A Long, Lonely, Adventurous Road

my traveling companion,
Katherine Elizabeth

Cześć!

One wild sojourn later, I write from Poznań, Poland where I just arrived a few hours ago after traveling across the continent. But I’m not here to see the Europe Cup matches, I’m afraid. I’m visiting a dear friend of mine, Zuzia, whom I have not seen in almost five years now. We met at the World Scout Jamboree 2007 in England, which in itself brings back a lot of really cool memories. That – of course – is another story altogether.

For the past three days, I have been taking the scenic and adventurous route from Naples to Poznań, traveling by bus, train, and foot across Europe with only my pack on my back. My mission has been to arrive in a way that spends the least amount of money, and I largely succeeded. I can also say that I had a few really nice stops along the way. It’s not as fast as it might have been hitchhiking, but it was certainly safer, more legal, and just as fun. I do think I’ll have to try hitchhiking some other time. I hear there are hitchhiking races in Europe, but that’s something for another time.

afternoon in Venice

early morning in Switzerland

Zurich

Now, when I was first talking about the possibility of coming, I did not understand why, but Zuzia told me to try to make an appointment to be in Poznań by June 21^st, the summer solstice. I agreed. Since I was leaving on the afternoon of the 18^th, I thought it might just be possible.

The first night, I had to pull off in Bologna, and I walked until I was far outside the city and in the countryside of western Emilia-Romania (not the part that was so devastated by the earthquakes recently). There, I lay down my tarp and stayed the night under the stars that had been guiding me north up to that point. The next morning, I awoke to the sunrise and a nice breakfast of cookies, cheese, and honey before setting off again. By that afternoon – with a few interesting local train stops and a lot more walking along the way – I was in Venice by 4:00 and then back in Milan by 8:40. I went north from there and was in Switzerland by that night.

The next day was a nice, long tour of eastern Switzerland by local train and bus, winding my way over the lovely mountains that I would someday rather hike than pass. For this trip, however, I could not take the slow path, because my deadline was already approaching fast. After losing a day between Naples and Milan, I would need to arrive in Poland within only a little over 30 hours. So all morning I did this until I arrived in Zürich after spending my lunchtime walking about Lucerne.

That was when I frighteningly discovered that I was suddenly out of money.

I put all my bills on a timed auto-pay system while I was out of the country, so everything lined up at just the moment I was arriving, and this was a fact had previously slipped my mind. I had made it as far as I had with only the money left over from Naples, and I had planned to get more at an ATM when I needed it. This was when I, while trying to get money for the next train, found that I didn’t have enough funds, and I realized what had happened. In conclusion, I was stuck in Zürich with only 20 Swiss franc cents.

It was at this point that I doubted just about everything. Poznań, where I needed to be the very next day, was over 800km (500 miles) away, and I wasn’t even sure if I could get that far by train in the time that I had left. Well, you know what strong men do when they need help. They pray. I had never in my life seen a chapel in a train station before, but this time it was quite a blessing.

The chaplain, after hearing my story, let me use the internet and I was able to get in touch with my father who saved the day. I will have to repay him when school starts again, but that, at least, is a time when I can afford to do so. I had some more wonderful talk with the chaplain, and spent some of my time there just in being thankful. With Dad’s help, I was in the Black Forest in Germany in no time at all, and that is where I finally spent the night.

The next morning, after a lovely (and early) sunrise tour of the little towns of the Scharzwald, I was on the ICE train to Berlin with new groceries and plenty of time to rest off the last two days. When I arrived in Berlin, I was able to get a very cheap and very lucky (in the middle of the EuroCup!) ticket to Poznań. After a three hour train ride, I made it on 21 June, 8:25pm. Just in time!

Zuzia and me, after I just arrived

Over the past five years, Zuzia and I have communicated over letters, email, Facebook, and the occasional Gmail chat, but we have never Skyped, so I have neither heard her voice nor seen her face for five years. Meeting a friend again after a time like that is quite a thing indeed. I was fifteen and she seventeen when we met, so although I know her well, I was meeting a brand new person for the first time in my life.

They have been telling me about various plans and ideas for activities over the course of my stay, so I think they intend to keep me in Poland until it’s time for me to go back home. But first, they took me out to the reason that they wanted me in Poznań so quickly…

There is a festival of lanterns on the summer solstice, a celebration of the longest day, shortest night, and the beginning of the summer. People gather near the river in the city in a big field and everyone gets a lamp. At around eleven o’clock at night (by agreement with the airport) everyone lights a lantern, makes a wish, and sends it off into the sky.

me, lighting my own lantern

the girls sending their wish off into the sky

It was so beautiful. All the lanterns fill the night air like a thousand flying stars. I felt like a little kid with wonder.

It was the perfect way to celebrate summer, and a perfect way to arrive. I’m so glad that I was able to make it in time. Afterward, they took me out to taste some of the city of Poznań and we made it back home very late. We will sleep late tomorrow, but I am glad to have finally made it to Poland.

Ania, me, and Zuzia

I’m Jonathon, and this is my life.

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Returning to Switzerland after Four Generations

Dear Followers,

I have a fantastic adventure to tell you about... =]

Some of you might or might not know, but I am part Swiss, fourth generation. Here's just a little family history for you: My great grandfather Robert D. Brackett was by all accounts a very cool person. He and my great grandmother Tonia used to travel all over on vacation and bring back things from his journeys. He had massive (and beautiful) collections of rocks, geological samples, shells, and all manner of cool things from around the world that have been passed down through the family. My other siblings and I are slowly inheriting some of them (courtesy of my grandma Mary Jean) and I have a small fortune of memories and articles, including my great grandpa's old hunting and fishing knife (apparently it was also either his father's or his grandfather's, so it has been in the family for ages).

The story as I know it is that great grandpa Brackett was in Europe as a military driver. After the war, while he was on leave in Switzerland, he met great grandma Tonia, a Swiss girl who was working in a resort on Lake Lucerne. I wish I could tell you guys all the things that I've learned about them, because there are so many cute stories. I'll just tell you that their story is currently among my favorite, and they really really loved one another. She returned to the United States with him to Michigan and never went back to Switzerland. They kept up decent contact with the Swiss family over the years and my grandma has several photo albums and a couple of 40-30 year old addresses from friends and relatives that she had never met.

As you know, I am in Italy with my family, so my grandparents made the big trip to come stay with up for a few days. On a whim, we thought that since we were so close (and since it was the first time that they have ever left the country) it would be a fun little adventure to take them north to Switzerland to see the place where my great grandmother, my grandma's mother, grew up. So, after dragging them to Siena and Rome last weekend, we got back to Milan and we rented a car and set off for Switzerland.

Lake Lucerne, where my Great Grandma Tonia worked

We left early and had the most beautiful drive. The GPS we rented (we called her Karen) guided us into and over some of the most beautiful countryside in the Alps.

Dad at the Wheel

my grandma was so excited the whole time...

We passed by the beautiful (and big) lake where Robert and Tonia met, crossed over the Italian region of the country and into the German, and went through the third longest road tunnel in the world and the longest in Switzerland. Tonia Keller lived about an hour away in a little village nearby Sursee called Winikon. On the way, my grandma was showing me photos of the town as it was in the 1940's. She had little pieces of paper marking the location of the school, the house where she lived, and giving a few other little data tidbits. I found that with the little German that I have learned so far, I could read the letter that Robert Brackett had written to Tonia's family to let them know that she had passed away (he called her his "everything in the world").

When we got over the crest of the hill, we passed through Triengen (the bigger city that Winikon branches off of) and at that point the excitement started pouring over as we began already pointing out things from the photos.

We spotted the old church immediately and drove our way through the little town and up the hill that it was sitting on.

It is a strange, enthralling feeling to be in such a situation - to be in a town that you have never seen before but are so connected to. It's like coming home after a very long journey. You feel like you should recognize it, be a part of it in some way, as if somehow you belong to it and it you. And yet, it feels strange and foreign.

We spent an entire half hour at the church, looking at everything. The inside is beyond beautiful (and surprisingly so, because the out is so plain), and it is surrounded by a little garden cemetery. Because flat space is so limited in the ("whole country!") cemetery, plots are only available to a loved one for about twenty years, then they are transferred to the church's collection, so although we had a photo of Tonia's mother's (my great great grandma!) stone, it was long since gone. We did, however, find the stone of grandma's late uncle, Ruedi Keller, who only died very recently.

After we spent a very...overwhelming...time at the church house marveling over the beauty of everything, over the closeness to such a long lost relative, over everything really, we began to make our way down the little stone path onto the road below toward the house.

It was on this way, the same little path that Tonia walked back home when she was a little girl, that we passed a lady standing outside of a doorway having a smoke. We almost walked by her without saying a word, but I sucked up the courage to try talking to her and mentioned the house and who we were. My German failed me a little bit at a certain point because we came to a block in our conversation and tried to find other methods. I asked if she spoke English, then she asked if I spoke French, to which I asked if she spoke Italian, to which she nervously and apologetically replied "Emmmm...!" However, she wanted to help and so she took the packet of index cards with names and numbers and hurried inside, saying she was going to do…something. It took a while for her to come back out again and we were getting anxious and extremely restless by the time she came back out with the cards.

She pointed up the road and explained in Denglisch that she had been on the phone calling about and that Berty Keller, the wife of Ruedi Keller, the aunt of Mary Jean, and my great great aunt, was up Dorfstraße by the school and on the left, working in her front garden.

…What?

We thanked her in a rush and went up the side of the hill as fast as we could. With little to no contact over the past several decades, it was impossible to imagine finding someone, but here we were about to meet for the first time a woman my grandmother had only ever written a letter to (to inform her that Tonia had died) and whom my father probably never even knew existed. Sure enough, there she was – just ahead and digging about amongst her flowers. We waved to her and she waved back, coming down to meet us.

Left to Right: Isabella (our translator),
Herr Keller, and my Grandma, Mary

She only spoke a very heavy German and was already calling her neighbor over for help translating. It was clear she was both very excited and confused, but as soon as Grandma showed her the photos and addresses that she had, Frau Keller recognized her niece immediately and was a flow of speech. In the next breath, I’m convinced she explained in depth the history she knew about Mary Jean, said three Hail Marys, and recited the Magna Carta, but closer investigation and some help from her neighbor confirmed that we were invited to have coffee inside and she had a whole house of things to show us.

We must have spent the next hour or so with her, raving over old photo albums and telling stories about the family members, communicating through the combined efforts of Frau Berty’s neighbor Isabella and me. It was way beyond cool. I was in the house of my great great aunt whom I had never met, along with my dad (her great nephew), and my grandma (her niece). It was a one-of-a-kind family reunion. She had pictures of so many people I’m related to (in one way or another) and stories and…

It was just so so cool.

Isabella, Grandma, Grandpa, and Dad at the table

See? We managed to communicate pretty well!

Isn't she just beautiful?? ^^

Pictures of Great Grandma Tonia and Great Grandpa Robert; The one on the right is Tonia leaving for America

Herr Berty is an artist; she painted this herself and my grandma
has a few of her pieces as well; even I recognized the style immediately

Isabella did a fantastic job translating into English. She hadn’t spoken it since the fourth grade and was only fresh because she was helping her kids (now that age) to learn. Wherever she struggled, we helped her through, but she was simply brilliant and so good to take the trouble to come help.

And Great Great Aunt Berty (I get to call her that! ^^) is just the most wonderful, warm, and sweet old lady. She showed us her paintings (grandma has a few of her pieces), jewelry and sea shells that were sent to her, and a number of other things. She wouldn’t let Dad leave without accepting a box of Swiss chocolates and she and grandma talked about flowers and gardens, because they both love them so much. With their addresses and Isabella’s email, we hope to keep up correspondence and send them pictures of grandma’s flower gardens as well. I will be sending all of the photos we took as soon as possible and I'll send a link to this blog post.

When we finally left, she kissed us all good bye and invited us to stay with her any time we want.

all four generations together

this is when she explained to us that in Switzerland, the salutation is done
with three kisses instead of two

And we had to absolutely salute Isabella, who did a wonderful job

Great Great Aunt Berty made the visit unforgettable for everyone, I think

 We went back downtown, had a nice German-Swiss dinner (Lecker lecker!), and gave ourselves one last look at the house, the town, and the hill.

Tonia's old house

We took the scenic route back home through the pass in the Alps. It had been a day more than amazing, and all that was left to do was take our time going back to Italy.

I’m Jonathon, and this is my life.

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