Lucerne, Switzerland
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2007
1
80
Trip End
Dec 28, 2008
Lucerne,
Lucerne,
Switzerland
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The train wound its way through incredibly narrow valleys, the one side of which could have been straight out of Heidi: little alpine cottages/houses, with small windows and brown sloping rooves, made from logs and other natural materials, or constructed so that they definitely blended into the surrounding environment and didn't stand out from it. Opposing these traditional Swiss hamlets, on the other side of the tracks (so to speak!) would be factories, processing plants, and other industrial sites, testament to the fact that Switzerland remains known for its beautiful scenery as well as its high quality manufacturing (and chocolate!). The non-industrial side of the valley was just as I had always imagined: tiny villages or clusters of houses, separated by immaculately maintained greens and then the forest rising up the steep mountain slopes behind until it peters out and the rocky mountainside is exposed, barring a few patches of snow right a the very top.
We arrived in Lucerne, which was to be the first of only two stops in Switzerland. All I knew about it was that it was famous and that it is what we called the special hay we fed to the horses when I was a kid. Ray had been there before and said it was beautiful - he was right. The town is situated at one end of a large lake, from which steep, heavily forested mountains rise straight up. Of course, the classic Swiss architecture is abundant - the town looks like the heavens have sprinkled giant cuckoo clocks all over it. It's certainly a style and a scene I hadn't seen before and I was enchanted: every significant building, street, bridge and public space screamed class, quality, design and heritage. Quaint and pretty would be two words that spring to mind, although neither of them carry enough weight with their respective meanings to do justice to Lucerne.
We were only staying three nights in Lucerne, so that gave us two days to have a look around. That first night we met an interesting and hard-case young Aussie guy called Ben, who destroyed our hopes of having the dorm to ourselves for the night. I thought him a bit odd at first but he turned out to be a great guy. He was a travelling circus performer (well I guess you'd have to be a wee bit odd to do that for a living) and was working his way around Europe performing at various festivals. He had come off the Edinburgh festival a couple of months ago and was looking forward to his first appearance at the Melbourne festival early next year. So he must be pretty good. He studied at circus school in Christchurch. He was a real crack-up and we all had such a laugh. He did a performance for us where he stuck a rubber cooking spatula in his mouth, balanced a glass bottle on the wooden end that was sticking out of his mouth and then proceeded to throw the bottle around and flip it up and down, always catching it on the wooden bit. Yep, was a fun night! When I mentioned that I was a drama teacher and actually did clowning as a genre study he gave me a DVD of his act.
Ben recommended that we do the very expensive but apparently worth it day trip along the lake and up the biggest mountain in the area. I can't remember how much it cost and quite frankly, I don't really want to because everything in Switzerland was so friggin expensive! It was a stunning day, and we started the trip with a 40 minute boat ride along the lake. The lakefront was quite jagged, and behind each little peninsula would be another gorgeous little hamlet, once again in the quaint, traditional alpine style. So green and so beautiful. Looking out from the boat, you looked across the perfect, glistening lake, then your eyes were drawn up through the time-capsule hamlets to the brilliant green of the village common and the deep, dark green of the rising forest then back into the misty, indigo jagged outlines of the Swiss Alps.
We arrived at the base of Mt Pilatus, up which travels the world's steepest clog railway. We piled into the bright red carriages of the little train and began the slow climb up. I think someone mentioned that the incline was about 70 degrees. You really would have struggled to walk up some of the sections we rode up. We went through narrow little tunnels and around hair-pin bends with vertical drops off the side, and all the while the view kept getting more and more spectacular: more lake, more mountains, fewer trees, colder air! We passed a few hardy cows on the way, (yes, with bells round their necks) and I kept expecting Heidi and Peter to come running down the hill - it was straight out of a storybook.
We reached the end of the line and the summit of Pilatus at 2100m, well above the tree line and from there we could see every branch of the lake and right out across the Alps in all directions. An absolutely stunning view. The harsh, rugged beauty of the mountains fades into the blue misty distance and your eyes strain to make out form, so that you can't tell where the earth ends and the clouds begin. This vague, ethereal alpine scenery contrasts with the lushness and precision of the fertile valleys and clearly defined villages below.
