Well, I don't have such an impressive family tree as me pre-predecessor Zosia as I am from a completely normal middle-class family. The noble rabbits we have only seen from far away and I am not sure if this is only of our disadvantage. When I think of the many royal heads that rolled during history... And the paparatti now-a-days are a real plague for the rabbits with blue blood. Hmmm, I just must think if there is a little bit of blue blood in my veins after all. All these photosessions for hours that take place in this appartment...
And also politically my ancestors are not so important as is the family of Wiesia. When Switzerland was founded in 1291 (the historians may apologize for this simplified version of history) my ancestors were living without knowing anything about this in far away Netherlands and did not know that one day they will dig their burrows in the South.
With this excurs I am at last where I wanted to start: a short history of my family.
The tracks of my ancestorts are lost in the early centuries. Important for my story are onle the members of our family that lived in the end of the 19th century. Because of stories of their neighbours which told them again and again of a beautiful valley in Switzerland they once headed for vacations into the south. In this valley - they were told - there was healthy water coming out of the rocks and the countryside was just lovely. My ancestors - who had earned a fortune in carot trade - wanted to see this by themselves and so they visited the Val Sinestra, a side-valley of the Engadin in the south-east of Sitzerland.
Well, it was not the only visit there. Every year they headed there and so did their descendants drive the long way from the Netherlands to the Val Sinestra. This went on for generations and every year returning to the flat north got more difficult. At last the Deilenaars (so was the name of my family in these days) bought themselves a holiday home in the Engadin and spent always more time there. Until my grand-grandfather decided to leave the Netherlands for ever. He sold the still flourishing carot trade and with the sum bought the resort hotel in the Val Sinestra.
Soon he met a beautiful woman from the Engadin and they decided to marry. As in the meantime he felt more like an Engadinian than an Dutch-man he tried everything so that he could take over the name of his wife. That was not easy at all in these days! But in the near South-Tirol (Italy) they found a village that was softened by a good sum of money and so my family got the name Bardill.
In the 70ies the interest in bathing and drinking resorts decreased ant the resort hotel was not paying off anymore. So my grandfather decided with a sad heart to leave the beautiful Val Sinestra and moved a bit north into the center of Switzerland. Until now the search for minerals had only been one of his hobbies but now he wanted to look for them as a profession. And in the surroundings of Kerns in the canton of Obwalden he thought he could do this.
So my family came to Kerns, where it stayed until today. The strong link to the beautiful Engadin and Val Sinestra has remained and so we all have names that are frequent int this region. Me, I have moved now again a little bit north and who knows, perhaps my family will end again at the beginning of her excursion: Deil in the Netherlands!
