Would you be interested?
03/03/2026
If you did military service as a driver in Switzerland, you were allowed to see the inside of some barns. The reason was that in the exercise scenarios, the task was to place a vehicle in a so-called standby room, i.e. to position it close to a position - in my case a mobile air defense unit - camouflaged and wait. With a full-size truck, the effort involved is considerable. You have to find a good location, unpack the camouflage net and leave the Trummu.
It was much easier to drive to the nearest farmer and ask him if the big Saurer could disappear into his shed - in my active service days, the majority of the fleet still consisted of products from the manufacturer in Arbon on Lake Constance.
Ideally, the "Lasti" could be parked directly behind the barn door, snout forward, so that you could drive away again with little effort. Of course, it was important to keep a watch, but often there was a short breather with a pot of coffee from the farmer's wife, I had to leave the "Güggs" - a sip of home-brewed alcohol - outside, for me the strict zero alcohol limit applied.
I often hoped to discover something in one of these barns, like a Bugatti under the haystack, or even just a discarded old Bulli or Beetle. Unfortunately, this never happened, not even a bicycle was waiting for me - I would have had room to transport it. Perhaps a higher power saved me from even more junk.
The long-awaited barn find!
However, the dream of getting the Bulli out of the barn was to come true, not while I was on duty, but after the end of a classic car meeting in Wald am Bachtel in the Zurich Oberland - on a Sunday evening. First in the middle of the hustle and bustle, my van was standing all alone on the large village square barely an hour after the end - a typically Swiss phenomenon. Festivals of any size are always completely deserted after 6 p.m. on a Sunday.
I was just about to put my equipment away to treat myself to an ice cream with the organizers when an elderly gentleman approached me about my bus and magically said: "I've got one of those in the barn!"
Fifteen minutes later, we were standing in the yard with colleagues and found a really well-preserved, slightly modified 1959 Bulli that had once served as a radio bus in the army - rust-free and dry. The colleague bought the car for a moderate price and within a few evenings the bus was ready for use again.
New brakes and fuel lines, then the '59 estate ran again
Since then, I've been asked here and there whether there was any interest in cars, even for a VW Type 166 Schwimmwagen - how that got to Switzerland would be a story in itself. A Bulli was never there again - and thanks to platforms like zwischengas.com, even a farmer with a well-stocked barn now knows what his treasures are worth!
The best barn find is the one in your own barn!
