To celebrate the Lucerne festival's anniversary, they play Happy Birthday To You in half a dozen styles. (Click on the centre of the left video.) The right video shows another comedy with two musicians fighting for attention.
Map of Switzerland from Wikitravel
The West side has a border with France and if you speak French you'll be able to read the French signs. However, Swiss French sounds strange. I kept getting baffled by bilingual signs showing unfamiliar words, which were not French, German or Italian but their other, fourth language Romansch (which is not one language but several dialects).
On one of my trips I flew into Zurich. From there we caught a very clean modern train to Lucerne.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL & COVERED BRIDGE
Why Visit The Lucerne Music Festival? We didn't go for the festival, although I later learned Lucerne won an award in 2017 for its festival.
Lucerne is also one of the most attractive little riverside towns. It has two antique bridges with paintings on the inside. We stayed in a boutique hotel and whilst my husband was working I spent a day walking along to the covered bridge, over to the old town and back.
The bridge has paintings all the way along with captions underneath. If you want to read, and line up behind others, take photos of it and yourself with it and then help somebody else take a photo, you can easily lose an hour. When I was there it was a busy time, coach groups with guides in three languages stopping for a description of every painting. to cut the crush, the bridge was made one way, so I had to wait until it was one way in my direction.
Then it's a walk along the river bank to the next covered bridge which has gruesome pictures which reminded me of paintings by Breugels of people suffering from the plaque and haunted by skeletal or devilish figures. I also walked up and down the sloping cobbled narrow streets of the old shops, window-shopping.
Our last sightseeing stop was driving around endlessly looking for a way to the lion low down on a wall. We finally found it, then hunted for a nearby parking place so I could jump out and take a photo. Not so special, but I was glad to have done it.
Problem
Lucerne has several festivals. The world has several music festivals. I am not into classical music concerts. I can get quite bored. However, I found this wonderful video on Youtube of the comic duo, Igudesman and Joo.
Is it worth visiting if you don't want to participate in the conerts? Why would it make you put Lucerne on a shortlist of places to visit?
Let's start with Switzerland as a whole.
Zurich's Art Gallery and Monet
We flew into Zurich and had a weekend there. The first day we saw the art gallery housing a giant Monet painting of the flowers under the bridge at his house in France. the pinning was on the far wall of an almost empty room. The art gallery guide told us that standing up close, which tried at first, you just see globs of different coloured paint. As you retreat the painting gradually comes into focus.
I also saw a Chagall or two, much smaller pantings, after the giant Monet. See the Chagall's first, the Monet last.
The next day we went to see the Chagall windows in the chapel of the cathedral. Chagall had retired. he went to the cathedral, just to take a look. Once he saw the chapel, so tall, he immediately imagined the three windows, each one in different colours. That is his style.
If you sit and look at them for a long time, it's like meditating. At first I thought, 'Oh yes. Very nice, but why such a fuss about how wonderful they are? Just tall bits of glass.'
But eventually a feeling of peace crept over me and relaxed me.
The station
We went early to the station. The street was one way and we ended walking part of the distance from our hotel, dragging our suitcases. Fortunately we knew the trains run on time, like Swiss watches. So we were still early. A ukulele band was performing in the station.
The Modern Train
Then we took the ultra-modern train. The seats folded in two directions so you could face either way. The carriage had a rack with hangers, so you could take off your coat or jacket and hang it up as if you were in a theatre.
Switzerland's major tourist cities are:
Geneva - on Lake Geneva. on the West near France. going clockwise around the lake you come to Lausanne, Switzerland's wine country.
Lucerne - (Luzern in German, Lucerna in Italian)
on the mouth of the river and lake with two covered bridges leading from the new city to the old city.
Lucerne Events Dates:
Lozärner Fasnacht.
Zurich:
Switzerland's largest city has 50 museums. Chagall windows are in the church. Modern Art Museum.
Huge, wide Monet in art gallery.
Airport, with connections on Swiss airline (Star Alliance member, handy for us as we collect loyalty points, airmails from Singapore Airlines); plus train links to Lucerne.
Shopping and Riverside Restaurants
We walked along the riverside street which is on the cliffside offering views from the buildings on the bank side. Restaurants on the riverside were the most expensive.
Wh is fondue so expensive. It's only cheese melting with bits of bread? To ams a proper fondue you need two or three types of cheese, maybe emmentaler, gruyère and reblochon, plus garlic, white wine or kirsch.
Fondue and Cheese
We were looking for a place serving cheese fondue. Failing that, a boutique selling Emmentaler. We saw windows with cheese and Swiss cow bells.
What do you cut the cheese with if the restaurants are too expensive or closed or full? You have to buy a Swiss army knife. We popped into a shop which had a display and captions like a small museum. I didn't want the genuine army style knives with covers in camouflage grey. Besides, they did not have the vital corkscrew because the army on duty is not supposed to be drinking. I fancied the jolly red ones with the white cross - and the helpful corkscrew.
Story
On another business trip we took the train down to Milan in Northern Italy and watched ate evening's opera at La Scala opera house. We had booked the theatre tickets on line. Then we had a late night snack. Finally we caught the train back gone midnight.
Trains From Switzerland To Italy
Getting the right ticket for our train and the time and price we were travelling was more complicated. There was a long queue. We needed change in another currency. Did we get one through ticket? No the tickets went half way. You had to buy the second half separately. From a different machines.
When we got on the train it was dark and we wanted to sleep. But we needed to show the ticket to two sets of border controls each way, ticket inspectors who walked down the train, speaking two different languages.
After one ticket inspector passed, we curled up to go to sleep. We were woken by another man, and could not understand the problem, until another passenger helped. The ticket inspector said in Romansch that he wanted the ticket for his half of the journey. The passenger explained that, by translating what the ticket inspector's said in Italian or to his girl friend. She explained it to me in French. I explained it to my husband in English. My husband asked if we had the right tickets. Off we all went again with our impromptu united nations translation service.
On that trip we went to A l p r o s e, the Swiss chocolate factory, with a museum, free tastes and lots of different kings of chocolate to buy. The milk which is turned into cheese is also an ingredient of chocolate. We posed outside the factory for a selfie beside a statue of a cow.
Zurich Events Dates:
August Zurich street parade - which attracts a million visitors.
August Theatre Festival - Zürcher Theatre Spektakel.
Bern
The capital city has an old town with arcades.
Basel
This medieval city on the Rhine has an art fair; and the February Carnival, Basler Fasnacht.
Swiss Cheese in the USA
If you can't get to the Swiss festivals in Switzerland, you might catch one in the USA:
Sponsored by the Ohio Swiss Cheese Association, Sugarcreek Business Association, and the Village of Sugarcreek, The Swiss Festival is held the 4th weekend after labor day each year. (2017: It was September 29-30) 2018 ...
If you pass a Swiss hotel in New York, consider eating at their restaurant, or booking a hotel room. You might be offered a little piece of wrapped Swiss chocolate.Swiss Hotels:
https://www.booking.com/country/ch.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/festival-travel-checklist
Official Swiss Tourist Board:
https://www.swiss.com/gb/en
Switzerland - Wikitravel:
My Previous Post on Chocolate:travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com/2014/09/chocolate-guide-worldwide
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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