A day trip to Lake Geneva and the Sherlock Holmes Museum

So, one of those quirky, living in Europe moments happened this weekend.  Saturday morning Dave told me that the owner of an online audiophile magazine was moving and had posted that he had various high end stereo items that had been sent to him by manufacturers to review and now he is giving them away before moving, but people had to pick them up from his home in Villeneuve, Switzerland.  So, next thing I knew we had a plan to drive to Switzerland on Sunday!  Saturday afternoon Dave was googling for information about the area, and stumbled onto information about a small Sherlock Holmes Museum in nearby Lucen, which was all it took for Marika to decide spending 7 or 8 hours in a car was totally worth it to join in on the adventure.

Our drive was uneventful, and we enjoyed seeing at least a small amount of snow as we crossed the mountains.  I realize my readers in the US and Canada have been buried in more than the usual amounts of snow this winter, but we have had none in Heidelberg and precious little anywhere in the region, so even a small area with an inch or two was good.

Villeneuve is a cute little town.  Here is a photo of the street we were visiting:

We picked up the stereo equipment and had a really nice chat with the 6moons owner and his wife (an artist, originally from the US), before walking over to the shores of the lake.  It was absolutely lovely, as you can see:

We did not dawdle for too long.  We still wanted to stop at the museum, and had a long drive back home.  our next stop was the town on Lucen, which has the awesome castle overlooking it:

The Sherlock Holmes Museum was originally in the castle, back when the castle and museum were owned by Arthur Conan Doyle'S son Adrian.  Now it is nestled in a building tucked under the castle, with the honorary 221b address on the door:

Entry to the musem is 5 Swiss Francs per person.  Only cash is accepted.  We had come semi prepared, with small bills and coins in Euro, in the hopes that we would be allowed to pay in Euros if we did not need change, and ready to run to an ATM if not.  The proprietor very kindly took our euros and let us into the small, but excellent museum.  He spoke broken English (no German; Lucen is in teh French speaking section of Switzerland) and clearly loved the museum and worked hard to share stories with us.  I think he enjoyed having Marika there, with her clear love for the works and the author who disliked his character so much.

The museum is in just two rooms.  The main room, and a back area which contains a full replica of the mock up of Sherlock'S quarters that was created for the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Here is the main room:

Here is Marika geeking out over an original handwritten draft of teh first Sherlock story, A Study in Scarlet.  She was tickled that in the draft the main character was still Sherrinford.

All but the first of the Holme's stories were published in serial form in a magazine, with lots of illustrations.  Here is Marika showing me one of her favourites, and here is a photo of the illustrator, Sidney Paget, and his brother (whom he used as a model for the great detective):

The table running down the center of the room was interesting.  It was a Holmes family table, and when famous people attended dinner parties, a small plaque was added with their name on it, almost like a mini walk of fame.  Marika got a kick out of J M Barrie and Bram Stroker being next to one another (Peter Pan and Dracula!).  

(photos of the engravings were hard to get, this one is Rupyard Kipling)

Here is Doyle'S desk, where he wrote most of his stories:

and a portrait of the author himself, with Marika goofing around in props (yes, they have those too!):

We all goofed off with those hats and pipes:

In the back room is the glassed in mock up of the 221b Baker Street residence.  It was hard to get good photos (being dimly lit) but WOW was it full of tiny details from the stories!  Loads of them.  Marika spent a good twenty minutes looking at it all (and would have stayed longer if we had not needed to get home); we promised to come back in the summer with enough warning for her to reread them all and catch more details.  

Overall, this museum was a heck of a lot of fun.  Worth a visit if you ever find yourself in the area.  It was also much more authentic (both in terms of having real life artifacts from Doyle and in recreating the stories with many of the details in the texts) than the museum f the same name in London.

After dragging Marika out of her literary heaven, we walked around Lucen just a bit, getting as close to the now privately owned castle as possible, before heading home:

 We thought this house looked almost like a Playmobil model, right down to the color scheme:

Once we got home, the guys were all about the esoteric stereo equipment.  The glowing tubes are supposed to be impressive.  I suppose they are as impressive to me as old letters by some dead author are to them!

--Hadley