Dear friends,
2004 is soon coming to an end, with us hopefully having reached our home in Nevis just before Christmas – right now, we are still in Sydney.
We started the year in Switzerland after having spent Christmas quietly at home with our Nic, Alexandra and Leonie. Uschi went once more to Kempten to see her mother before we left for our winter quarters on January 13. We had several visitors in January and March – this is always very enjoyable for us and I hope for the visitors, too. Let me remind you that we have guest room for visiting friends, on the basis of first come first served. So far, we have only one booking for 14/21.2.05.
Once back in Switzerland, the usual spring and summer events took place rather by clock work: First we drove to Beaune in Burgundy to assist a chapter of the Confrerie du Tastevin at the Clos de Vougeot, then we tried very hard a week to perfect our golf game in Upper Austria and then Uschi spent some time with her mother in Kempten and later in La Tour while Willi went to see the final days of the spring sumo tournament in Japan.
Please click on any of the frames below and a larger picture will open. When you want to go on to the next image, just close the large window by hitting “Back” button and you will return to the main page.
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| Uschi & Willi at Doyle’s at Sydney’s Fishmarket |
Alexandra, Peter & Willi at Oma’s 90th birthday party |
Oma, Nic, Leonie and Baerbel |
On June 19, we attended a BBQ in honor of some 50 Japanese Nestlé OB kai members who were on a sight seeing trip to Switzerland in the mountains high above Lake Geneva.
Our yearly trip to the UK took us all the way to Land’s End with a visit to the Eden Project where in abandoned tin mines; you will find exquisitely arranged tropical rain forests or the Mediterranean climate represented. Of course, as usual, we met quite a number of old friends in the UK Capital.
This year, we also drove to Lucerne where the Swiss in Japan held their once-every-3 years-get-together at the Palace Hotel where we renewed many contacts that have been lost over the years.
Willi went quickly to Nevis for some special errand in July. The new AF Airbus 330 and 340 configuration makes travel quite comfortable in their large ALIZE cabin (in regular flight to say Japan that is their normal Business (Espace) Class.
On the way back, Willi stopped in Paris to meet 3 good friends from Otsuka. The highlight was the Bastille Day (14 Juillet) Celebrations and the military parade and flyover which we could observe from the top of the Publicis building right next to the Arc de Triomphe. We also visited the Picasso Museum and were invited to a superb dinner at Le Train Bleu in the Gare de Lyon.
We again spent 10 beautiful days in Zermatt and then Nic, Alex and Leonie came to visit for a long weekend. We in turn visited their new home near Winterthur that was completed in mid year. It is much larger than the apartment they lived in beforehand, but especially it is in the midst of fields and forests, with clean air.
On 20th August we left for a trip to Kempten to celebrate Uschi’s mother Hilde Bergmann’s 90th birthday together with her closest relatives. I think we all had a great time and we could enjoy a fine meal at the Tableau with a very happy and radiating Oma. May she have many happy returns of the day!
Before leaving for your Round-the-World trip, Uschi too her mother once again to Zermatt, only for a few days, but these were also happy sunny days. Oma Bergmann loves the mountains and she would have taken a paraglider down from Riffelberg, but the winds were too strong to venture for this event. May be in 2005?
Then came the departure for South Africa. We first stayed in and around Capetown, a most wonderful area full of majestic sights, fine dining, and great shopping. Naturally, we drove down to Cape of Good Hope, with the rotating Swiss cable car to the Table Mountain from where one has a magnificent view of the city and the Cape. We stayed at a family-style country house with 10 rooms, a fine garden and an excellent kitchen.
200 odd kilometers north was the Bushman’s Kloof, a former 68 km2 farm that had been transformed back into a nature reserve where mountain zebra, bonte bok, springbok, ostriches and other animals have been reintroduced like some 6-8000 years ago when the bushmen lived there and left some great rock paintings showing that at that time, lions, hyenas, elephants and giraffes lived there, too.
In the main wine producing areas, Stellenbosch, are hundred of wineries, some huge others small but they plant wines virtually to the mountain tops. One of the early settlers built a huge property now about one hour from Capetown, then a good day’s journey, called ‘Vergelegen’ or far away. Whilst the winery produced some of the finest crus, we were mostly interested in the old main house in the Dutch Cape House built in “H†shape, with a huge hexagonal 12-ft walled formal European garden, and a rose garden in a huge park with 300 year old huge camphor trees planted at the time of the early settlers.
We visited many other most interesting places – please read the full report by clicking on
http://www.bosshard.net/main/index.php?topic=Trips under South Africa I and II.
The finale was nevertheless the one week we spent in out just outside the famous Kruger Park. We saw all Big Five, we witnessed a kill, encountered leopards in both locations, and we saw dozens of lions, hundreds of elephants inside the park, white rhinos, hippos, crocs, hyenas, a few buffaloes and a huge array of birds. Again, for the full report, please go to the web site under http://www.bosshard.net/main/index.php?topic=Trips South Africa III. Pictures will be loaded separately and appear little by little before the year end.
We were generally positively surprised at the quality of the lodgings and the food served in most establishments we stayed at. But the best were those having the Relais & Chateau affiliation. The star of them all was the Singita Lebombo Lodge, both the original one built on the cliff but also the smaller 6 villa Sweni Lodge down by the river. The ranger/drivers and the spotters were great everywhere, obviously knew there huge territories and the respective inhabitants very well.
We are very happy we did this rather long trip, one we wanted to do for many years and one which we can truly recommend.
The persons receiving this by snail mail will find some of the picture highlights of 2004 on the attached sheet, those receiving it by email can go to http://www.bosshard.net/main to see them in a few days.
And now, we rush to snail mail these lines from Sydney, Australia; the email version will follow a bit later from the U.S. West Coast. In closing, Uschi joins me in wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a most wonderful, successful and healthy New Year of the Rooster 2005.
Willi & Uschi
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| Hilde & Uschi | Uschi, Friederike & Hilde | Uschi & Alexandra with Leonie |
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| Leonie in red komono | Leonie with Dad on a Ferrari bike |
Leonie with cousin Sarah |
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| Leonie pinching Oma Uschi | The new house in Daettlikon near Winterthur. (For more features see under Topics – Daettlikon above) |
Alexandra & Nic in Egypt |