Saturday 16th – Tuesday 19th July Bern, Luscherz, Neuchatel and Geneva
Well,
what does one do after camping for one night in Gampelon, on the edge of the
beautiful Lake Neuchatel and being kept awake by the close proximity of endless
crap music pounding away all night! After
early rain on the tent, the next best option was to escape quickly, with our
heads still pounding from the all night heavy metal entertainment. So we set off for our breakfast rendezvous
with Jarah & Martin, friends we met at Ngepi in Namibia. The
river Aare in Bern was roaring, so their idea of an early morning plunge into
the icy blue waters was off the list!
Instead we settled for brunch at the Gartenrestaurant Marzilibrucke (as
you do), followed by a royal tour around the old part of the Swiss capital of
Bern with its medieval walls, clock towers, chocolate shops, plus the apartment
where Einstein lived for 2 years. He
wrote 3 of his 4 opa magna there, then left his wife and the two boys and ended
up with his cousin, later marrying her!
The bears of Bern happily played in their fenced-off area by the river
as we walked along the bank, amazed at the fast current, which is used for the
country’s hydro-power.
Then
it was back to Luscherz to stay with our friends again. Dinner was at a beautiful home near Lake
Biel, then in the morning it was off to the Civil D’Etat to continue the saga
of tracking down the Bouvier rellies!
Our third stop was the most successful…it was off up to the Chateau de
Neuchatel which houses the archives from pre 1860, so a couple of hours were well
spent going through the 200 record cards entitled with the surname Bouvier, and
all from the Neuchatel Canton. No doubt
about the Swiss…they keep records well!
If the original family member is born in the canton then the family will
always be of that region. So tracking a
Bouvier from this canton in Switzerland armed with a few dates from 2 centuries
back made searching much easier. Luckily also, there were a few pages of a
family tree showing quite a few generations back from Jules Francois Frederic
who headed for Geelong in 1884. So in that couple of hours the family tree went back to the 1560’s…….
Geneva
was unfortunately cold, wet and grey!
After a quick stop for a photo next to the lake it was on through the
wet to find the Apple shop to talk through a few Mac issues. Then we left for our caravan that we’d left
in the Bugey region of France for another night then it will be on to Lyon, for
more of the arts, culture and histoire!
