25. Transportation by horse carriage

During the summer of 2005 a man from Strasbourg, France, René Oberli, contacted me about the Oberli family (surname of Anna Geiser Treuthardt's mother).   After he and I did some long-distance family history work together, I asked him how he thought a family would have made their way from Vaud Canton, Switzerland across France to Le Havre.  All of the following comments are his, from an email on May 26, 2005 and a phone conversation on June 9, 2005 (he called me from France):

He speculated with confidence that the Treuthardts took "horse carriages" for the first stage of their trip, before arriving to the town or city from which they took the train. 

He gave this example.    The father of Monsieur Oberli rode in a horse carriage in Switzerland in the 1930's, when he was staying on vacation in a village at his grandparents' home.   They drove to Lausanne by horse carriage, to visit friends of his grandfather.   He said, "the horses knew the route perfectly because at the end of the day they stopped automatically at 'la pinte' for the passengers to drink a few 'deci's' (100 cc) of white wine or absinthe.   No problem to go back...the horses knew the path."
 
The Treuthardts likely took a horse and carriage up the hills into the Jura, which are only 800-1,000 km in elevation.   From there they could have gone to Dijon and taken a train.   The Poste mail service went up into the remote areas and could have transported them as well.  


Below:  Horses which understood the Czech language (pictures taken during our travel to Prague in 2008).   (see the two comments following).