Day 15: The Lion of Lucerne, Lao Food, Migros Rocks

Day 15


The shore of Lake Lucerne.

Colette had to work today, so I spent the day exploring downtown Lucerne. It's a nice and rather international place, full of tourists of all flavors and vintages. People come to Lucerne from every corner of the earth to gawk at extremely large mountains, take scenic boat rides, and purchase over-priced chocolates. Lucerne is extraordinarily clean and efficient, perhaps the quintessential terrifically functional Swiss city. I think it would be interesting to plant a piece of trash in an out of the way-area and see how long it takes to get picked up - I suspect not long.


An ornately painted building in downtown Lucerne.

Lucerne has tons of excellent clothing and design shops that I've never heard of before in my life. Everything was more expensive then I could possibly afford but impeccably designed. Lucerne also has an incredibly diverse selection of restaurants, which cater to the diverse groups of people that visit the city. There are at least seven Thai restaurants downtown, and as I have yet to see a Thai restaurant in the whole of Italy, that's a pretty amazing ratio. There's also Indian, Japanese, Mongolian BBQ, Spanish, Brazilian - so on and so on, many of them apparently pretty good. You can even go on a Fajita Cruise if you are so inclined, or suck down a cold Corona at an approximated Mexican cantina after sledding down the slopes of Pilatus. Don't get me wrong: I'm from California, for God's sake - fecund diversity makes me feel at home. I judge the livability of a place by the quantity of cuisines on offer, and Lucerne passes the test.



I went to the Vientiane-Thai-Lao-Vietnamese for lunch. If I don't have Thai or Vietnamese food at least once every two weeks, I get all wobbly. Had to get my fix, and Colette suggested it to me. I had a seafood salad and it was delicious, heavily spiced and really, really authentic. If this place was near me, I'd eat there all the time. I did have the interesting experience of ordering food in broken English-Lao-German.
























Paintings on the Kapellbrücke bridge.



Perhaps you would find this unimportant, but Lucerne has nice public bathrooms. I think you can assess the functionality and pleasantness of a place by its public bathrooms. Lucerne's are pretty much clean and do not give you the vague suspicion that someone has murdered a hooker within their confines, unlike those in other locales. (Beijing has bathrooms that are, I am pretty certain, portals into Hell - Dante would have been proud). New Orleans, wonderful place that it is, has exactly one public bathroom in the French Quarter. What do you think, is my equation of niceness correct?



After lunch, I realized that I hadn't visited Lucerne's famous Lion monument, immortalized by Mark Twain as one of the saddest things he had ever seen. I am always one to trust Mark Twain's assessments of value, and I decided to go find the place before heading back to Adligenswil and Colette's place. The Lion is located a ways back from the lake shore, and it was a bit of a wander to find the place, past many Das BeerenStein type restaurants and hotels.



But I found it, and was immediately struck by the beauty and size of the place: the lion is carved out of the rocks above a deep and clear pool, set in a grotto-like environment. It's very peaceful, and the tragic emotion of the lion itself is evident: I can understand why Twain responded so strongly to it. Designed by one Bertel Thorvaldsen, the lion was constructed in 1820, to commemorate the Swiss Guards slaughtered at the Tuileries Palace during the French Revolution. (Swiss Guards, it seems, get around). More then six hundred of the guards were killed during the confrontation, and hundreds more died under imprisonment or in the ensuing September Massacres - only one regiment of about 300 survived the violence, as they had been sent to Normandy. The dedication on the monument reads (in Latin) - Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti ("To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss). Insofar as symbolism goes, the shield leaning on the lion's flank is emblazoned with a fleur-de-lies, while the other shield bears the Swiss coat of arms. All of the officers who perished in the massacre are listed below. It is gorgeous and unexpected, and I highly suggest you visit it.

Next door is the Bourbaki Panorama, a gigantic 1821 painting - before the rise of the movies, tremendous and dramatic paintings were about as exciting as things got. The painting commemorates the sheltering of French troops in Switzerland during the Franco-Prussian war - per neutrality agreements, they could find safety in Switzerland as long as they put down their arms and agreed to stay in camps until the wars end. No, I didn't go in - they charge for admission, you know - but I've seen panoramas before and they are old-school fun. I did buy a passion-fruit chocolate bar in the gift shop so I like to feel I did my part to preserve the city's cultural heritage.

I decided to head back to the house, but I was going to do some shopping at the local Migros first, Switzerland's gigantic (Well, by Swiss standards) chain of supermarkets and grocery stores. Although they are not a small chain, I think they're great stores: lots of fresh, attractive produce and meats, helpful employees, impeccably clean, the whole nine yards. (Have you noticed that in Switzerland, the area of origin of all meat served at restaurants must be publicly posted? I like that a lot). I was going to make Colette some aloo gobi and some roast chicken, so I picked out the relevant vegetables (as well as some crazy cheap Italian cherries) and headed up the hill. All of Switzerlands children are currently addicted to Migro's animal-sticker collecting game- you get a packet of stickers to paste in a book for every 20 francs spent. If you want to befriend a Swiss child, give them some Migros animal stickers.

The curry came out pretty well, I think - aloo gobi is crazy easy to make - and we had a nice wine-accompanied dinner after Colette returned. The evening was spent watching movies in German, which I never tire of. Something is inherently funny about German-over dubbings.

Conclusion? I love Lucerne. Perhaps someday I will get a summer home there like George Clooney. That'll be the day...