Lucerne

On Saturday Patrick and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (a rarity around here, we've learned) and spent the day in Lucerne! The city is really beautiful, as apparently everyone else in the world already knows, since they were all there to enjoy it with us. The quaintness of the city is brought down a little by the hordes of tour groups and the bus parking lot they've installed in the middle of it all, but hey, who are we to complain? We used Lucerne as a jumping-off point to go into the "pre-Alps" and went up a mountain called Pilatus. It was a great day trip, and only an hour from Basel!

Here's some pictures from downtown Lucerne. We decided the riverfront area is slightly better than Basel's, but only because the river is narrower and there many more bridges spanning it so it's easier to keep going back and forth. Plus, there are cute pedestrian bridges, some of which are made from wood and are centuries old - or, they used to be centuries old, then burned down sometime in the 1990s and got rebuilt in the same style.

This is the view across the lake (the downtown spans the point where the lake narrows into a river):

This is a fun building from the old city:

Patrick with bridges:

Patrick needs more cowbell!

We took a train from Lucerne to the town of Alpnachstadt, which is at the base of Pilatus.

From there we took the steepest cog-wheel railway in the world up the side of the mountain, which took about a half hour and gave us some awesome views.

It was really cloudy when we got to the top, so we couldn't see much.

We went walking around on the hiking trails anyway, because it was still pretty cool to be up there.

I call that one "Window Without a View."

Look at that poor bastard! Hiking up the mountain when there's a perfectly nice railway to take!

All that walking can really get tiring. Good thing there are some handy chairs to nap in.

At the request of my mom, we purchased and ate a candy bar on the top of the mountain in a recreation of her ascent of the same mountain 40 years ago. We made sure to get a Swiss one.

Just as we were about to go back down, the clouds cleared! The view was pretty amazing.

We went down the opposite side of the mountain on a pair of gondolas. The first one was really large and they pack a ton of people into it, so that wasn't so fun.

Then we transfered to a way smaller gondola in this mini town.

We got to travel the rest of the way alone, so that was great.

The gondola left us in a town called Kriens, which is basically a suburb of Lucerne, and we took a bus back to downtown. We walked around some more until we felt like we saw all that the city had to offer and then we hopped a train back to Basel. Overall, we had a great day.

Swiss Family Mullivan

The Paper Museum

Today I had plans to go to Bern with Peter, plans that were abruptly shattered at 8:15 this morning when he called to cancel. He said he'd had terrible insomnia last night, but I say he was probably hung over. I say that mostly just because I can, because everyone knows that whatever you post on a blog is incontrovertibly true! I thought briefly about going to St. Gall by myself instead, because that seems like a better place to go alone than to Bern, but then I went back to sleep instead. To make up for it I decided to enjoy some time walking around Basel, in particular the St. Alban neighborhood, which is near where my running club meets. I also went to the Paper Museum, which is in the same area.

This is some church - the placard on the side said it was started in 1280:

And this is the St. Alban Tor, which means gate. It's one of the few remaining original gates to the city.

The actual gate part reminds me of that scene in the Princess Bride when they're trying to stop Princess Buttercup's marriage to Prince Humperdinck.

It looks like people actually live in it now, which is incredibly awesome. I wonder how much that rent goes for! This is what makes me think it's inhabited:

Someone put out a table and chairs on that terrace, and there's a chain going across that says "Privat."

On this side of the gate is a nice park, which I think is a dog park, based on all the little signs with pictures of dogs scattered around. My running club often stops and stretches in this park, though, and I haven't seen many dogs. I have seen other running clubs, however.

Here's a section of the old city wall, which presumably once connected to that gate. I mean, if you could just walk between them (or build buildings and streets between them as it is now), what would be the point?

These are some other random pictures from that neighborhood:

Look at the ducks!

I think this is just about the cutest building ever.

The building on the right is a youth hostel. I think when Patrick and I come back through Basel to fly out, we'll probably stay there, since it looks great.

After wandering around, I wound up at the:

Swiss Paper Museum!

It was a really odd museum, housed in an old paper mill and still functioning as one. The exhibits were fairly interesting, showing the history of writing, paper making, and printing. There were some hands-on activities like trying out calligraphy pens, making water marks, and printing, but these were overrun by children so I passed.

In those pictures you can see how they get power, and then one of the machines that gets powered. This thing was making a huge racket. I guess the idea is that you put a ton of rags in a vat of water and beat them with these hammers until they become pulp.

The funniest part of the museum was the quirky coat room:

How random is that? Overall I think the museum was worth seeing. B+ or A-. Perhaps if I was Monson I would give it an A--!

Funniest Lunch Ever

Today I went out to lunch with Ian and Hitomi, two fellow researchers from the archive. We tried a sandwich place that none of us had been to before - The Brötli Bar. They had a selection of open-faced sandwiches that looked like they were straight out of a 1950s Good Housekeeping article on making fancy sandwiches, complete with piped on mayonnaise, artfully arranged garnishes, and even aspic. Of course none of them had signs to say what they were, so we were left to guess, and I'm sure we made asses of ourselves because we were hysterically laughing about it. Here's what we got (taken by Ian with his iPhone so that we wouldn't be so over-the-top conspicuous):

Mine is the back left - one cheese with tomato and onion and one curry rice. As Ian kept asking, is that just rice on bread? Oh yes it is. As he pointed out, the picture does not do its bright yellow color justice. Hitomi and Ian both got the asparagus, which came garnished with some hard-boiled egg and a dollop of something else. I don't think Hitomi ever identified her other sandwich, and Ian had some sort of chopped up fishy one. Plus, salami (or am I not identifying it correctly?) with aspic. We also had some paprika to use as a garnish. The Swiss ladies who eventually wound up sharing our table really made use of that paprika, so I guess that's common around here for some reason. It was awesome.

Long Overdue Update

Whew, it's been quite a week! My borrowed internet signal has been cooperating less and less, so I'm being forced to ration my internet usage significantly to what I can get done on the shared computer at the archive and coming to this weird café to use their free wireless. I apologize to everyone who hasn't gotten a returned e-mail from me lately as a result! So I'm going to post all the pictures I've taken in the last week or so that I haven't had a chance to post already.

First up, some random events I saw happening last weekend. I went out shopping like normal on Saturday, and when I came home I saw this:

A fashion show from the shop in the building next door to mine. Their clothes are really nice - what I would wear if I was 40 and had $600 to drop on a skirt. The woman in the white jacket is one of the models. It was pretty funny to stumble upon! Here's a view from my window:

This time it's the woman in black who's modeling. There were two shows, and I got to witness both,  luckily. What amuses me to no end is hearing American pop music being played at events like this. I noticed it in a store the other day too. Everything just goes along as anonymous Europop and then bam! I hear some English and I have to keep myself from laughing.

The next day I walked down to the Marktplatz, which is usually quiet on Sundays, but there was a special event going on. I'm not sure what it was, but it had something to do with children (based on the sign) and something to do with Islam. At one point there were Arabic/Persian/Middle Eastern (pardon my ignorance) rappers with an audience mainly consisting of Middle Eastern families and bemused tourists.

I looked around for some tasty food to buy in the accompanying market that was set up, but nothing looked promising. Yesterday I saw a similar event, but that one had something to do with Cuba and I had forgotten to take my camera with me.

Also last weekend was the running club party! I went to help make what turned out to be massive amounts of food that was barely eaten and used it as an excuse to take some pictures of where the running club is located. First off, to get there I have to walk down this hill:

Which isn't that big a deal, except after running for however long, I then have to walk back up it:

I hate that damn hill.

Then, at the end, I need to walk down this flight of stairs - also not too bad, until after the run, when I have to walk back up.

It's hard to see because of all the greenery and the glare, but it is an enormous staircase. That landing on the right side is really only about the halfway point. Sometimes we start our runs by walking up those stairs, and then we all bitch about it. Or in British terms, we "whinge" about it.

The club itself is located inside one of the pillars of a bridge:

Our friend of the "porno" tag strikes again!  It's not a bad place to start a run, that's for sure.

Also last weekend, I went to the Dollhouse Museum, which was awesome.

They have a special wedding exhibit going right now, which was kind of cool. It had nothing to do with dollhouses, but it was fun to see all the old dresses they had, and especially all the pictures of people getting married ca. 1900. Plus, the displays of all the miniature things were really impressive. My favorite was the row of miniature stores, with different ones filled with tiny shoes, or loaves of bread, or pastries or whatever. It was awesome.

This weekend has been much less exciting. It's been raining the whole weekend, so I haven't really done much. Plus, yesterday was a holiday, so nothing was open. So much for my weekly food shopping! On the plus side, I've actually worked on my dissertation a little, so that's something...