Day in Luzern

Luzern, or Lucern, depending on whether you are using the German or French name, is my favorite city so far. After spending 4 actually enjoyable hours on the train Scott and I finally arrived. Coming out of the train station, we found a city map, and a little fair. The music from the fair had me instantly excited and happy. There was a ferris wheel and swings, along with a couple other rides, and a great mood. I was honestly instantly excited and happy to be there, dancing a little bit to the music, and enjoying the river front view that is available almost immediately as you exit the station. The city, right around the river, is beautiful, and has a lot of cool architecture.

We decided that we had 3 main things to see. Based on what we had heard from other groups that visited yesterday and looking over the map. This included first the cathedral, the lion sculpture, and finally the town wall. We immediately found the first cathedral. Two tall spires and with a courtyard for memorials/graves, the cathedral had a slightly different look to it. The doors, as always, were big, but these doors seemed more three dimensional in the carvings actually on the door. Scott had walked through the cathedral a little when I came in after taking pictures. He commented that it was the darkest cathedral he had been in. Confused, he told me to walk around and tell me if I agreed. The cathedral had huge paintings on the walls, one for each small arch-area. The first picture, along with all the following pictures, depicted the suffering of Christ. The pictures included suffering on the cross, during the trial, walking to Calvary, the Atonement, taking Christ down from the cross, and his burial. The first picture somehow shocked me a little. I’ve been viewing these type of paintings, but this one was different. I wanted to take a picture of it, but couldn’t bring myself to do it, as though it would somehow defile what it showed, lessen the reality. The following paintings included some that struck me, others that didn’t, and some that I felt comfortable taking a picture of. The cathedral, by the time I had gone through a few pictures, did have a dark feeling to it. Very different. I agreed with Scott, and we headed out to our next destination.

The lion carving, we were told, was difficult to find, but certainly worth it. After walking down a 30 ft. ‘quaint’ street, that actually was hardly more than a driveway, we were back on one of the main streets and began walking where the map directed us. We soon found a sign directing us toward the lion. And another. And another. This lion could not have been that hard to find! I have no idea how the other group struggled with it yesterday, but we found the lion without an ounce of trouble. The lion is carved into the mountain rock face, and is actually pretty cool. It is over a small pond surrounded by trees and probably benches (or it at least seemed like there should have been benches.) The carving had writing above and below it, which was unfortunately in Latin. I’m really curious as to what it said.

After visiting the lion and laughing a little at how easy it was to find, we set out again. This time we found ourselves in a little pastry shop corner of a much larger store, buying bread. Scott has a thing with buying bread in each place he goes, something that is actually kind of cool. He bought a very dark looking bread while I looked over a span of wonderful tasting, but expensive, pastries. One looked like a little cream cup covered with dark homemade spaghetti. Scott has apparently tried the spaghetti type topping as an ice cream topping. With this encouragement, and a decision to suck up the price I’m in a new country trying new things, I bought the spaghetti thing. Four francs later and a short walk to sit beneath a tree, the spaghetti pastry turned out to really not be very good. The spaghetti stuff had a thick and really horrible texture, though the taste was ok. The cream below it tried to change the texture, but really didn’t do anything to help the poor pastry. The small cream puff and cherry half on top didn’t do much to salvage it either. Fortunately, Scott’s bread was a bit better… though unfortunately, not much better overall. It is a very very dark bread, and had a variety of whole seeds in and on it, and surely a significant number of flours in it. These details were fine. We’re guessing however, that the bread may be a little overcooked, or burnt. The crust was especially thick, and had a bit of a burnt something taste to it. The crust was plain hard, difficult to bite off, and just tasted overdone. The random, and completely unexpected discovery, was that when these two combined, they removed the worst parts of each other. The spaghetti really would have been perfectly fine on something. On a croissant, cake, or really anything. The bread was enough to allow the spaghetti to be a light topping, while it pulled away the bitter burnt taste of the bread. We only mixed the two for a coupe samples, but agreed it improved them both.

On to the wall. It didn’t take us long to reach the city wall. Walking around the outside of the wall was very pretty. The first tower we reached wouldn’t let us in, but the next allowed us a seventy something hike up wooden steps to the upper room of the lookout tower. It was cool to see the draining system that had been built in, and the windows allowing for people to watch, or fight, from.

Leaving the wall, which by the way is really not very pretty from the inside, Scott and I walked around part of old town. The tall façade buildings and cobblestone streets are fun to see. There was a little fair-type setup in one of the squares with what seemed to be small handicraft tents set up for the day. One included a man making blown glass right there on the spot. This was enough to get us to stop and watch, though it ended up not being very impressive as he only twisted the glass into a snail shell like shape. Then we went to the coop grocery store, and bought some cheap food for dinner tomorrow night. Salad, a personal size salad dressing, and more breads. Scott also bought some bottled water which only deserves mention because it is strange water! I can’t tell any difference in taste as he claims, but the water does leave your mouth feeling as though you didn’t drink anything. We found out it has nearly 3 times the number of minerals as my bottled water, and that must be the reason, but its just a strange drink and we kept trying it to make sure that’s really what was happening.

Headed back out, and hearing my fair music again, we crossed another bridge across the river, and I saw one more building I wanted to check out. Not sure what kind of building it was, it looked different than most cathedrals, but like it could be a church or a city/town hall type building. Going in, we found it was another church. Though one much different than any others I have seen in Europe thus far. Instead of the Gothic style, it was a bit progressed from that. Instead of the stone everywhere, it was all painted. The ceiling with frescoes, the walls, all of it; primarily white and salmon colors. Even the area surrounding the organ pipes were salmon colored. I would have preferred most colors over salmon, but the church was very pretty and very ornate. Instead of all of the arches and gothic style halls to either side of the main hall, there were many rooms almost all of them containing confession booths. After pictures and wandering the chapel we sat down to drink our water and apple juice. In addition to providing near-useless water, the water bottle Scott had bought happens to be excessively loud. He was squeezing it while drinking, and the echoes were quite surprising. Even more surprising when he was letting the bottle fill up back to size with air. It was soooo loud. The couple in the room started laughing a little, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little with them. Needless to say, we tried to be quiet the rest of the time there.

Finishing the second much happier cathedral, we called it a day in Luzern, and headed to the train station. The train showed up at 4. We spent a grand total of 3 hours in the city. Though, I must say, it has been my favorite city so far. It is beautiful, simple, had things to do, was easy to get around, and we didn’t actually interact with other people I guess, so we didn’t face any problems with communication (or the lack thereof.) Now we’re on the train ride back, and I am ready for a nap!

Post nap: Woken up by two other members of our group! They're coming from Germany and it sounds like they had a great time. There is so much countryside here in Switzerland! So many cows and farms. Spent the rest of the night just getting home and relaxing. There you have it! One full day! (except that the evening is pretty sketchy.. but we'll call it good anyways.)