lived in Bern. He told me that the little museum was only opened 2 or 3 times a year. He also pointed out that it was Labor Day on May 1, and that a lot of people would be taking that day off.

However, he said that a Mr. Bruno Koller would be willing to give us a personal tour through the little museum, and that we could also meet a distant cousin, Mr. Willi Baumgartner-Thut, during our visit.

So on Monday, May 1, 2023, we drove across Switzerland towards Weiach, using the magic car that Kelly and Maria had graciously lent us for the whole week.

We saw some cute buildings and beautiful countryside along the way.

Finally we arrived at the tiny town of Weiach, and soon found the house of Bruno Koller, who seemed to be in charge of the little museum there. He spoke some English.

With him was a lady named Karin Volkart, who spoke English pretty well. She was a doctor, and it was fortunate that it happened to be Labor Day, because that meant that she had the day off of work, and she was very helpful in translating for us.

As they led us to the museum, we got to see cute houses along the way. In America, you sometimes see houses decorated with pretend dark boards on the outside to look Swiss. But these houses were the real thing, and the boards were really like that as they built the walls.

Soon we arrived at the Ortsmuseum, which is an old house converted into a museum.

The house was built and added on to over time, probably starting in the late 1700s.

We were also joined by Willi Baumgartner, age 92, who is a distant cousin to my Baumgardners who came from Weiach. It was fun to meet a "cousin" from this little town. People in this area tended to stay put more than they did in America.

Incidentally, "Baum" means "tree" (as in "O Tannenbaum" for "Oh Christmas Tree"), and "gartner" means "gardener" or "farmer", so "Baumgartner" means "tree farmer" and "Baumgardner" is just an English spelling of the same name.

    

The lady second from the right was named Anita Meierhofer, and she was the wife of the man who grew up in this house that later became the museum. She and Willi didn't speak English, so Karin had to translate for us.

Inside, there were quite a few old artifacts, including furniture, dishes, and kitchen implements.

Here is an old stove that ran off of wood. You can also see an oven built into the wall.

Willi took a look at some of the old medals displayed there.

This ceramic oven would radiate heat to keep the home warm in the winter.

We were told that it was tradition here to wear black clothes for weddings.

Here is an actual wedding dress.

This is a baby buggy.

And these are baptism clothes for children.

Bruno asked us to guess what this dresser-looking thing was. Do you know?

It's a potty! You empty the chamber pot below the next morning, but it saves you a trip out into the cold at night.

I liked this picture of an angel carrying a child. You can see a diagonal board peeking through the plaster on the wall. That is one of those diagonal boards you see painted dark on the exterior that makes the homes look all cute and Swiss-like.

Some of the ceilings weren't especially tall.

Like I mentioned, the museum is usually only opened two or three times a year, and one of those times happened to be the week before, when they opened the museum to honor a guy named Hans Rutschmann (passed away in 2022) who had drawn a lot of illustrations for the museum and the historical newspaper for the town.

We got to see some of his actual drawings.

His drawings were used for the cover of the Weiach historical magazine.

This model of the museum was built by a Baumgartner cousin.

Here's an old foot-powered sewing machine. On the right is a stove on which you can warm several irons. When one cools off, you set it back on the stove to start reheating, and grab a hot one.

Here's a clamp, which I thought my dad would appreciate. (He always said, "A man can't have too many clamps.")

I kept asking what things were for. If they didn't know, they'd ask 92-year-old Willi, and he could tell them. Karin said she loved coming to the museum with him, because she always learned something. (I don't actually remember what this is for, though).

I remember learning to type on a manual typewriter. That probably seems to my kids like riding a horse and buggy seems to me.

Here's an old phonograph for playing records without electricity. And I'm not sure what the thing on the right is.

I loved their old telephones.

These instruments and uniform were used in local parades.

Upstairs in the attic there were a bunch of farm implements.

Then we rounded a corner and I saw an old pump organ. Linette's great-great-grandmother, Ruth Piede Call, was a Paiute Indian and was adopted by Mormon pioneers. She and her husband had a log cabin in Chesterfield, Idaho, and they had a pump organ in it. When the cabin was abandoned, the organ was moved to a brick building. But a few years ago, the cabin was restored, and the organ was moved back into the cabin. Linette played the pump organ at the family reunion when they dedicated the cabin.

So when I saw this pump organ, I knew that Linette would know what to do. I opened the lid, and she sat down and started pumping. At first, everyone looked a bit surprised, like "What are you doing? Can you do that? Does that thing even work?" Then when Linette started playing and no sound came out, it seemed like people were thinking, "Well, of course...it's so old it probably doesn't work."

But then we pulled out some stops, and she tried again, and then it sounded great! Everyone was so surprised, and so excited! Bruno said, "Wow!", someone clapped, and everyone smiled so big! It was such a great moment.

Here's a little video showing how the pump organ's first and second attempt went. Look how happy everyone looks!

There was an older, partial organ over against the eves. (Notice how the ceramic tiles are held in place by a notch that bumps up against the horizontal boards. I first noticed that in the castle at Chillon).

These windows were part of a previous church. Perhaps the organ above was from there, too.

This building model was also done by the Baumgardner cousin.

Here's a washing machine. It's a bucket that you put soapy water in, and then the metal plunger-looking thing had holes to let water through as you agitate the clothes. There are also washboards for scrubbing the clothes.

And this is the dryer. You run clothes through the wringer by turning the big handle, and it squeezes most of the water out.

Here's a snow scooter. You push with one foot and stand on it with the other like kids do today with a wheeled scooter.

This is a strip of fur that you strap onto your skis so that you can slide downhill reasonably well one way, but get some traction when you need to walk uphill in your skis (since then you're "rubbing the fur the wrong way").

And here are a couple of sharpening stones.

It was great to have these kind people show us all of these interesting historical items.

The stairs back down were pretty darn steep, so we had to watch our step. (I stood by in case anyone stumbled--and not just so I could get a video of it!).

Here's a plow, which was one of the most important inventions of mankind, because it allowed for the transition from hunter-gatherer to planned agriculture, which in turn allowed people to stay in one place, which in turn allowed for the development of advanced civilizations.

This is a yoke that would attach a plow or cart to an animal like a horse, without hurting its neck or shoulders too much.

This looked like a slightly scary Santa hiding behind a post.

It might actually be him, because this appears to be his sleigh.

There was also a horse-drawn hearse there.

Displayed on the hearse was a gravestone for Jakob Liebert II, whose father apparently bought this house in 1843. They ran a pottery shop here. I found him in FamilySearch and added his death date from the gravestone, father from the blurb, and added this photo to his "memories". I wonder if this guy was the ancestor of the man who grew up here, whose wife was on the tour with us?

And here are a couple of carts, perhaps for hauling light loads of wheat.

I wondered what this contraption was, and they said you turn the handle at one end, and it creates a rush of wind. Then you pour raw wheat in the top, and the wind blows the chaff out to the side while the wheat falls down below.

Here are a bunch of block planes, for shaving rough wood until it is smooth.

And this is a clamp. You sit on the seat, put the wood in front of you, and push forward with your feet. There is tremendous leverage that securely holds a piece of wood right in front of you so that you can work it with a plane.

Kinda like this.

After this delightful tour, our hosts brought us back into the kitchen, where they had some treats for us.

They fed us some cake that was like gingerbread, with a fun decoration stamped on the top.

Since we couldn't accept coffee or tea, they served water, along with some chocolate covered treats, and it was a nice way to finish our intimate tour. We made a little donation to the museum to thank them for their time.

After the tour, they walked us around the town of Weiach for a bit, where we saw charming buildings.

Like other places, they have fountains with free, natural running water that is good to drink.

We saw some people with horses as we walked along.

They showed us the school, the fire station, and the city buildings as we walked around.

Finally, we stopped in at the little church.

Here is a gravestone of Ruth Baumgartner Jucker who died in 2006. These related families are still here after several centuries.

The church was Protestant, so not especially ornate inside, but it was pleasant and peaceful there.

This church of course had a modern organ.

As we left the churchyard, we could see the garden and trellis in Bruno's own back yard.

He lived right by the church.

Wili Baumgartner-Thut lived in a room in this big house, just next door to where Bruno lived. I loved seeing the green lawn and the flowers in bloom.

As we left, Willi gave me a packet of stuff that I didn't have much time to look at until I was home. It included a newspaper article in German that told of a Baumgardner/Baumgartner reunion held in 1998, when 35 Americans came to Weiach. It was arranged by Marion F. Baumgardner (1926-2020) and his wife Maralee.

The packet also included pictures from that reunion, a postcard of what Weiach looked like in 1998, and several Christmas cards that Marion & Maralee Baumgardner wrote to Willi and his wife Rosli over the years.

We originally thought we were going to need to kill some time before meeting up with our kids in Lucerne. But it turned out that it made more sense for us to pick them up in Austria, and we ended up having more fun than we expected in Weiach, so by the time we were done with the tour, it was time to head right out.

Though we saw a lot of gorgeous, breathtaking things during our time in Switzerland, this was one of the highlights of our trip, because of the connection we were able to make with these kind people, and because of the sense of ancestral connection with this place.

In the next episode, we pick up our kids in Austria, "do" Liechtenstein, and then explore the beautiful town of Lucerne.