Ogii and Dulmaa went to explore more of Zurich.
First stop was Laderach, a chocolate shop.
Train station and statue of Alfred Escher, who started one of the early railroad companies in Zurich.
With Ogii and Dulmaa.
Bottom of the statue.
Citykirche Offener St. Jakob.
Dunkin Donuts are here, too.
Dulmaa and her husband Christian's place.
A view of a church steeple.
A nice patio.
Ogii gave them some red wooden and acrylic coasters we bought at the Made in Hawaii festival.
At the Schweighof train station.
Waiting for the train.
To take them to the Uetliberg train station.
Where you can walk up the hill a bit more.
Past the deer with lighted horns.
To Uetliberg, the mountain peak.
Great views.
Uto Kulm, a hotel and restaurant there.
Nice seating area.
Having a beer.
Some of the other mountains you can see on a clear day, although today was rainy.
A marker for the outer mail wall of a prehistoric fortress from around 1000 years BC with traces of old camp sites and graves.
Back to the train station.
For a trip down the hill.
Neat fountain.
Some kids playing table tennis.
Many plants.
Including some strawberries the owners left out to eat.
Time for dinner.
Fondue.
Ogii having some.
Brandy from a small cask.
Dad, Mom, and I drove to Glarus to find some of Mom's Blumer history while Ogii was with Dulmaa.
The speed limit on the highway is 100kph, which is 60mph. It's about an hour drive.
Fog in the mountains.
Glarus.
McDonalds is the first business at the northern edge of the city.
Driving on H17, the main road through Glarus.
We couldn't find a parking disc in the rental car. They should have one because in most of Switzerland, you're supposed to set your arrival time on it as you can only park for an hour in blue spots, which are most parking spots. Nobody we asked knew where to get one on a Saturday, either, so I guess we'll just hope we don't get a ticket.
Our first stop was the Landesbibliothek, the National Library of the Canton of Glarus. They didn't know of any history of Blumers, though.
They said ask in the church, but there are multiple churches, and it's already almost 4pm, so we don't have much time.
This wasn't on our list, but we saw it as we were driving down the main road: a store called "Blumer."
Mom went inside and chatted with the employee a bit.
According to their website, the Blumer Nahmaschinen store has been around for 150 years and specializes in Bernina sewing machines, wool, fabrics and other sewing supplies.
We made a quick stop at the Anna Goldi museum.
But that was just about witches; no Blumer history.
They recommended going to the Museum des Landes Glarus.
That was about 15 minutes north. On the way, we saw waterfalls in the mountains.
They're not wide, but they're very long; all the way from the top of the mountains.
An optometric office with four optometrists.
They have their iris pictures behind them.
The Museum des Landes Glarus.
It has multiple floors.
With all kinds of historical items.
Textiles were a large industry in Glarus.
Conrad Blumer (born 13 March 1817, died 1 April 1882) to was a son of Peter Blumer (1771-1826) of the P. Blumer & Jenny textile firm (many of the Jenny family were involved in spinning and weaving). Conrad also became involved in politics.
A map of travels and trade. Conrad Blumer traveled to Mumbai, Calcutta, Jakarta, and Singapore in 1840.
Some textiles.
Books of textiles.
A receipt for cotton from the P. Blumer & Jenny company.
F. Blumer & Co was another textile company started in 1828 in Glarus. They employed over 600 people and exported their products worldwide. Their production plant closed in 1979.
A Russian ad describing the quality of Blumer products.
Translation of the ad.
Various tools.
Printing rollers.
A city gathering.
The museum also displays state rooms of the Nafels guard captain Kaspar Freuler.
With musical instruments.
And stained glass windows.
Kitchen.
Some of Mom's relatives had visited Glarus and said there was a museum with a lot of Blumer history, but we couldn't figure out which one it was, and it was already almost 5pm, so most of them would be closed now.
We drove south to the Blumerhaus Ferienwohnung Glarnerland.
It has "Blumerhaus" written on it.
Me and Mom.
Then we drove farther south to the Historisches Erlebnishotel Landvogthaus in Nidfurn.
Their website mentions some Blumers lived here.
Beautiful view of the surrounding cities beneath the mountains.
Uh oh, the rental car has a maintenance alert. It's Saturday at 6pm, so no repair shops are open, and no other rental car agencies are even close.
There are some carsharing spots, although I don't know if we could use those, since we're not Swiss.
If you think like a European instead of an American, though, of course there are some trains that could take us from Glarus to Zurich.
Even this late, they run approximately every hour until midnight, take around an hour and a half, and are only about $15 per person. After turning the car off and letting it sit for a few minutes, though, the alert didn't come back up, so hopefully it just needs an oil change and the transmission isn't going to go out halfway between train stations.
We stopped at a gas station just north of Glarus to use the bathroom. This was right before Ogii and Dulmaa made dinner, so Ogii called and asked if we wanted to eat with them. Since it was pretty late, we still had an hour drive back to Zurich, I was barely going to get the rental car back on time as it was, we had to get up at 3am the next morning to get to the airport, I was still flustered from the car maintenance alert and not being able to find the museum Mom wanted, and I already had it in my head that I was going to eat at the Burger King here, I told her to eat without us. Looking back, that was the wrong choice; we really should have eaten with them. Always take people up on their offer if they're cooking for you. Then, I was so distracted by the phone call, I forgot to get food here.
The toilets are free for kids on the left, but not adults on the right. Although if I didn't have any money, I could get over or under the bars.
Using the last 2 euro coin I have to get into the bathroom.
As we were driving back, I said watch for deer in the fields.
Right afterwards, I saw four deer.
Checking into the Movenpick Hotel by the airport. There are a ton of people here because of the bicycle race.
I dropped Dad and Mom off at the hotel, then went to return the car. Ogii was going to take public transportation and meet me at the car dropoff. While driving, I was a bit worried about the gas guage. It was basically a solid white line up to the "1" with a little red section at the bottom, so I wasn't sure if it was full (top of the white line) or almost empty (the top of the red line). But the symbol at the bottom seemed to indicate we could drive for hundreds of kilometers more until we needed to fill up. While driving, the bar didn't move and the number at the bottom didn't change, though, so I still couldn't tell. It wasn't until we were coming back from Glarus that the top of the white bar started to drop and I knew we had plenty of gas.
Dropped off the car without any problems or damage, then Ogii and I took a Uber back to the hotel.
Wait, only one bed?
My reservation said two beds. I guess because I didn't update the number of adults from two to four, and they were so full with the bicyclists, that they decided we only needed one bed.
Up at 3am to be ready for the 4am first shuttle to the airport.
There were actually too many people, so the driver would have to go back and pick up more people. He said he was only contracted and paid to pick them up every hour, but he went back more often because he felt sorry for the people waiting.
Bicycles in line at the airport.
I wonder how much stuff they miss, looking at thousands of bags a day. Some sort of AI detection that alerts them if it thinks something looks suspicious would probably help.
Not too much is open at 5am, but there are a few places.
And Ogii has some fruit bread.
Which tastes great.
Sunrise on the flight.
Swiss Alps.
Two planes headed the other direction.
Coming onto land.
Very European houses.
Landing in Amsterdam.
At passport control.
Our flight isn't too much more than two hours away.
An estimated waiting time is helpful.
If you don't have much time before your next flight, you can go in this line. That's nice.
This screen tells you about how long of a walk it is to your gate.
This sign is saying you can use the self-service passport control if your passport has this logo.
I never noticed that before. What is it?
A little Googling, and it indicates it's a biometric passport, a traditional passport that has an embedded electronic microprocessor chip which contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of the passport holder.
People were supposed to go into these little waiting areas one at a time. One woman went into it along with the unrelated man ahead of her, which was funny.
Expensive shops.
The seats are in these cups.
And around flowers.
Elephant sculpture.
We made it to our gate.
Self-driving wheelchairs.
Bread, cheese, and tulips.
And, of course, McDonalds.
In line to board. It's pretty easy to tell if most of the passengers are Americans (fat and poorly dressed) or Europeans (skinny and dressed nicely).
Headed for Los Angeles.
Arriving.
Mobile Passport Control has a bit of a line, maybe around a 30-minute wait, but was much faster than general. It was much slower than Global Entry, though, where people were walking through without any wait at all.
We had to walk over to the other terminal, thankfully only about a ten-minute walk in nice weather.
Our next flight is on time.
Sunset.
Leaving LAX.
The European flights had much better food.
Arriving in Honolulu at 9pm.
And home. Our plumeria is still alive.
In Glarus, we saw the Blumer store, the Museum des Landes Glarus im Freulerpalast (which has the textile samples and some history), the Blumerhaus Ferienwohnung Glarnerland, and the Historisches Erlebnishotel Landvogthaus (where some Blumers lived). I couldn't figure out which museum had the Blumer history, though, until after the trip, when I came across it while Googling. It's the Glarner Wirtschaftsarchiv ("Glarus Economic Archive") in South Glarus.
Looking back at the Google Map I searched when we were in Glarus, it was right there, so I don't know why I missed it. Maybe because it doesn't mention the Blumer name on Google Maps or their website.
If you Google the museum name, though, this website, https://drawingmatter.org/glarner-wirtschaftsarchiv/ is one of the first results. It has a description of visiting the museum and does mention Blumer.
We actually drove almost by it; it was only a quarter mile off the main road.
Looking at their website, https://glarnerwirtschaftsarchiv.ch/, the museum is only open on Wednesdays, 2pm to 4pm, but is open at other times by request. If we had known this was the museum we wanted in advance, we could had possibly requested they be open on Saturday at 4pm for us, but I don't think we could have simply shown up on Saturday and gone in. I should have researched the Glarus museums better ahead of time. Rather than only looking at them in Google Maps and their websites, I should have Googled their names, as that's how I found this is the museum we wanted.
They actually have an online archive at their website, https://mobile.cmistar.ch/webclients/glwirtschaftsarchiv/#/ There are 13,963 results for "Blumer" under the left tab at the top, "einheiten" (units). Most don't seem to have much info, but the second tab at the top, "Dateien" ("files"), has 42 photos.
The Wikipedia page for the Blumer family, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumer_(Familie), also has some information.
It's in German, but you can Google Translate the website.
It also has a few pictures, under Weblinks, Commons: Blumer (Familie, Glarus).