Otto Anderau

The major reason for this trip was to visit my Dad’s first cousin, Otto. He is in his mid 80’s and in poor health. We arrived at his house and could hear him, so we went in. He lives on the second floor of his house, the first being mostly storage and garage. He has trouble getting around having had a hip replacement about a year ago, but he also has some very serious heart and lung problems. When he first saw and hugged Bill and me, he cried. I didn’t expect to be this emotional about meeting him, but I was touched by his emotion. His English is limited and our German is non existent, so we had a bit of trouble communicating until his son Viktor got there. Viktor’s English is quite adequate, although he has some trouble understanding Texas accents.



Otto is a genealogist and has book after book he has put together about the Anderaus. He has traced some back to the 1330’s. He has records of the first mention of the name Anderau in public records in Switzerland. He delighted in showing us his books, in German and B and M showed him photos of our part of the Anderau family which they brought for him to keep.


Otto’s daughter Felicity and her husband Joe came and we enjoyed some canapés that Viktor had put together and a plum tart that Felicity brought. I was especially taken with the decorative way Viktor had “sliced” the cheese. He showed me the device and I hope I can find one. The finished “sliced” cheese looks ruffled and very feathery. He told me that a semi-hard cheese is needed for this effect.. Who knows, some of you may enjoy some feathery cheese, or some of you may already know about this device. Anyway, it was tasty and pretty.
We toasted with apple cider/ wine and enjoyed talking about life in this area of Switzerland.

We left about 8—Otto was getting tired—and made plans for an excursion in the morning.