Our last trip to Rapperswil was in winter when the town was quiet and the trees were bare. On Wednesday afternoon we took the S-Bahn from Stettbach with Papa, Nona and Travis to see the castle and the rose gardens. We have been having thick, morning fog nearly every day now. It settles over the lake and in the valleys and sometimes takes until noon or later to burn off. So we were happy to see the skies clearing as the train took us south along the Zürichsee.
One reason for our afternoon excursion was to travel through Männedorf, a small town south of Zürich on the east side of the lake, where Dad's great-grandfather, John (Johannes) Hasler, was born and raised. Dad's sister, Sylvia found and 'translated' (it was written in broken English) a journal written in 1881 by John Hasler on his return to Switzerland for a mission trip after he had emigrated to Utah. He recounts his trip from Utah to NY by train and then across the Atlantic ocean via steamer to Germany, down the Rhine river via boat and coach to Bern, Switzerland. From Bern he traveled by train, walking and finally another steamboat to Männedorf where his family could hardly believe it was him. They thought they would never see him again. In his journal he documented his missionary work as he traveled around Switzerland and we had fun looking up the towns on Google maps, trying to figure them out from his unusual spellings.
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