day tripper

So today I went to the alps. Tanja and Michael came up with this great idea: we could take a train to another town and catch the ferry (the ferry and the train station are next door to each other, conveniently), take the ferry through a section of the alps to Lucerne, walk around Lucerne, and then take the train back to Zurich. Then we planned to have a rooftop barbecue for dinner back in Zurich with our friend Nicola.

Being -- you know -- foreign, I wondered if it was possible to do so many things in one day, and without a lot of hassle, and still have time to do a roofdeck barbecue that night. Indeed, there was no hassle at all. We walked in the morning to the train station in Zurich at a leisurely hour -- 10 a.m. -- and I bought a ticket for the whole day: the train (both ways) and the 3-hour boat ride, which came to 82 Swiss francs. And after a day of adventuring, we were back in time in Zurich to make a barbecue on the rooftop, and we did.

Now, mind you, if in the USA there was such an offering like this: you know, a comfortable train, a 3-hour ferry ride, alps, medieval town to walk through at the end, etc. -- it would be a huge hassle. You'd probably have to order tickets through Ticketmaster weeks in advance, stand in long queues for hours, drive in horrible traffic, go through a metal detector, get served hot dogs and stale pizza on the ferry if you were lucky, and then be greeted by horrible knick knack shops and beggars and people dressed like Heidi trying to sell you plastic Matterhorns. But it wasn't like this at all. It was really, really cool...

The ferry was indeed a 3-hour drive on Lake Lucerne, and through the alps, or some of them. It wasn't crowded....there were plenty of people, but not a mob scene. And the ferry stopped many times along the way in tiny alpine villages where people hopped on board to go to Lucerne. Each of these villages had features that made them seem really interesting to visit: you could ferry to them, or train to them for an evening (dinner) or a longer visit in a hotel on the lake. And these hotels looked splendid in a very elegant and distinctly European kind of way. These kinds of getaways are entirely do-able if you live there.

In addition, the ferry had a restaurant where we were served wine and salad and strong cheeses and ham and so on...it was affordable and good. There was an outside deck where we could look at the scenery, or we could sit inside. It was a great day for someone like me, who likes trains and boats.

Then we arrived in Lucerne. I'd never been there before. Villages like this must have been the inspiration for Walt Disney, who made a fortune from building fake castles.

Totally cool city. We walked across the ancient wooden bridge and along the lake front, where --like any European city with a waterfront-- restaurant after restaurant served people at tables outside, right along the water. After we walked through old town for awhile, we walked uphill to the towers of the old city wall, and climbed inside one of them to look at the landscape of Lucerne. Then we went back to the waterfront, had a drink at one of the cafes outside, hopped on the 5:10 train back to Zurich, and we were back at the apartment in time to barbecue and eat salad and wine on the roof with Nicola. It was a cool day...very special for me, but normal, I think, if you live here.