Luzern in the Mist

I had the chance to pay back my friend Li this weekend for hosting me in Bologna. She and her friend Hannah visited me in Switzerland, and for their first day here, I took them to Luzern. The train ride took a little over three hours. There were options that took about ten minutes shorter, but we figured a direct train would be more comfortable. As we rode, we realised that the weather forecast for the weekend was probably mistaken and it would not turn sunny as the day went on. Rather, the entire day would continue in a haze.

We arrived in Luzern at twelve and immediately proceeded to get lunch. Li found a Thai place on google maps, and we were lucky that several people were just leaving it as we decided to take a seat at a large table. Li immediately started making conversation with a man seated at the far end, and before anyone’s better judgement could step in, we had made a travel companion for the day.

Fortunately, the man we picked up at the restaurant was not a mass murderer, and even if he was, he did not succeed in murdering us. Instead, he turned out to be an IT specialist from Zug, showing a fair bit of knowledge about the local sights in Luzern. For the rest of the day, he proceeded to guide us around the historical centre and humoured Li’s consumerist needs: we stopped for some hot chocolate as well as a Zug cherry cake – a dizzyingly alcohol-soaked sponge cake carrying little to no cherry flavour at all.

We made a loop around the centre, beginning at the 17^th century Hofkirche Sankt Leodegar with its beautiful golden transept chapels. Walking north, we arrived at the deceptively massive Lion Monument, a rock carving dedicated to the Swiss guards killed during the French Revolution. Mark Twain waxed particularly elegiac about this relief in his work A Tramp Abroad, writing “his size is colossal, his attitude is noble,” and a lot more about how forlorn the lion looks.

Climbing upwards, we walked along the city walls and their needle-like towers, which were closed to the public due to the slippery conditions. This did not matter much, as we spent most of our time persuading Li to put down a cat she had picked up on the way. Crossing the bridge, we then rode the cable car up to Château Gütsch, which offers a good view of Luzern’s historic centre and walls. On a good day, one can also see the mountain peaks and the far shores of Lake Lucerne (or, as it is known in German, the Vierwaldstättersee). Given our luck, we were grateful that we could see anything at all.

After descending from the chateau once more, we spent our time walking around the historic centre and the covered bridges. We were told that a significant portion of the Chapel Bridge burned down some decades ago, taking down with it a series of irreplaceable paintings. Though some do remain within certain sections of the Chapel Bridge, a similar series still stands on the triangular panels between the ceiling beams of the Spreuerbrücke.

Unfortunately, we found the Jesuit Church closed for an annual light festival, which was also set to take place around several other historic sights. I do not think our wait was worth it. The light show in the old town was essentially a sponsored advertisement by some local company, and the rest were just unintelligible. After gaping in the cold for a few minutes, we all walked to the train station and parted ways with our guide without ever learning his name.