We Need Passports to Climb a Mountain?

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There are bottles of champagne on the breakfast bar again this morning, and a group of Americans at the next table is getting stuck into them. It seems that one of the couples is having an anniversary. I hope that they're not planning on abseiling down any mountains today.

Today we've booked a "Golden Ticket" round trip up Mount Pilatus. I booked this a long time ago, so we're not exactly sure what it involves. The voucher isn't giving too much away, other than a requirement that we take our passports with us. This is a bit worrying. The mountain only looks to be a few kilometres away, and I’m pretty sure we should only need passports if we’re planning on leaving Europe. I hope we get back to Lucerne in time for dinner.

We've got two options to start the trip - by boat or by bus; we go for the boat option. There are only a very few clouds around today, and a gentle breeze, so it's very pleasant cruising out on Lake Lucerne. Most of the houses fronting the lake have boats parked in garages underneath them.

We make a few stops before arriving at the village of Alpnachstad where we disembark and board what is supposedly the steepest cog railway in the world, with a gradient of a staggering 48 per cent. I wonder what happens if the cable breaks. I then quickly decide that if I want to enjoy myself it might be better if I didn't wonder about this too much. The views as we climb rapidly up the mountain are breathtaking.

As we approach one of the stops we start to hear music. It's not particularly rhythmic or harmonious, but I think it could probably still be classified as music. It looks to be coming from the square bells that they seem to hang around the necks of all the cows here. It sounds like each cow has a bell that plays a different note, which is probably good; I suspect it might get a bit monotonous for the owner and his family if they had to listen to the same note all the time. Issy says she feels very sorry for the cows; she thinks the noise must drive them crazy. I think it's good that the owners care for their animals enough to hang bells around their necks, which must make it a lot easier to find them if they get lost. Anyway, if the noise was really driving them crazy surely all they'd have to do to stop it would be to stop moving. I wonder if cows are smart enough to work this out.

We climb into pine forest, and then no forest at all, just lots of grass and rocks, and shortly afterwards we reach the steep and rocky summit of Pilatus at 2,128 metres. We've rugged up well, and it's cool but not really all that cold. Clouds are swirling around the peak so we find ourselves constantly in and out of the sun. There's no shortage of facilities up here including multiple cafes, gift shops and two hotels. We climb a short distance from the rail terminus up to one of the peaks. The views through the cloud over the surrounding summits and down into the valleys and lakes are spectacular. There seem to be lots of hiking trails that terminate here, and all seem to be well used. We head up a path to a second peak on the other side of the terminus. This path leads up over the summit and then down a steep set of steps through a dark wet tunnel through the rock, and out into thick cloud.

Issy's on the path ahead of me and I try to take a photo of her through the cloud. An American man is standing between us, and his companions yell at him to get out of the way. He asks me if he's out of the way enough, and I respond with "beautiful". He says he knows he's beautiful, and because of this he should have stayed where he was so he could have been in the photo too. He tells me to email it to him. I'm not quite sure why; he's not in it, and anyway he didn't give me his email address. I don't think I understand American humour particularly well ... I assume it was humour. The path continues through a much longer tunnel with view holes chiselled through the rock in one side of it. The views are spectacular, and probably made even more so by the thick swirling clouds.

We have lunch on a terrace in front of one of the hotels.

The first stage of our descent is via a very large cable car with a cabin capacity of about twenty. We're still up at somewhere around 1,500 metres when we get to the bottom. There's a summer tobogganing course here that's apparently the longest in Switzerland. It looks like a lot of fun, and Issy's keen to give it a go.… well she was until we see a couple who look like they’ve been seriously overindulging on the strudel get stuck on one of the corners. We’ve been warned not to miss the last cable car down, and if we got caught behind that lot I think that that’s exactly what would happen.

The rest of the descent is via a much smaller cable car, and we've got a cabin to ourselves. The slope's much gentler and it takes us right down into the outskirts of Lucerne, where we're directed to a regular commuter bus stop. No one's asked us for our passports yet, and this is the last leg, so I assume we must need them to board. I don't see anyone else with a passport, so I wonder if it's just us foreigners who need them. We sneak on without anyone seeming to ask too many questions. Maybe they all think we're Swiss. We decide not to talk to avoid giving ourselves away.

We arrive back in central Lucerne, and set out in search of a supermarket. We need to buy drinks because we're definitely going to need to rob a bank if we keep taking them from the apartment minibar. A tiny can of Red Bull costs the equivalent of about seven Australian dollars, which must work out at about a dollar a sip.

It's been an excellent day, and we agree that the excursion up Mount Pilatus has been one of the highlights of the trip so far.

Issy says that she's picked a restaurant for dinner. I ask her if it's Japanese. She doesn't respond, but I do notice drool starting to form at the corners of her mouth. We walk around for a long time searching for her chosen eatery but it seems to be well hidden. We eventually find a sign indicating that it shares the first floor of a building with a hotel. We climb the stairs and find the hotel, but the restaurant's noticeably absent. The hotel receptionist looks Japanese and doesn't speak a lot of English. Fortunately (or not depending on your perspective) he knows just enough to cross his arms and say "no more" when questioned about the restaurant. He then adds that this was, with strong emphasis on the word "was", the one and only Japanese restaurant in the whole of Lucerne. Issy looks shattered. We settle for an Italian eatery in a square near our hotel, but if the look on my beloved's face is anything to go by, I suspect she thinks that spaghetti carbonara's a very poor substitute for her much anticipated sashimi.

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Photos

Jackdaw, Mount Pilatus
These were everywhere and very keen to try some of our lunch