Help planning a trip to Glarus

Fly to Zurich (from where?) and it is an easy train ride from Zurich airport. Or maybe a car rental for the time in Glarus would be in order for some exploring. Glarus is both a town and a small canton (county/state) of Switzerland. Very scenic.
How much time do you have?

Hi, and grüezi!

Two of my husband's maternal great grandparents came from towns in Glarus Canton that were only miles apart, but they never met each other until they'd both arrived in the USA. They lived for some time in New Glarus, Wisconsin. I don't know whether New Glarus has resources to assist Americans of Swiss descent, but that might be an option for advice on some level.

On a trip that started in Vienna, Austria in the spring of 2001, we took the train across Austria into Switzerland and the town of Glarus. It was spargle (white asparagus) season, and that delicacy was on all the menus! Also, the day we left to return to Vienna was the annual Landsgemeinde, a form of democracy that predates the USA by centuries. People gather on the street and vote on laws for the coming year. For a couple of days, the town workers were marking off rectangles along the street, marked with last names to indicate where each family would be stationed.

We didn't have details about what address the great grandparents had had, so we weren't looking for particular houses. We did walk to Ennenda, adjacent to Glarus town, from where Scott's great grandmother had emigrated, and took the bus up the mountain road to Engi, from where his Great Opa Baumgartner had come. In the town hall in Glarus, there's an office with hand-recorded books of residents. Even Scott's grandmother, who was born in the USA and never made it to visit Switzerland, was written in the book, as a child of a citizen. They photocopied that page with her name for us, and we were able to present that to her for her 91st birthday. If you have some family members' names and/or specific towns of origin, that would help. We haven't done much ancenstral geneology research, so maybe there are a lot of other resources out there, and the Internet is a much bigger deal than it was in 2001!

The church in Glarus is small, but has an impressive pipe organ for its size.

If you want to find out more about your ancestors. You could try to contact the Swiss Center of North America (http://www.theswisscenter.org/swiss-genealogy). Maybe they can help you.

You could try contacting the Swiss Historical Village in New Glarus - they have a lot of information about the families that emigrated from Glarus and may have some suggestions.

Cyn, my dad's great grandmother was from Ennenda. She was a Jenny and I see we also have a Baumgartner in the family tree. We did visit New Glarus two summers ago, but did not have much luck. After the trip to Wisconsin my dad stated "I'm going to Switzerland before I get old." Since he will be 76 this summer my sister and I thought we need to do this. Our family name from Glarus is Marti(Marty).

Sam, I am a school teacher so we would like to go in June or July. Time is not much of an issue but money could be:) We don't need 5 star motels, a shower and clean beds would be fine. Also we aren't against buying groceries and making a few meals, although we would like to experience some of the local food. We looked at tours but they seem so fast paced and we couldn't visit Glarus and the surrounding area like we wanted to.

My mother's from the canton of Glarus so I've been around that part often, but it's been a while.

What kind of suggestions are you looking for? I can't help you much with accommodations beyond what any common google search can. But I can suggest a few things to see and eat.

See:

• GeoPark Sardona - I'm told the canton of Glarus is a geologically interesting site because of a 10km deep rock layer that moved some 40km over a younger layer a long time ago
• The Tierfehd at the very end of the valley is a very isolated place. Not much to see in the traditional sense but (at least as a child) I found the calm and sharply rising mountains an impressive sight. There's also the Restaurant Tödi there which at least back then was very good. Considering it's still open and judging by the prices it's probably still very good.
• The Freulerpalast in Glaurs.
• Elm might be interesting too for you.
• And the Klausenpass leading to the Canton of Uri and lake Lucerne is also a nice place to visit.
• I've also heard good things about the Klöntalersee but never been there.

I'd definitely recommend you sample some of the local cuisine as I feel it has some rather unique things to offer:

• Kalberwurst - a very smooth veal sausage
• Ziger - a small, very hard and pungent cheese, traditionally ground over a butter bread (Zigerbrüt) or over macaroni and cheese (Zigerhörnli).
• Glarus Pear bread
• Glarnerpastete (Glarus pastry) - A puffy pastry desert filled with either almond or prune paste.
• Elmer Citro - A lemonade made from mineral water produced in Elm. It's possible to visit the factory but I don't know how much there is to see.

Depending on your knowledge of German and French or if you can find a guide on it you might have some fun with the Swiss German dialect of Glarus which is peppered with germanized French words.