Winterthur family travels Central America by bus with their children and piano: “Every day is a secret”

class = “sc-cffd1e67-0 iQNQmc”>

While we are freezing in Switzerland, René Loosli and Gabriella Sieber and their three children are waiting for temperatures to rise to 32 degrees in Mexico. At the end of 2022, the family rents out their rental house in Winterthur and has been traveling around Central America by VW bus and tent ever since.

They are currently in Bacalar, about five hours south of Cancún. They live in a rented house here. “This is not the first time we have been to Bacalar on this trip. We came back here because there are a lot of artists here and we made a lot of connections,” says Gabriella Sieber in a phone conversation with Blick.

Little kids’ piano playing drew attention

Swiss people attract great attention in Mexico. This is mainly due to his son Jembé (12). His piano is in the family’s VW bus. The son plays wherever he wants and often brings the audience to tears with his piano playing. “The crazy idea of ​​traveling with the piano arose thanks to the super talent of Jembé, who learned to play the piano autodidactically at high speed in Switzerland and surprised everyone,” explains father René Loosli.

Jembé is now asked to perform at music clubs, restaurants or events while traveling with his family, alone or with other artists. When Jembé gets paid for playing the piano on the beach, at the market, or somewhere else, that money goes to the twelve-year-old boy’s “Kässeli.” However, she prefers to play spontaneously in parks and natural environments.

Although widely described as a “super talent,” Jembé takes the hype around him seriously. For him, the only thing he focuses on is playing the piano, which he enjoys sharing with others. He sees music as a unifying element between people. “I’m happy when people like my music,” he says. It’s clear he likes it, because his piano playing is well-received on social media, with strangers sharing videos of the Swiss boy at the piano.

At Blick’s request, only hesitantly and after some consideration, the parents agreed to publish their story. An indefinite trip, without any concrete planning, that they want to undertake as a family without being disturbed, is the closest project to them.

They don’t want to market Jembé in any way. «Playing the piano had been his passion for three years and he would play for hours by himself. He can decide when and where he wants to play. “She has valuable space and support for her musical development throughout our journey,” explains the father, who supports his family online as a digital nomad.

Brief planning for a long trip

“We are relatively spontaneous and only needed three months to prepare for the trip, unenroll the children from school, book tickets and look for a tenant for our home,” Gabriella Sieber says with a laugh. He and his wife worked as flight attendants for a long time. After many trips, you consider yourself a world citizen and travel as a school of education and life.

While parents could easily book flights for the trip with their children Muendo, 15, Jembé, 12, and Anuhea, 7, transporting the piano by VW T5 bus presented a greater financial and practical challenge. Thanks to crowdfunding and a creative trick that disguised the piano as a camping bed, a company was found willing to ship the bus containing the “disguised” piano to Veracruz.

The piano was challenging many times during the trip to Mexico. “When we go from one place to another with our luggage and our piano, the bus gets really cramped,” says the mother, laughing.

The family and those around them in general were initially skeptical about their planned trip to Central America with the precious piano. The idea to implement the crazy plan came from a piano maker from Winterthur, who was excited and supportive of the idea. “We are in contact with him, and thanks to him Jembé can now tune his piano himself, take it apart and put it back together,” says Loosli.

Learning school materials, even remotely

An important issue throughout the whole trip is the school education of the children. “This is a daily balancing act that we deal with extensively. “We are constantly adapting our system,” explains the mother. Your children are learning classic school material from textbooks or online, and they have already attended a school in Mexico.

In addition, all three children learn a lot during the trip from daily life, contact with local people, encounters with strangers and everything that the nature and culture of the respective places have to offer.

Instead of just teaching math, kids develop chess strategies, develop complex card tricks, build architectural models, practice the art of origami, or create and sell their own works of art, such as spray-painted paintings, at their own sales stands. “They should do what they are passionate about and do it with their own desire, passion, ambition and creativity,” says Anne.

While Muendo discovers sailing and sails with an Argentinian from the national team, his daughter Anuhea is passionate about acrobatics on the vertical sheet and starts playing the violin.

“I would be happy if I could make music with my sister,” says Jembé, who was honored by indigenous peace ambassadors and invited to a peace conference in Sweden as an inspiration. However, the timing did not work out because the family remained in Mexico. Instead, Jembé was able to play for children at a children’s home in Mexico at Christmas. “This was Jembé’s Christmas wish. “Instead of buying his own gift, he wanted to give his music to children who were not well off,” says his mother.

No plans to return home

They leave open the issue of how long the Winterthur family will continue traveling in Central America and when they will return to Switzerland.

Gabriella Sieber: “Every day is a secret. Nothing was planned for us. “Everything happens according to intuition and is completely a matter of the heart.” Just like Jembé playing the piano; without notes, from the heart, flawed but touching, from the heart and with passion.

Source : Blick