Chris' great-grandfather Joe Walker (his dad's mom's father) was born in this building in 1898. The Walker family owned and ran the Hotel Tell + Post in Fluelen, Switzerland, on the bank of Lake Lucerne for over 100 years. Chris' cousin Daniela (whose mother is first cousins with Chris' grandmother Terri) and her family hosted us for several days; they live in the neighboring town of Altdorf. It was a beautiful drive from Staufen into the Swiss Alps and Daniela met us at the tunnel right before Fluelen. When Terri (chris' grandmother) was about 20 she bought a bike in Amsterdam with a friend and rode all the way to Fluelen! The story we heard is that she cried when she got to this tunnel and saw Fluelen - home after such a long ride. (Is all of this correct Baers?) The Walker family doesn't own this hotel anymore and it looks much different (more modern/boring) than it did in the past.
Fluelen is famous because it's the spot where Wilhelm Tell jumped out of the ship (away from the Austrians I believe who were trying to take over Switzerland) and onto the banks of Lake Lucerne and basically founded Switzerland as its own country around 1307 I think??? This is the spot -Tellsplatte -where we met Daniela. I remember the Wilhelm Tell Overture (Tchaikovsky?) from music class and you probably know the legend of him shooting the apple of his son's head with a cross-bow in defiance of the Austrians. I remembered the story, just never really knew the context and who it was about. But this supposedly happened in the main plaza in Altdorf.
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