When my grandmother was eight, she went on a trip to visit her grandparents in Switzerland. It must have been quite an adventure for the little girl who lived in the tiny California city of Santa Maria; a train ride across the United States to New York and then a week long sea voyage to France. The journey ended with an overnight train to Locarno, in the Ticino region of Switzerland.
Like so many other Europeans in the late 1800s, my great grandfather Frederico left his homeland to make a new life in America. Most immigrants couldn’t afford to go back to see family, but Frederico had made the journey once before; returning to marry his childhood love, Pia, “the most beautiful girl in the village.” Fourteen years later he returned again, this time with Pia and their four children. He wanted to show off his new family.
My grandmother, Lillian, was the second youngest. She must have been excited to see where Papa grew up and to meet her grandparents for the first time. The holiday was supposed to last six months. They had rented out their white stucco home in California and Frederico had put his meat business on hold.
This was June 1914. Though Locarno is a small lazy city on Lago Maggiore, news of the assassination Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria must have rumbled over the quiet lake. War was soon declared and all passenger ships stopped indefinitely.
My grandmother and her family were stuck. Even if they could make their way to a port, there was no way to get the 7,000 miles home. It was out of their hands. To make matters worse, no one knew how long the war would last. I would have found the uncertainty the hardest to cope with.
They of course made the most of their situation. The California-born grandchildren got to spend some quality time with their Swiss-Italian grandparents. They learnt to speak the local language. They spent the winters in Locarno, and the summers tending goats in the hillside village of Brontallo. It was war time and they weren't without tragedy, my grandmother's brother died of cholera.
They eventually made it back to California six years later. That's a whole other story I can tell you another time.
Last month, when the volcanic ash over Iceland made us unsure of when we would return to the UK, I told my eight-year-old daughter that we may be spending some extra time at grandma and grandpa’s. She was thrilled.
"You mean no school mummy? Cool!"
Photo credit: rfarmer
