In this blog post I'm going to both describe my final few days of travelling through Switzerland as well share some additional facts on the history, geography, and culture I learned along the way. And I'll conclude by offering my final thoughts on this country I've very much enjoyed (no make that loved) exploring.
So, I left off last time in Grindelwald after my great day among the mountain giants at Jungfraujoch. I drove back into Interlaken where I fueled up the car with diesel and upon leaving the gas station promptly backed into a large rock denting and scratching up the paintwork (on the car that is – the rock was just fine). I drove on around Thunsee (Lake Thun) to the City of Thun with the setting sun making the whole scene look worthy of a scenic calendar. Leaving the main highway I turned north along little country roads finding another gem of a camping spot in a forest beside a hiking club hut. Next morning it was about an hour's drive into Lucerne. The trusty and increasingly dog-eared Lonely Planet guidebook describes it thus:
Recipe for a gorgeous Swiss City: Take a cobalt lake ringed by mountains of myth, add a well-preserved medieval Old Town, then sprinkle with covered bridges, sunny plazas, candy-colored houses, and waterfront promenades.
I was about to find out that this is a pretty accurate description of this wonderful city of just 60,000. Parking the car in a huge underground complex on the edge of the city I immediately happened upon a camping store when emerging to surface. This was most fortunate as I'd run of gas for my camp stove that very morning (resulting in barely drinkable lukewarm coffee) and discovered that my spare blue canister is of the wrong kind to fit my stove. With new gaz (that is the brand name not another typing error from me) bought I wandered off into town and came across a huge market. A real odd mix of junk and expensive antiques. I really wanted a genuine old Swiss cow bell, but the cheapest small ones were about 50 CHf (Swiss francs are today roughly equal to US dollars) which, although tempted, I couldn't quite manage. So I made do with a photo. But I did indulge with a "flashback to the 80's" purchase of a couple of CDs from the Pet Shop Boys, so I'll be jamming in yodeling country.
On into the heart of the city where there was some sort of farm-comes-to-town festival happening with lots of animals, demonstrations, and samples of local produce. I bought a great sausage and dense but tasty piece of bread for lunch – and it came with an additional 2.00 deposit for the paper plate. I was given a little plastic token that when I took my dirty used plate back I was refunded with my 2 franc coin – I'd love to know what it was all about and why.
Lucerne lunch – with my 2 CHf refund token for a paper plate!
Having mentioned the Swiss currency twice in the above paragraphs I'd thought I tell you some more about their money by way of a little history. You may wonder why their currency is written as CHf and not Sf (for Swiss Francs). Well, the abbreviation for Switzerland is CH – here is why. When the Romans rolled into what is now Switzerland they found a bunch of Celtic tribes including the Helvetii. Having conquered all the locals, they rubbed salt into the wounds by calling the territory Helvetia. After the decline of the Roman Empire and almost a thousand years with Frankish rulers from Germany and the Burgundians from France (laying the foundation for the division between French and German speaking Switzerland that exists today), the self-ruling Cantons (like states but more the size of large US counties) began to join in a Swiss Confederation. Rather than giving preference to either of the dominate languages they used the Latin - Confoederatio Helvetica. So it is CH that you see of car license plates, in internet addresses, and on their currency. Swiss francs are divided into 100 centimes (which just to keep you on your toes are called Rappen in German speaking Switzerland). They have a 5 CHf coin which is huge and heavy and a tiny small coin which is 50 centimes (with the 20, 10, and 5 centime coins being larger than the 50 – go figure). Notes come in 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 1,000. Being a nation famous for banking, it seems that big notes are preferred. My 200 CHf request from an ATM gave me just one bill. But it was no problem to change it – in fact the women in front of me at the camping store bought a 50 CHF jacket and paid with a 1,000 bill.
Ok – enough of history and foreign finance for a while. Lucerne is famous for some interesting sites and I now visited the three that sounded the most intriguing to me. First stop was the Löwendenkmal (The Lion Monument). This amazing sculpture commemorates the some 800 or so Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution. The French King relied on a regiment of soldiers from neutral Switzerland for his protection. On the 10th of August 1792 the Revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace where the King and family were living. After fighting off the Revolutionaries the King ordered the Guards to stand down. Ever loyal they did, and 600 were instantly killed that day and other 200 later in prison (mostly by guillotine). One officer of the Guards happened to be home on leave in Lucerne during this time, and thus survived. He committed his life to creating a memorial for his fallen colleagues and began to collect money from local citizens. After 20 years of fund raising he commissioned the monument of a lion dying of wounds in a cave, design by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and carved during 1820-21 in an old disused standstone quarry not far from the edge of the city.
The Löwendenkmal (The Lion Monument).
The monument is dedicated Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti ("To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss") and these are the words you see above the den. The dying lion is portrayed impaled by a spear, covering a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis, symbol of the French monarchy; beside him is another shield bearing the coat of arms of Switzerland. The inscription below the sculpture lists the names of the officers. When visiting as part of his around the world tour, Mark Twain proclaimed this to be: "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world." It is hard not to agree.
Next stop – the famous bridges crossing the Reuss River. The most famous is the Chapel Bridge (Kapellbrücke), a 204 m (670 ft) long wooden bridge originally built in 1333, although much of it had to be replaced after a fire on August 18, 1993. Partway across, the bridge runs by the octagonal Water Tower (Wasserturm), a fortification from the 13th century. This tower has previously served as a prison, torture chamber, watchtower, and treasury. Inside the roof of the bridge are a series of paintings from the 17th century depicting events from Luzern's history. The tower and the bridge are Lucerne's trademark and form one of the most photographed monuments in the country.
The Kapellbrücke Bridge, Lucerne's most famous landmark.
A little down river was the Spreuerbrücke or Mill Bridge which alos zigzags across the Reuss. Constructed in 1408, it is now the oldest original covered bridge in Europe. It features a series of medieval-style 17th Century paintings of scenes related to the plague by Kaspar Meglinger. The entire series is titled Dance of Death. With each scene portraying various conditions of men and women infected with the plague: priests and warriors, princes and men of learning, the young bride, the devout nun, the lawmaker, the hunter, the miller, even the artist himself, all depicted at the mercy of The Black Death, with his mocking smile.
Painting of the plague on Lucerne's 1408 Spreuerbrücke or Mill Bridge.
I then carried on with the art theme – although this one a little less macabre. The Sammlung Rosengart is regarded as Lucerne's blockbuster cultural attraction. The Rosengart Collection was originally the private art collection of father-and-daughter Siegfried and Angela Rosengart. The collection, housed in an old Swiss National Bank building, comprises well over 200 works by 23 different "Classic Modernist" artists. These include 125 works by Paul Klee and some 50 by Pablo Picasso. Other artists represented include (in alphabetical order) Bonnard, Braque, Cézanne, Chagall, Dufy, Kandinsky, Laurens, Léger, Marini, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rouault, Seurat, Signac, Soutine, Utrillo, and Vuillard. Angela Rosengart was a close personal friend of Picasso having modeled for several of his paintings. As close friends and among the few exclusive dealers in his work, they often had 'first pick' of his outstanding paintings and sculptures. Complementing the collection were over 200 photographs by David Duncan of the last 17 years of Picasso's life with his family in their home near Cannes, France. This was an incredible collection, and unlike many of the other more famous European art museums, it was about the right size so you fully appreciate the works rather than feeling over-whelmed.
Leaving mid afternoon I drove around the northern shore of Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne) to the town of Kussnacht ,where a house beside the lake was flying a New Zealand All Blacks flag. Then to Schwyz – home to the original copy and most important document in Swiss history, the Charter of Federation signed by the Cantons of Nidwalden, Uri, and Schwyz in 1291. On the Hauptplatz (main town square) the Rathaus (town hall) had amazing murals painted in the 1800s depicting scenes from the Battle of Mortgarten.
Town Hall with its amazing murals in Schwyz.
Schwyz, a town of 14,000, is also home to Victorinox – maker of the Swiss Army pocketknife. Click the link to find out how the company got its unique name. I drove past the sizeable factory on my way to Brunnen. This spectacular town is located at the junction of two lakes (Lucerne and Uri). Paralleling an incredibly scenic road I headed onto Aldorf, where William Tell is reputed to have shot the apple of the head of his son.
Statue to William Tell in Aldorf.
Then a 50km torturous route up the wind-swept Klausenpass at 1,948 meters followed by a steep drop down to the towns of Linthal, Rüti, and Glarus. The last being interesting in that two-thirds of the town was burnt in a disastrous fire in 1861. The re-building left a mixed legacy of graceful mid 19th century buildings with the older very solid timber rural houses still showing some of their fire scars. At nearby Näfels I turned to follow the shores of the Wallensee (Lake Wallen) stopping for the night at a great hotel in Filzbach. Unusually, the price of the room came with the evening meal and breakfast. I was the only person staying at the hotel overnight. At the beginning of my trip every hotel was close to full, then as we head into autumn and everyone else is back at work I am often one of very few tourists in many of the places I visit and stay.
Next morning off around the lake, through the funny sounding town of Flums, then over a bridge crossing the Rhein River and out of Switzerland for a few days. I'll do a separate post for my enjoyable three days in the little country of Liechtenstein.
So, picking up the Swiss story again on the morning of September 15th, I stopped to take a picture of the white painted line on the road that marks the border of Liechtenstein and Switzerland and then in a flash I was in Fläch. The next town after that was Maienfeld. Johanna Spyri (18827-1901) wrote the story of Heidi basing it in the countryside around the town. The locals even renamed a little village nearby Heididorf which does a roaring tourist trade on everything Heidi related (which is a little crazy when you consider she never lived there because she never existed). Through a town with the great sounding name of Bad Radaz, apparently a favorite holiday destination for Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.
I carried on through Chur, Domat, and Trin (which are also all rather cool names for towns I think). Then through the famous trio of ski towns (although increasingly well known for snowboarding with the Burton Open held each January) of Flims, Laax, and Falera. Next and more sizeable town was Ilanz and I arrived on cattle auction day – which was fun to watch for awhile.
Watching the cow auction in Ilanz.
I couldn't work out what language the locals were speaking, it wasn't on of the three commonly heard Italian, French, or German - it turned out to be Romansch. This language (from the Rhaeto-Romanic language family) is spoken by less than 1% of the Swiss population but since 1996 it has been recognized as an official national language which should play an important role in guaranteeing its preservation and promotion. Should you find yourself deep in these valleys of Graubünder Canton, the only place this language is spoken, then it might be helpful to know that hello is allegra.I now turned south and stopped my frequent breaks for photos and exploring as I had an important appointment to keep – and you know the Swiss, they tend to be punctual. In Lucerne I picked up a brochure of a hot pool complex that looked simply amazing. It is connected to a very expensive hotel and they offer accommodation and spa packages. They then release a select few day passes – for the following day, in a rather complicated reservation system needing a European mobile (cell phone) as I discovered. So, I had the helpful woman working at the Lichtenstein Youth Hostel make the call to inquire about a reservation for me when I got back from my hike. So right on time at a few minutes before 11 am I rolled into Vals.
To say this place was fantastic is not really doing it justice – in fact I don't really know what words to describe this incredible experience. In 1983, the village of Vals bought the Therme spa with the hotel: today the Hotel und Thermalbad AG company is 100 % owned by the Vals community. It was a fairly typical layout with several hot pools of different temperatures but the community wanted to upgrade the facility. The architect Peter Zumthor, from Haldenstein in Graubünden, was commissioned to build a new spa which was opened in 1996. The rectangular construction with stacked walls of Valser Quartzite quarried only two kilometers from the pools used 60,000 stone slabs to create a true work of art. Please do check out this website, click on the link at the top called "Spa" then look at the pictures of the various pools.
At 42 CHft was easily the most expensive swim I've ever had. But the whole ambiance of the place was magnificent. I stayed for 4 hours – emerging thoroughly relaxed and with extreme prune fingers. I began the rehydration process by consuming vast amounts of Valser water. This mineral water, from the same complex of springs that feed the pools, is bottled at a huge plant in the small town and you find it throughout Switzerland.
I retraced my route back to Domat, passing through many tunnels, including the amusing named Crap Sés Tunnel (crap means 'peak' in Romansch).
Then south to Thusis and shortly thereafter I tuned off the main road and found a great campsite beside a power station (the name of which was Kraftwerk Solis). Next morning up and over the Julier Pass (quite high at 2,284 meters/7,494 feet) and then down the other side and shortly into St. Moritz. Twice the host of the Winter Olympics (1928 and 1948) and annual host for summer and winter vacations of the rich and famous. I wandered around town amazed at the huge number of very high end shops (the full range of designer brands for all luxury goods were here). I bought a $125, 000 watch – just checking to see how carefully you are reading. It does make me wonder who goes on holiday and decides they will buy a new watch – at that amount of money! Looking in the real estate agents windows was equally amazing – houses in the 10 million CHf range were pretty common. My contribution to the local economy consisted of two postcards and a great poster for 3 CHf, then I headed on my way. Then through three amusing named towns; Zuoz, S-chanf, and Zernez.
In a nation that I feel almost all looks like a national park I was amazed to find that there is only National Park – called "Swiss National Park". I paid a brief visit to the information center in the town of Zernez to peruse the exhibits. The park was created in 1914 and spans 172 sq kms.
Following a vintage car out of Switzerland and into Italy.
So, my time in Switzerland has come to an end. The drop-dead gorgeous scenery never gets old. I felt at times as if I was driving through the scene on the lid of a box of Swiss chocolates. The people I meet were nice – quite reserved but still friendly, helpful, and genuinely glad that you were there to see their country that they obviously love. I will have to think about returning to ski these magnificent mountains – the size and variety of resorts, and even the smaller ski areas, is mind boggling. It was also interesting to see where alpine tourism was born, and with more than 200 years practice, the mountain towns have catering to international visitors down to a science. But, I believe that to understand a place, its history, culture, and people, then you have to look to the land. And Switzerland with her verdant valleys and snowy peaks, raging rivers and tranquil lakes, deep forests and quaint villages is an amazing land.
One final interesting antidote. In the German speaking part of the country the way they say thank you is interesting – and provides another glimpse at the Swiss way of doing things. I had my German phrase book but what people would say to me was not in there. Then, in Lucerne a bought a great little book called the Xenophobes guide to the Swiss. This series of little books are useful, interesting, but mostly amusing (The Guide to the Kiwis makes for fun reading!). It explains that for the majority of the country German is the dominant language. However, they speak a version or dialect known as Schwizerdütsch, or Schwyzertütsch. It is a spoken language only and for writing they use High German (Swiss German is reportedly as different to High German as Dutch is). So, when saying thank you, rather than danke, (thanks) which they think is too German, the Swiss say merci (French for thanks). But then to avoid being mistaken for French speakers they add very much in German. However, it is not the High German vielmals, but rather the Swiss-German version without an 's'. As the Xenophopes guide states; "The result is very odd, very bilingual, and very Swiss."
So, merci vielmal Swizerland for an incredible adventure.
Great site. A lot of useful information here. I’m sending it to some friends! I really like this!
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