Vorwärts Hat Gebunden

Day 106
I was up early and packed my stuff up quickly. After saying goodbye and thanking Stu for letting me crash I was off to the train station. My next base would be Interlaken. Interlaken is where people go to do adventure sports. I don't do things like that and was just planning on using it as a base to get to other cities around Switzerland. When I saw the prices for the different activities I decided that there was just no way I would be taking part in any of those things.

By the time I had gotten there and checked in I was feeling a bit tired and didn't really want to get right back on the train and walk around another city. Therefore I just sort of wandered. Interlaken is small, so this didn't take a whole lot of time. While I was walking around I saw a bunch of people paragliding. It looked like fun, more fun than I would have thought.

By the time I was back at the hostel and watching a movie over dinner I had decided that I would go paragliding in the morning. You only live once, well, that is until you go paraglding right? I also wanted to try and challenge not my fear of heights, but my dislike of adventure sports. Then it started to rain, hard. I was worried that it will still be gross and cloudy in the morning. Paragliding would be a waste of time if this was the case. The whole point would be for the view.

After watching tv and then Orange County with some Brits I headed down to the night club. The Germany verses Turkey game was on and I wanted to see it. I was happy, and not at all surprised when Germany won. When this happened the night club turned into an actual night club and I lost interest in it. It was late anyways and if I was going paragliding I would need to be up early.

The Lion of Luzern

Day 105
Stu and I both happen to be morning people and we were up early. I used this to my advantage to go and visit Luzern. On the train I tried to update my woefully behind journal, but didn't get very far on the short ride. I hate when I let my journal get behind. I wish that my journals for my past trips were more detailed and I am determined to make sure that I record everything this time around. I don't mind so much if the blog gets behind, at least that's all written down so I won't forget when I finally do post it, but the journal needs to be up to date.

After grabbing a map and a rather large amount of information I was ready to hit the town. Luzern is beautiful, its surrounded by mountains and it is just so Swiss. I started exploring by walking across the zigzagging Chapel Bridge. Before even crossing it I could tell how pretty it was, the sides were lined with flowers. While I was on it I admired the 17^th century paintings in the rafters that focused on local history.

My next stop was the Hof Kirche, Luzerns main church. This was meant to be the most important Renaissance building in all of Switzerland. It had clean lines and wasn't ornate like the Italian churches I had become used to. I quite liked it.

Just a few minutes away was the Lion Monument. This was carved into the side of a rock wall. It is of a wounded and dying lion. Mark Twain called it “the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world.” I don't know about that, but it definitely was beautiful.

I surprised myself by visiting the nearby Glacier Garden. From the description and the ads it looked like a roadside attraction. It kinda was too, but in a good way. It advertised that a visit was a journey through 20 million years of Luzern's history with a few extras thrown in.

Essentially, in 1872 Josef Troller wanted to build a really big wine cellar in to the side of the mountain. During construction he stumbled upon a geological anomaly from the last ice age. Once the area had been dug out it was opened as an attraction. As time went by more and more additions were made. The park was pretty cool, I hadn't seen anything like it before. There were deep holes carved out by water and ice as well as a lot of fossils. Plus, I was given a brochure that explained everything and that always makes me happy.

The museum was very detailed. There were several all miniatures of the area depicting various times during history. There was even a stuffed woolly mammoth. A film explained that Luzern had begun as a tropical beach area, but this all changed with the ice age and glacier formation.

Upstairs there seemed to be a lot of random Luzern related things. There was old furniture and a lot of different types of rocks. I particularly liked the room with some intricate wood carvings on the walls.

The next attraction was the Alhambra Hall of Mirrors. It was created in 1898 for the Swiss National Exhibition, and moved to Luzern in 1899. I took my time walking through it and managed to get some really cool pictures with the mirrors.

Next up were some really cute bunnies. I could have watched the all day. However, I had to take a short climb up to the viewing tower. On the way I passed a cabin, and out of date “glacial mill” and a gnome. From the top I had a great view of Luzern and the mountains. I had it to myself and just enjoyed it for a bit.

Luzern still has a large part of it city walls and you can walk along the top of this. This took me some time due to the heat, there was very little shade up there. It was nice to get lots of different angles of the city and the mountains.

When I was back in the old town I took pictures of the fabulous painted buildings and decided to grab some lunch. I ate at a place that overlooked the Reuss River. I had one of those “I love my life” moments as I watched the river go by the Swiss background. I just couldn't believe that this was my life, and had been my life for over three months now!

My next stop required traveling over another painted bridge, the Spreuer Bridge. The pictures on this bridge were called the dance of death and were a bit more morbid than the other ones. This lead me directly to the Luzern History Museum, which had just recently been redone. I was really surprised when I was handed a bar code reader with my ticket. The museum was set up like a warehouse. Each object had a sku, to read information about it I just had to scan it. I hated it. I don't like history museums that are set up in uber modern ways. I feel like it further removes history from the present and makes it more difficult to connect with. Despite that complaint, they did have a ton of information on all of the objects and I could have spent years there. They even had games and specific itineraries dependent upon interest that you could set up with the scanner. There were displays on everything from telephones to undergarments for the last few centuries. Well, the telephones only covered about 100 years, the underwear was older. The special exhibit was on Luzern's lake and tourism there. There were loads of old swimsuits to look out and a large collection of beach towels. I didn't really get the whole thing. It was pretty weird.

After stopping by the town hall for a picture I headed back to the train station. I passed the ride journaling. At the Zürich station I took a picture of the super sized football players that were hanging around. Stu had told me earlier that it was quite eerie when they were being put together because there were body parts lying around everywhere.

That night for dinner Stu was staying in with work so I headed out to a Jamaican place. The people were friendly and the food was good. It also gave me a lot of time to write and finally get pretty much caught up.

Back at Stu's place I fell asleep reading a lot earlier than I had intended. But what could I say, it had been a fabulous, but long, day.

Regrets I have a Few

Day 104

Stu and I were up early and just sort of looked at each other across his apartment to confirm that we both felt positively awful. I tried to force a speedy recovery with advil, water, and reading, and Stu watched movies for a cure.

Eventually the pills kicked in and the hangover went away. I also convinced myself that I would be irritated later on if I wasted the entire day just laying in bed. Around noon I got my act together and headed to St. Gallen.

St. Gallen is a cute little medieval Swiss town. After studying the map over Strarbucks I headed to the cloisters. There was some sort of event going on and most of it seemed shut. Or perhaps I just couldn't figure out how to get into the church.

Instead I headed to the beer bottle museum at the Schutzengarten Museum. The hundreds of bottles from the last couple of years were interesting, but they certainly did nothing for my almost gone hangover.

I decided that learning some local history would help me out and headed to the relevant museum. As it turned out it was a Monday and the museum was closed. Bummer.

My map told me that the funicular was the best route to the Mulener Gorge. I went up it thinking I would have a fabulous view, but instead I just got a concrete wall. On the way back down I met a friendly German guy named Julius. We ended up getting some ice cream and walking to the train station together. He was also in the area for a day trip.

By the time I had gotten back to Zürich and walked to Stu's place I was in desperate need of a shower. It was hot out. When I was ready to go we headed out to a local place to meet up with Stu's friend Pamela and fellow Bootie Madhu. Pamela wasn't able to stay long, however, she was moving back to Hong Kong and offered to let me crash with her when I get there. It will be really nice to see a familiar face at that point.

Madhu was a lot of fun and the three of us ended up at a pizza tent set up for the Eurocup. There weren't any games going on though and it was pretty quiet. When the tent shut down, not very late, we took the tram together to the train station and then parted ways with Madhu.

After my seemingly long but really kinda uneventful day I was definitely glad to be getting some sleep.

Football and Beer

Day 103
I was excited to be heading to Zürich for a bunch of reasons. I was getting tired of Italy and was ready for a new country. Over a few different trips I have spent about 7 weeks in Italy. I have seen a lot of this country, even though I know there is still a lot more to see. I was just really ready for a change and something that would not be so very familiar. Secondly, I really liked Zürich the last time I was there. And, most importantly, I was looking forward to seeing Stu. Stu is a Bootsnall friend who also met up with me way back when I started this trip in London.

The train ride was easy, I read and slept for most of it. There was basically no border control, and once again I didn't get any new stamps in my passport. That's fine by me, the less stamps, the slower it will fill up and more pages will be needed.

Stu even met me at the train station. This was the first time during this trip that someone was somewhere waiting for me that I already knew. It was kinda nice. What was also nice was Stu's shower. It had lots of water pressure and hot water, things that I hadn't had in quite some time.

Once I had cleaned up and dropped off all of my things we Stu and I went to an American pizza place called Uncle Sam's for lunch. The pizza was good, and the American theme was a nice taste of home. Afterwards Stu gave me a walking tour of Zürich, even though it was familiar, it was nice to have a local (Stu has been in Zürich for about 7 years) show me around.

I've mentioned before that the Eurocup is going on. I've seen a ton of games at this point. The series was being hosted by Austria and Switzerland. Zürich was set up for a huge party and as there was a game on that night we decided to check it out. We also grabbed a couple of beers to walk around with. As I am American and this is allowed basically no where in the States it is quite a novelty for me to do this.

First we checked out the lake, the people swimming, and a park. We both watched the game out of the corner of our eyes while we caught up over beers.

Around 10 pm we realized that the alcohol consumption was a bit more tan either of us would have liked. We headed back to Stu's place and spent a bit of time chatting on his balcony before heading to sleep.