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Published: April 23rd 2006
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14th, 15th and 16th of October, 2005.
Lucerne, Switzerland.
Tour Day 3 As we travelled from France and into Switzerland - all the while with the most endlessly blue skies I have ever seen in my life - the landscape gradually went from incredibly green hills to amazingly green mountains, and in the distance you could see blue Alps with white snowcaps. The road began to carve its way through endless mountains, and by the time we reached Lucerne I think we may have spent more time in darkly lit tunnels than on open-air roads.
Lucerne turned out to be a really pretty little town. We stopped at their most renowned monument, the
Lõwendenkmal, meaning
The Dying Lion Of Luzern, which is a sculpture carved into the sandstone cliff's edge by Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen in the early 1800's. It's in dedication to the Swiss soldiers who were on loan to France (dunno why) and died during the French Revolution while defending King Louis XVI and his family, in Tuileries Palace. King Louis, not wanting to harm his countrymen and perhaps not valuing the Swiss officers as much as the French citizens, ordered them to lay down
their weapons and stop the oncoming anarchists without killing anybody. For reasons I personally will never understand, they did just that, and all died for their trouble.
The sculpture is actually quite moving, though there's a large water feature in front of it which means you can't get up close and personal. I don't know if the emotion it stirs is due to the history behind it, or because the deceptively large sculpture is so well crafted that you can see the pain in the lion's face as he sprawls dying. Carved in a niche in the flat cliff as if it were in a cave, the lion, symbolizing the courage of the soldiers, lies on the surrendered shield of the French king with a broken lance piercing his heart, signifying its complete loyalty in protecting the shield to its death. Before the head rests the shield of Switzerland with its single cross. Above the cave are carved something like "Helvetiorum Fidei Ac Virtuti" which in English means "To the Loyalty and Courage of the Swiss". It's a very serene, melancholy little spot.
The rest of the 'landmark tour' was delayed until the next day, as it was
early evening by this time. So we headed to the campsite where, despite initial reluctance, the little log cabins turned out to be quite adequate. Indie, who had lived in Lucerne for a while and had an ex she was meeting, ended up stuck with about a dozen of us, mostly girls, who wanted to go into town for a night out. The fancy, dress-code club she took us to was a far cry from the pub I'd expected, and though I don't know how I made it past the doorman in my tourist tshirt, I certainly didn't stay long. The club was a mix of lounging rooms, dance floors, statuary, and bar areas. It was very nice, and dressed apropriately, I would have had a ball. But after about an hour I snuck away with a few of the other girls and we wandered the town alone, eventually meeting up accidentally with some of the guys who'd followed.
Tour Day 4 The morning began with a walking tour of Lucerne, which was fairly brief, as apart from the Lion Monument of yesterday, there is only
Kapellbrucke (Chapel Bridge),
Hopfkirche church, and the old-town streets around
the weekend fruit markets. I had an hour or so of sightseeing and wandering through the stalls before heading to the lake for the optional Mt Pilatus excursion. This was something which I could not have comfortably afforded (€120) if it had not been for the very generous thank-you gift of €300 spending money from my client's extremely sweet, high-flying son. I will be forever grateful to him for that kindness; it was an unforgettably incredible experience, something I am desperately glad to have done.
Those of us who had opted to go travelled along Lake Lucerne by boat to the foot of Mt Pilatus (about an hour away), all the while taking photos of the quaint Swiss homes perched on the waterfront and climbing their way up the green, sloping hills. After a short wait we boarded the little cogwheel railcar and were soon chugging slowly up the almost vertical inclines.
Not to be confused with a normal train system, a cogwheel railway operates on something of a lock-and-key mechanism. The Mt Pilatus railway line is apparently the steepest in the world, with gradients of up to 48%, which is pretty darn steep! So rather than the
circular wheels of a typical train, which would not adhere to the tracks on such an angle, you have a 'toothed wheel that engages another toothed mechanism'. They look just like the clogs inside a clock.
At any rate, ıt was a fantastic ride, oftentimes a little bumpy, and kind of scary on some slopes, but an experience within itself. And the view! As we rose toward, into, and then above the cloud cover, the vista outside the windows became more and more amazing, an endless patchwork of mountaintops stretching endlessly behind each other into the distance. The bases of most were increasingly covered in the thick cloud cover, and the higher we travelled above the mist, the more the peaks appeared to be strange jutting islands in a vast white ocean, framed by the pine trees on either side of the tracks. Cows wıth huge brass bells strapped around their throats grazed the mountainside, heedless of the train, but I barely noticed them. Nothing so prosaic as livestock could compete with that view.
Once we'd reached the top and were left to our own devices, I clambered up onto the top pf the mountain and luxuriated in
the magic of the scene, let the moment sink into my soul. The Swiss Alps stretched out in every direction, mammoth and so very beautiful. The air was so thin, as if there was less weight, less substance to it than my lungs were accustomed to. Diluted oxygen. The climate was such a strange mix of hot and cold - the sun seemed so close and fierce, yet the air was crisp and the shadowed areas of the mountain were icily cold; some crevices still held snow!
I wandered about, taking copious pictures and playing briefly in the not-soft-as-expected-but-cold-and-hard snow. By late afternoon I was badly sunburnt, not having expected to need suncream in such a cold climate as Switzerland. I gave in and took the gondola cableway (just lıke the Skyrail back home in Cairns) back to the bottom of the mountain. On the second leg of the journey, and in the midst of a thick fog, I was startled to hear the jangling of what sounded like a hundred soft bells coming from everywhere at once. The three others in the carriage didn't speak English, and I stared uneasily up at the slim grip holding us to
the cables, wondering if the bells were something of a warning system. But then the fog cleared a little and I saw that we surrounded by a herd of cows wıth bells about their necks. I laughed out loud in startled delight;
now I was in Switzerland!
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