01 | July | 2012 | schwingeninswitzerland

Of course they have “The Death of Sherlock Holmes” by Sidney Paget prominently displayed.

Traces of Sherlock Holmes are all over Meiringen. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle visited the town and nearby Reichenbach Falls. He had grown tired of writing the stories and was so impressed by the falls that he though they were an ideal setting to kill off his hero. Meiringen even has a Sherlock Holmes trail in the center. Even if you don’t do the trail, signs of Sherlock are everywhere.

It would have been so much cooler if I had a deerstalker on instead of a Detroit Tigers baseball cap.

Hotel Adler…get it? Irene Adler. “To Sherlock Homes she is always the woman”

The Sherlock Holmes Museum opened in 1991 on the 100th anniversary of Sherlock Holmes death in the old English church with the support of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. It has objects here related to the history of Doyle and Holmes as well as a “recreation” the parlor of 221b Baker Street. Okay, okay, I know that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were never alive, so it’s not really their things in the museum. It contains items that belonged to similar people of the period (the nineteenth and early twentieth century).

In addition to Watson’s rugby gear, they have a walking stick of the type used for walking mountains at the end of the 19th century, Holmes’ hats, a statue of Sherlock, and a view of the falls. One thing I learned from this case was that Scotland Yard uses an IT system called HOLMES. It’s an acronym for “Home Office Large Major Enquiry System.” Clever.

In addition to the usual memorabilia, this case has a copy of The Times from 1910 with a story about the Swiss Federal Railways banning the sale of “novels of the detective type” in their station bookstalls. It notes that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stated “there was nothing in his detective stories to shock anybody and he was in no way responsible for the bad literature and worse morals of the stories that have inundated the continent.” That’s why I love to read him.

The “recreation” of 221b Baker Street. Items specifically included because of their mention in a story include: a violin, the picture of Henry Ward Beecher, the Persian slipper where Holmes kept his tobacco, the slightly bent poker, and the bearskin hearth-rug. “It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles.”

I would have bought the deerstalker hat in the gift shop if it hadn’t been so expensive (note to him, now you know what to get me for my birthday) They had some pretty cool stuff. I purchased a book of some of the best Sherlock Holmes stories. The cool parts are one page is in English, the opposite page is in German. The employee who sold it to me stamped it with a stamp from the museum. “Excellent!” I cried. “Elementary,” said he.