Jun
11

Alexa Abroad! Part 3C.

MONDAY:

It was grey and drizzly when we arrived in Luzern. Our first stop was the lion pictured in the picture portion, rather depressingly called “THE DYING LION OF LUZERN.” Mark Twain called it “the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world,” a memorial to Swiss mercenaries who died at the Tuileries in 1792. As if the stabbed, dying lion in a hole weren’t melancholy enough, listen to this: the Swiss guard had been hired to protect the family of Louis XVI, but what the 1000 Swiss soldiers—mostly rural young men with limited economic options—did not know as they refused to step aside for an angry mob of 30,000, was that the royal family? Had already fled.
760 of the 1000 soldiers were killed, protecting nothing. The inscription “HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI” means “To the loyalty and courage of the Swiss.”

On that immensely cheering note, we went for lunch. It was SPARGEL FEST! while I was in Switzerland—in other words, asparagus was in season, and virtually every restaurant was supplementing their regular menu with a special SPARGEL KARTE! (asparagus menu) featuring dishes featuring The Verdant Spear, as it is called. Or will be, if I have anything to do with it. There is something so charming about the verve and excitement with which various foodstuffs are greeted as they come into season in Switzerland. Spargel is not the only vegetable to garner such fanfare. (I believe there is some sort of mushroom brouhaha? Mother?)

We ate outside on the patio of a lovely hotel, watching pedestrians go by. My mother and I pointed people out to each other and discussed their outfits, and whether those outfits would look good on us. This is something of a hobby of ours, and it gives us an opportunity to nip any bad ideas in the bud. Ideas like “Maybe skinny jeans aren’t so awful after all!” (me) or “Scarves! More scarves!” (her).

We shared an order of the spargel ravioli to start (also pictured in the picture portion) and then we each ordered fish, ultimately trading plates because we each preferred the other. The fish was lovely, perfectly cooked, accompanied by perfectly salted potatoes. But the highlight of the meal came at the end, when we ordered what we thought was iced coffee and received instead dishes of the lightest, richest, fluffiest coffee ice cream you have tasted, and there was nothing Swiss about the exclamations that escaped my lips after that first bite. I am pretty sure the Swiss don’t make noises like that in even the most intimate of circumstances.

{Next up was shopping, but I will save that part, because I really should take a picture of the much-contested shoes to show you first.}

My mother took a picture of me by the water, water I nearly backed into in the process, and we looked at the swans before walking across a wooden bridge rimmed with flower boxes and decorated with paintings. The bridge was built in 1333. Websites point out that much of the bridge was destroyed in a fire in 1993, and so some of it is in fact a reproduction. But that “some of it” means that some of it is not.

Have you ever heard anything so preposterous? THIRTEEN THIRTY THREE. It is a WOODEN BRIDGE. Shouldn’t it have rotted under my feet, spilling me precipitously into the murky (that’s called poetic license—Swiss lakes are not murky) depths? Women may once have crossed that same bridge wearing those cone-with-a-scarf-fluttering-from-it medieval hats.

I live in America. The Midwest, in fact, where nothing dates earlier than the mid 1800s. You Europeans may be used to spires and parapets and things that existed before Queen Victoria was even a glimmer in her great great great great great grandfather’s eye, but to me, it all seems impossible. So many of the buildings in Luzern are embellished—painted with murals, adorned with intricate gilt scrollwork. The views of the mountains across the lake are spectacular. When I look at my pictures, it is hard to believe they were taken in a real place, not on a stage set somewhere.

The next time I am there, I plan to take one of the boat rides around Lake Luzern. I will drink wine and play cards with my mother as we are ferried scenically along, and I am told there are french fries, on these boats.

You see what I mean? Impossible.

TO BE CONTINUED…

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |