Karl Zberg, 1939, passed away in 2024 - Back to Flüelen, via the North and South Poles

[read out at the funeral ceremony on April 6, 2024]

Back to Flüelen, via the North and South Poles, that was Karl Zberg's life. Growing up with four sisters here in Flüelen, Karl wanted to see the world - and he did. Even in the last few months of his life, he received visitors from different corners of the world - a fellow pilot from Ireland was here in Switzerland and dropped in on Karl in Flüelen, a pilot landed in Zurich with a large passenger plane from the United Arab Emirates and it was clear to him that he too would drop in on Karl before continuing his flight.

It is not a matter of course that Karl has traveled so far around the world that the world has now visited him. Karl has always taken matters into his own hands.

Together with his four siblings, he had a happy childhood in simple circumstances at a time when children could still sledge down the Axenstrasse from Gruonbach to Flüelerhof in winter. The fact that Karl could not only dream of the big wide world, but also lived this dream, was certainly due in part to his parents. His father Zberg, who went to western Switzerland as a farmhand for eight years at the age of 12, worked for the DGV, the Lake Lucerne steamboat company, after his return to Uri. He was a bridge keeper in the harbor and sailed on the "Dämpferli", the small ship that shuttled between Flüelen, Isleten and Bauen with passengers and all the necessities before there was a road between Isleten and Seedorf.

Going out on the lake with his father on this "Dämpferli" was one of the greatest things for little Karl: "I've already been there," Karl told me.

Even in his youth, Karl was interested, enjoyed learning new things and was happy to be able to attend the newly opened secondary school in Flüelen. This paved the way for the hard-working pupil to take up one of the coveted apprenticeship as a mechanic in Schächenwald.

From an early age, Karl loved being in the mountains, sometimes further than his mother would have liked, for example when his mountain friends climbed the Rophaien when he was still at primary school - not along the hiking trail, but "up ahead". Climbing in summer ranged from first ascents on the Hagelstock to tours on the Salbit across the entire canton and beyond.

However, the tours to the peaks of Uri or the trip with the "Dämpferli" to Isleten only increased his interest in every-thing beyond the horizon. He also shared this passion with his father, who also brought books home and often sat in front of a world map with his children and discussed faraway countries.

Karl Zberg was actually very interested in flying, but this world was a long way off for a young man from Uri from a modest background. Karl thought that the military might be a way to get into pilot training. But the district com-mander clearly rejected this idea: "Before Zberg became a pilot, he would become Pope", he is said to have said.

If I can't discover the world by plane, then maybe by ship, Karl told himself. Without much information, the young Karl Zberg sent an application to a Swiss shipping company in Basel and was not discouraged by a rejection. He found another address for a shipping company in the telephone directories at Flüelen station and sent another application. His application was accepted there in 1961.

He was suddenly told that he had to be in Marseille [France] the day after tomorrow. After a night on the train, he made his way through the port of Marseille to the ship that was to be his home for the next few months. He didn't hesitate to take this big step - he simply wanted to, he said later.

In the beginning, he was not above doing dirty work, but soon,  Karl's manual skills and technical understanding were appreciated on the ship. From France, the freighter sailed down the west coast of Africa and back again. During the ship's stops in the various ports, Karl got to know the cultures of distant countries that interested him so much.

He never forgot his home, his friends and his family and was always happy to return to Uri [Switzerland] before he was drawn out into the world again. He also sometimes missed the snow on the long journeys along the coasts of Africa to Angola - one trip took around four months until he returned to his home port. "When I saw the snowy mountains of the Sierra Nevada in the distance on the Mediterranean, I felt homesick," Karl says.

In the ports, Karl Zberg wasn't just interested in the bars like some other sailors. Karl Zberg took the opportunity to see as many of the countries visited as possible. Even though it was forbidden to climb the Pyramid of Cheops, Karl and a few colleagues did not miss out. The Forbidden City in Beijing, Bangkok, New Zealand, or Japan - Karl Zberg made his dream come true and, as a ship mechanic, visited all these cities and countries himself, which he had previously only known from books.

But Karl Zberg was far from fed up with the wide world and, after another home leave, went to England to further improve his English language skills. He also wanted to start training as a ship's engineer there. "But every morning, on the way to this school, I heard this plane approaching. That gave me no peace and I always thought I'd be better off investing in an apprenticeship in aviation," he said.

When he was looking for aviation magazines at a newsstand in London, he happened to see an advertisement for skiing vacations in Scotland in a knitting magazine. It occurred to him that he was not only a talented mountaineer but also a gifted skier and had already been recommended to work as a ski instructor in Scotland. But he didn't know where to apply. At this kiosk, Karl Zberg once again did not wait passively to see what life would bring but took the initiative - bought the knitting magazine and contacted the ski resort.

Shortly afterwards, Karl Zberg was employed as a ski instructor in the north of Scotland. Even if nobody asked for it, he quickly bought specialist books to learn the technical terms and trained himself for the ski instructor job - Karl didn't like to settle for half measures, he wanted to do what he did well. Here, too, people were obviously happy with him, so Karl Zberg was soon giving ski lessons to members of the Royal Army, Air Force and Navy. Later, he also obtained his official ski instructor's license in Andermatt [Switzerland].

Karl Zberg's life took what was probably a fateful turn when he traveled to Canada as a ski instructor for a col-league who was unable to work due to illness. On a beautiful Sunday, Karl Zberg was waiting at a ski lift north of Montreal to go up the mountain. Karl didn't leave the empty seat next to a man he didn't know unused, shared the ski lift bar with this man and struck up a conversation with him. Once at the top of the lift, the two men knew from each other that one was a trained mechanic from Switzerland with a keen interest in flying and the other, John Jameson, was a pilot and managing director of a Canadian airline operating in the north of Canada.

The interest was mutual and Karl Zberg got a job as a mechanic with the Canadian company months later. The salary was 300 Canadian dollars per month, half that if you wanted to get your pilot's license at the same time. Naturally, Karl chose the second option - he had not lost sight of his goal of becoming a pilot.

With his Swiss sense of quality, Karl Zberg was already a foreman after just a few weeks, but the promised missions to the Arctic, which Karl would have been so interested in, did not materialize for the time being. A difficult time followed for him, he had to help himself with various jobs to make ends meet, he helped with haymaking, building houses, worked as a mechanic for oil companies in Edmonton and for the Canadian railroad in Calgary - he sacrificed a lot for the dream of his career as a pilot.

Karl's perseverance paid off, a window opened up again and in 1968 Karl was able to take a plane to the Arctic as a mechanic - after visiting many countries around the world by ship, he was finally able to explore the far north. After his first assignments as a mechanic, he quickly progressed to pilot training, and it became clear that Karl also had a talent for flying.

For the next 30 years or more, Karl Zberg worked as a pilot, often in the almost endless expanses of Canada's north. He often flew transport planes to remote villages and settlements where the plane was the only connection to the outside world. Not only passengers, but also food, fuel, machines or animals - he brought what the people needed and often picked up patients in remote settlements and flew them to a hospital - so he was an important part of the lives of many people in the almost endless expanses of the Canadian North.

He also traveled by plane for research stations so far up north, where the last settlement was many hours away by plane. Karl Zberg is probably one of the few people who did not know the exact answer to the simple question "How many times have you been to the North Pole? ""I'm sure it's been around 30 times," he said. Karl became an expert in flying in these extreme conditions, where navigating by the stars was required because the magnetic compass was going crazy, where wolves or polar bears were waiting at the landing sites, where there were no runways and every landing site on snow had to be searched for and assessed anew, where loading and unloading cargo was a natural part of the pilot's job. With this enormous experience in his pocket, Karl also qualified for missions at literally the other end of the world. He was sent with the twin-engine Twin Otter aircraft across the entire North and South American continent and even further to carry out supply flights at the South Pole.

Karl Zberg, who treated people all over the world with a great deal of respect, humor and his characteristic mischievousness, also had a highly serious side. Up there, beyond the Arctic Circle, flying far away from airfields, this was necessary. Mistakes would very quickly have been fatal, and he would often have had to wait days or even weeks for outside help. Karl took his responsibilities as a pilot all the more seriously and precisely, assessed the risks and weather and also knew his limits, so that he was spared any major accidents in all his years of flying in often extreme conditions. He has shared this knowledge with countless young.

If you keep your eyes open, there are always "so many interesting opportunities" that you can grab. But you also have to make sacrifices when you decide on something. Kari Zberg probably decided not to get married out of a sense of responsibility. For 50 years, he was very close to Lina Arnold from Bürglen, who also spent a large part of her life in North America. "But I would never have been at home, that wouldn't have worked with flying and even less with shipping," he said. Nevertheless, he was there for his Lina when she fell seriously ill and accompanied her until her death [back in Switzerland].

At the extreme points of the world around the North and South Poles, Kari also made a name for himself with many celebrities. People such as Neil Armstrong, who was the first man to walk on the moon, and the current King Charles of Great Britain were on the plane with Kari Zberg. Kari didn't make a big fuss about it; under the extreme conditions of the Arctic and Antarctic, the qualities that really matter became even clearer than else-where. These are the same qualities in kings, astronauts and indigenous people - Kari treated them accordingly, he had respect for their qualities and not for their titles.

Kari retired as a pilot in 2004 and after a few more years in Canada, he decided to return to his family in 2010. Cared for by his sisters Margrith and Vreni, he bravely endured his cancer. Kari Zberg's big trip around the world came to an end on March 17, 2024.

Translated with DeepL.com

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