During the train ride, I was sitting next to these 2 girls who were travelling to Luzern to meet their relative. What caught my attention was the way they dressed up, like the character Heidi, with plaits and wearing traditional Swiss clothing, something which is very rare to come by these days. And soon we were talking with them asking me a lot of... kiddy interesting questions.
Luzern
Wasserturm und Kapellebrücke - Watertower (on the left) and the Chapel Bridge: the oldest wooden bridge in Europe, constructed in 1333.
As you walk through the Kapellebrücke, you would see these paintings on the roof of the bridge which tell the story of Luzern. However, some of the paintings were being destroyed together with a majority of the bridge in a 1993 fire. Although the bridge were rebuilt, the damaged paintings were taken down.
Another highlight is to walk along the remaining fortified wall, and climb up the watch towers. From there a top view of the town can be seen, like the picture below. The mountain in the background is the Mt Pilatus, with an elevation of 2132m, overlooking the Luzern.
The Löwendenkmal (Lion Memorial)
This memorial is actually dedicated to the Swiss guards who were killed in 1792 during the period of the French Revolution. On August 10 1792, the Tuileries Palace in Paris were stormed by the Parisian mod in a bid to hunt for the royal family, in particular Marie Antionette. The Swiss guards (who have been mecenaries for centuries) who were at the palace defending were being slaughered while the royal family managed to escape through the gardens. Notice that there is a spear through the lion and it looks as though it is dying.
Luzern, although small a tour of the important sights can be completed in like 2 to 3 hours, is still nonetheless important because of tourism as well as its central location. From Luzern, many other Swiss towns, especially those in the south can be easily reached.
Zürich - zu (too) rich?
Needless to say, this is a German-speaking Canton of Switzerland. Actually many people who have been to Zürich said that Zürich is a city and there's really nothing to see. Even the SEP students who are there complained that its quite boring and the things there are really expensive. I fully agree with them, but since Zürich was along the way back into Germany that evening, I decided to see how boring it is.
The Bahnhofstraße is the street where for the first time I saw so many Swiss banks concentrated together (something like Robinson Road in Raffles Place). And popular rumour says that underneath in the basements of the bank vault stores huge amount of gold and silver, like the UBS bank building below:
Zürich Lakes
That's it for the Schweiz. If I were to return to the Schweiz again, I would definitely want to go to Interlaken once again. By the way the tourism board actually recognises frequent visitors who return to Interlaken over the past 20 years. You'd just need to go to the tourism office and tell them and they will give you some form of recognition. How they verify, I have no idea myself. Anyway, besides Interlaken, I would want to also visit places like Zug, Brienz as well as Lugano. And hopefully meet interesting experiences along the way, like meeting the 2 Heidis. Who knows, they would have grown up by then.
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