Couple of Guys with a Map: Lucerne our minds!

The Snores

The night before departing for Lucerne we witnessed a rare feat of human strength, determination, and fortitude. No, not Lebron James’s legendary performance, cementing him amongst the best in NBA history. No, this was courtesy of our hostel roommate who put on a sleep apnea display unlike any before him. His snores were deep, thorough, and almost surgical in timing. As I lay awake on my top bunk 20 feet away, I took note of the three intervals of snoring progression:

1) The Ascent: His inhalation was your standard snore. A long, roaring inspiration with reverberations across the room.

2) The Machine Gun: This was unique. At the very end of the ascent he forced in some extra oxygen and forced out some extra sound with an interval of snorts that sounded, as titled, like a machine gun. It was terrifying, yet impressive.

3) The Descent: This was applause-worthy, because I thought he stopped breathing after each machine gun phase. But in an act of pure resilience, he forced out some sort of moan, reminiscent of a lion who had been shot, only to reset back to The Ascent phase.

Becca tried coughing from the bunk below to startle him. I got up and made some noise to get him out of his zone. Nothing worked. He was unstoppable – he was the Lebron of snoring.

So three hours of sleep later, we awoke at 615 to catch our trains from Fuessen to Buchloe to Zurich to Lucerne, Switzerland. The forecast was overcast with rain all day, again, but thankfully European weathermen are the worst in the world and were wrong again, as it drizzled for about 30 minutes. That, or this trip has been blessed by the lord. Things seem to keep going our way and we aren’t sure what we did to deserve that, but we’ll keep stopping in every church we see just to be sure.

Tourists versus Swans

We made the walk to famous Chapel Bridge, and were nearly trampled by tourists and geese. It’s hard to determine which group is more aggressive between the bloodthirsty photo-crazed tourist groups or the bread-hungry oversized swans. Both animals are willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want. Neither group is ever satisfied. The swans in Hohenschwangau almost bit Becca’s hand off, the swans in Lucerne almost bit each others heads off if it meant more bread. The tourists at Neuschwanstein Castle were relentless, the tourists here took more selfies than I previously imagined was possible. One lady was taking selfies next to some nondescript neighborhood, and asked Becca to take a picture. She then asked for a few more, and then a few more, instructing her to get down on her knees (not kidding, see below) in order to get the ideal shot. Another, we watched video tape the arrival of a city bus which he never got on. Another next to us right now has video taped almost all of the first hour of this train. 75% has been trees. But to his credit, the other 25% has been breathtaking.

The bread swarms do provide some nice pictures!

MY GOD

The Town

Breathtaking is probably the best way to describe Lucerne. It’s a town of 80,000 tucked away in the alps along Lake Lucerne, and hasn’t completely fallen victim to industrialization so it maintains its colorful ‘cuteness.’ Therefore, Becca says it’s the most beautiful place it has ever been. On day 1 we walked the entire town, walking from Chapel Bridge which leads to Jesuitenplatz (shout out to the Jesuits!), stumbled upon a wall built as fortification in the 1300s, and with a little exploring that we didn’t know was possible, spontaneously ended up on top of an archer’s tower, outside striking range from all other tourists, overlooking the city and the lake with the alps as a convenient backdrop. This trip is blessed.

We infiltrated their defenses

The archers had a pretty nice view!

From there, we made it to the other side of town to the Old Town, ate “Gourmet Pretzels” for dinner along the river, acted like big rollers so Becca could use the bathroom for the 45^th time, this time within a casino, and walked the coast of the lake, which I was convinced was an ocean. We don’t have these things in Omaha. All of the little streets were colorful and quaint, exactly as one might expect in a Swiss Alps town. Every apartment must have a mandated “hang flowers from your balcony or get evicted policy,” which adds to the old town character, and further convinces Becca that this is her future home.

We were going to do a boat tour but I didn't want any Extrafahrten

The Creepy

We made our way across the Franciscan Bridge – a bridge leading across the Reuss river from one side of town to the other for the Franciscans to get to church using their own bridge…because God forbid they would have to use the Chapel bridge which leads to the Jesuit church a block away. Within these bridges are hung a series of paintings documenting the town history in German. I don’t know if this was another weird German joke that we didn’t understand, but by the end of both we were terrified. Instead of posing with a peace sign next to the paintings, I started looking at the paintings in a little more depth. One featured a meeting, another had a feast, the next ten were ALL PORTRAITS OF PEOPLE GETTING THEIR HEADS CUT OFF. We did NOT see that coming – time to leave!

Painting one: head still on body. Painting two: all limbs dismembered.

Painting 3: literally nobody has a head. Painting 4: skeleton uprising

But the Frianciscan, two bridges over, had a series featuring people with skeleton heads, which I’m assuming was the inspiration behind Game of Thrones’s White Walkers. The skeleton army then got into a battle of some sort, more heads were cut in half, and I’m not really sure what happened from there, but someone ended up with a halo and virtually everyone else died. HBO is going to need to build another Game of Thrones bridge to keep the fans coming back.

The Pool Bar

We finished the night at a Euro Cup watch party for the Switzerland vs Austria game. The party was within an old public swimming pool that was converted into a bar. I would say more about it, but that’s literally exactly what it was. We stood in a swimming pool. In Switzerland. Watching a Euro Cup game. Couldn't have predicted that one. Switzerland qualified for the round of 16 that evening, leading to a car horn celebration echoing through the town - quite the ending to a first day in Switzerland.

The Castle

On beautiful and sunny Day 2, we considered taking the Steepest Cogwheel Train in the World up to Mount Pilatus, the tallest mountain in the city. This was 106 Swiss Franks for the whole trip, about 120 US Dollars, though, and we figured we would rather do things like eat and tour castles for free. So we did that, to no disappointment.

Schloss Meggenhorn, which I believe was a castle constructed by my BC friend Megan Horn, is just as picture perfect as Neuschwanstein, even more perfectly groomed, just as well located, but just 1/20^th the size. It was constructed in the 1620s, and today serves as a picturesque, panoramic lookout point for tourists that want to get off the beaten path. We were actually scared at one point as we were the only ones around, and there were no selfie sticks poking my eyeballs. We hiked a trail from the castle to the docks to the top of the mountain, where a herd of herder-less sheep waited for us, until falling into single file formation and migrating elsewhere to go eat more grass and do more Switzerland sheep things.

The Food

Summary: $$$$$$$. But tasty German-influenced fare was our go-to, although the internationalization of Switzerland as a whole creates vast restaurant selections from just about every European country.

Gourmet pretzel = pretzel used as bread, with salmon, pickles, onions and horseradish

On day 1, I saw a castle halfway up a mountain just outside the city. “There. We need to go there.” So we did on day 2, found out it was a restaurant not too much more expensive than the $18 Whoppers in town, and obliged ourselves with a gourmet meal. Seeing as we had a complementary breakfast at the hostel, stole some additional free breakfast for our lunch on the hike, and hadn’t spent anything on tourism that day (I don’t know if you can tell how poor I feel here), we splurged just a bit on dinner on a cliff in a remodeled 1350s castle overlooking the Lucerne valley below.

'Is this table ok?' 'Uhhhhhhhhhhhh, yes.'

Probably the best date spot we’ve ever been, and I vowed to come be a Scoopista here if the doctor thing doesn’t work out. Might actually do it regardless.

Enjoy this photographic journey of the other spots we hit - next stop Interlaken for more of this natural wonderland.