Luzern Festival

Alright. I am back again...

As far as I can keep updating and writing down what I have been doing, I am content. I am not sure about you guys.
I had a busy weekend (plus Monday).
In this post, I only talk about Friday and Saturday afternoon.
So, this trip was to go to Luzern to join Helen, Judith (Helen's sister) and then later their family.
Also, my old friend Alireza who studies in EPFL university (located in Lausanne), also joined us too which was really great.
I guess I had not seen him for almost 3 years. He was invited by Helen when they met in Geneva almost 2 weeks ago. They had never met each other before, however, they were friends through Facebook for almost 8 months or so and that's how they recognized each other in Geneva.
Facebook and Social networking is not that bad after all.

On Friday evening, my train from Zurich to Bern was leaving around 8pm. I arrived somehow early and I had some time. The result of this spare time, is shown in the previous post with some pictures.

I arrived in the Luzern main station with 2 minutes delay which is not a good number based on Swiss standards!!
Helen and Judith were waiting for me in the station. Judith is living in Luzern.
I had not seen Judith for a while. Almost 9 months or so when she came to Santa Barbara to visit Helen for her birthday.
Alireza also joined us 10 minutes later from Lausanne. At the first sight, I realized he put on a bit of weight comparing to 3 years ago. And that was somehow the topic to make fun of him for the whole weekend!
Us Iranians can not stop teasing each other for some time. We should come up with some ideas to do so!
It was really great to see him again. We did our undergrad and also masters program together in the same universities back in Iran.

We made a mistake (or to blame the girls, they) made a mistake (since we were in rush to catch the train) and we ended up waiting in the next station for half and hour. Not a bad break though. We all had some hot chocolate.
We arrived at H&J's parents place in the small town called Wolfenschiessen.
Although it was dark, but I could tell that the environemt was gorgeous!
All big and huge mountains covered with all the green vegetation. I was impatiently waiting to see it in the following morning.

I am not going to talk about the Saturday morning now. I will write the whole story about it in the next posts.
In the afternoon, Helen, Judith, Alireza and I plus Helen's brothers and also some of their friends went to Luzern to attend the biggest festival there.
I guess we were lucky to see this festival at this time.

First, I should say that Luzern has a very famous old wooden bridge called Chapel Bridge (or in German Kapell-Brücke). This bridge is constructed over the river called Reuss river.
This bridge was constructed in 1333 and is 670ft long. When you walk inside, you see some paintings supposedly from 17th century. I have heard since there was a fire some years ago, the bridge went down. And some paintings were destroyed. Now, all you see there is the copies of the original ones (they also saved some of the original ones).

The river walk was very nice. With bars and people walking along the river and enjoying their time. Also, a lot of people were feeding the ducks and swans with everything they could get their attention. I remember doing it with my family and specially my dad back home when I was younger too.
Well, in US, I would expect seeing a big sign warning (forbidding) people of feeding the birds. Cause that food is not meant for the birds and would probably hurt them.

It was amazing. Within just two hours, the whole area was occupied by people! Incredible. I could not believe my eyes. A lot of people from everywhere. All the alleys and the streets where occupied. No way you could move easily...
There were some music bands at each corner trying to entertain people.
Different bands were taking the stages for one hour or so.

I just left the group a bit earlier while they were enjoying some Samba (or Salsa) music.
I really wanted to walk alone along the river. I am biased about the river walks. Why? Well, I am from a town which I believe that it has the most fantastic and fabulous river walk in the world! (Yes, you might be right. I am biased here! hehe). Isfahan (or sometimes written as Esfahan).
I walked through the bridge again and noticed some scripts (mostly love notes) on the bridge in different languages.
Cellphone, one of humans' invention which connects you back to the reality and disconnects you from you own world. I got a call from Alireza and I joined them back again.
We had a bite on the street from a food kiosk. I had a "bratwurst": a special sausage (It should be a special Swiss food). It has a white color outside in spite of the fact that it has beef in it.

Then, we had the masterpiece of the night. A big fireworks on the river. The interesting point about it was that it was synchronized with several music pieces.
And guess what! This fireworks lasted for almost 20-25 minutes with several pieces of music.
It was gorgeous as you can imagine. Everyone was really excited about this. The whole area above the river was hazy out of the fireworks smokes. It was funny that right after it finished, everybody asked the same question: "This was crazy! How much money did they spend on this everlasting fireworks?"
It was much better than that of the Santa Barbara's for the US independence day!
And I was keep making fun of the Swiss people around me that you guys are rich!!!! You just spend a lot on a fireworks just for a city festival!
Now I am looking forward to the Swiss national day! Maybe they send a spaceship to the moon! :-D

One interesting point I have noticed about the whole festival was that I did not see any police cars around!
Considering the number of people, it seemed a risky situation with also a lot of drinking!
I just saw some fire fighters' trucks.
I had heard from some of my German friends that they did not have the super controller polices on the festivals or events like this either. I am sure US has its own factors and reasons for being more considerate about such events. Plus, I can not extend only one festival to the whole year events in the Switzerland.
I am sure the cultural differences are also playing a major role here too.
On the way back home (to Helen and Judith's parents'), the train was full of all the people who had taken part in the festival. All exhausted.
Helen told me that this was her first time seeing these many people and fireworks for this festival. Well, I guess her absence in Switzeland for almost 4-5 years also affected her comparisons too. Time brings a lot changes without even noticing or asking for it!

Ok.
For now, I ran out of words.
Now I am trying to upload some pictures.
Hope I can upload enough pictures to cover everything. I guess here, I am limited to only 21 pictures for each post.

Good night,
Momo

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