A Breather in Lucerne

In the morning, the fog had really lifted. The valley looked even huger from my window that morning than it had the evening before.. I just had to go out of the back door of the hostel to stand there, gaping. The hostel's right on the side of the mountain, you see, so the valley starts literally at the backdoor. There was not a soul around.. and except for Petra's cute flower pots, not a man-made thing in sight.. Just that gigantic valley with a river flowing through the centre of it, bare rock rising vertically from the river (the Lauterbrunnen rocks) that turned green and slopy at around my level, and then into snow capped peaks a little furthur up. A bit of mist was still hovering around the top to round off the totally unreal effect. The only thought in my head was "Wow, Gimmelwald.. wow!"

Vinay woke up an hour or so later, and we went to Murren (this time we got to see it properly, no fog, flowers and pretty little shops and lanes and all), got our luggage out from the lockers, took the funicular back down to Lauterbrunnen and went back to Interlaken to take the train to Lucerne.

The journey from Interlaken to Lucerne is very, very scenic. Green fields ring with the sound of cowbells unexpectedly, mountains stand on the edges of lakes, casting perfect reflections. The Golden Pass is just awesome. A small village stands on the banks of Lake Thun, and a winding road follows the edge of the lake, as do the train tracks. I'm going to buy a summer house there.. if I can't afford one in Gimmelwald or Lauterbrunnen.

The Golden Pass on Lake Thun

Lucerne was a bit of an eyesore after a couple of days of beautiful mountainside, but I quickly came to love it. Its character is very different from that of Zurich.. there's far less business in the air, less bustle, less of the sharp dressing we saw in Zurich. It's a leisurely city, almost, if you could ignore the sounds of the traffic. The buildings look even more dated.

We walked what seemed to me to be an eternity along Lake Lucerne (notice how many lakes I've mentioned so far? Switzerland rivals Africa for the sorbiquet of "The Land of a Thousand Lakes") to the Backpackers Lucerne, which was my favourite hostel for the whole of the trip. It's posh, very clean, the amenities are superb, the crowd is friendly, and for a place with white and grey interiors, it's very very cosy. We dumped our luggage there (check in time is 6 p.m.) and went for a walk around the old city. One of the first places we visited was a church. I don't know the name of it, but the interior was nothing short of stunning. It was so ornate.. almost like we'd strolled into some maharajah's palace. Gilt edged carvings, paintings and woodwork.. it looked less like a church than any church I've ever seen.

Then we crossed a wooden bridge built, I understand, in the 14th century.. it's being restored coz some boat that caught fire burned down more than half of it, supposedly. I don't know the name of the river the bridge was across. But anyway. On the other side was the old city. We'd checked up at the travel office and we had a walking itinerary.. we saw a couple of old town squares, more fantastic fountains, did some window shopping (for some reason, Lucerne was more expensive than anywhere else we'd been), ate fries at Mc Donalds when it started raining (blasted highway robbers charge you 20 centimes for every packet of ketchup!) and saved the ad sheets on the tray coz they said "Royale with cheese". :) Vinay's a bigger Pulp Fiction fan than I am, though.

Flowers everywhere In Lucerne...... and a painted house in the Old Town in Lucerne

It stopped raining and we made our way down to the 'chinese towers'.. a wall thing periodically interspersed with towers, so called because the wall looks like the Great Wall. Nothing much. From there we walked to the Lion Monument (on the way passing an Indian restaurant that was flying the Indian flag.. I have a picture). The Lion Monument was pretty good. It's supposed to be the most 'moving piece of stone' in the world.. depicts a dying/dead lion pierced by an arrow, one of its paws laid protectively on a shield. I wouldn't praise it overmuch but it's quite nice. Symbolises King Richard who died in battle with someone or the other, with Swiss mercenaries fighting alongside him.

The Lion Monument: Carved out of natural rock in the 18th century.. and the Chinese Towers

Right beside the Lion Monument is the Glacier Garden Museum, which had been highly recommended to us, but it was almost closing by then, so we decided to come back in the morning. It had been about 4 hours of continuously walking and climbing around and both Vinay and I were exhausted so we headed back to the hostel (looong trek).. I took a loong shower, washed my hair and all, and went downstairs to do something about dinner. I had a couple of ready to eat sabzis with me - channa and rajma, so we'd bought rice when we'd gone out. I cooked rice.. burnt a bit because I didn't stir it enough and didn't have the sense to use a water bath for it. It was a great dinner. I'd gotten so used to the bland food there that my eyes were watering from eating the rajma, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. We had just a bit left over so we put it in the fridge. Vinay went off to sleep and I started reading a book from the 'library' there.

Most of these hostels have a cool system - if you have a book you've finished with, you exchange it for one from the hostel's collection. Honour system, too, nobody keeps tabs on the thing. It would never work in Singapore, I bet.

I was reading till late.. partly because I wanted my hair to dry out completely before I went to sleep. Finally went to bed at 12.30.