When I saw the different Group options for our weekend travel, I noticed that Group 3 was Everyday Life in Europe, but I propose a new Group 7- Discovering your ancestry in Europe. Most the students family ancestory comes from a part of Europe and after the experience my brother and I had, I would highly recommend doing a project to encourage this experience. Before leaving for Europe, Blake and I spoke with my Grandma Maureen Schwendiman (My mom's maiden name) and she explained that our great great great great Grandfather, Samuel Schwendiman came from the small towns of Oberstocken and Niederstocken Switzerland. She had a photograph of him, his house he moved into when he was first married, and a small map of the towns.
My Grandma also mentioned that she had heard the Schwendiman family owned a local restaurant where there was a book with all our family pedigree charts. Blake and I finished up our Temple experience outside of Bern and decided to take on the venture. We asked the tourist shop in the Bern train station where Oberstocken and Niederstocken were located. She gave us a long list of directions including three train rides and a bus ride. We followed her instructions and were able to make it to Oberstocken. Once in Oberstocken, we felt lost and didn't know where the house was that was on our picture. We decided to walk into Niederstocken, which was about 8 miles away. On our walk we had cows chase us, cars almost kill us flying down the back country roads, and we couldn't understand any of the German of the people we asked for directions. We did however show everyone the picture of the house we had and they kept pointing down the road. Finally, after a long walk and lots of prayers in our hearts, we found the house!!! Here is the picture we took of it:
We kept walking and we finally entered the town of Niederstocken. One of the first houses we came to had the Schwendiman engraved on the front. Next door was the restaurant our family owned. We went inside and met a Schwendiman descendant. Her daughter spoke decent English and we asked her to see the book my Grandma had talked about. They didn't have the original, but what she brought out was even better. She had a family history of the Schwendiman's with detailed stories of each of our great great great great Grandfather's brothers and sisters with all the pedigree chart information. Blake had his Cannon camera with him and we took digital photographs of every page to send to my Grandma.
We ended up staying a while were able to enjoy a fine Cocoa Cola Classic with her. What an amazing trip it was for Blake and I. It took a lot of researching and walking, but the feeling we had walking the 8 miles back to Oberstocken to catch the bus was one of a kind. This was one of the most memorable days of my entire life and I learned more today about cultural awareness than I ever would have traveling to another tourist destination. I highly recommend students prepare for this experience and seek after it. The book that most relates to this from our readings, in my opinion, is Travels of a T-Shirt. We were able to actually meet the people I'm writing about similar to the author who traveled and personally met her factual characters. There is much more meaning when you see how others work to live rather than study it. I really want to follow-up on our family history and read the 100 digital pages of their history that we took. The stories in that book will bless my own family's lives forever.
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