Day 1 Continued: Lucerne — Where The Queen Of England Met The Queen Of The Mountains
My wife Janis and I recently returned from a 12-day hiking trip to the Swiss Alps (dipping our hiking sticks briefly into France as well). Our hearts are still flush with the afterglow of the wonders we saw (and cheese we consumed). For anyone with interest to spare and minutes to waste, here are some of our adventures and reflections.
The euphoria of beginning a long-awaited vacation can transform most any city you visit into Valhalla — even Newark, New Jersey (though I don’t know that from experience). However, Lucerne, Switzerland needs no such help.
If I had just left a three-hour beatdown with the IRS, on the morning of my release from ten years in prison, with an appointment to see my divorce attorney that afternoon, and suddenly found myself in Lucerne for lunch, all my troubles would wash away in an instant.
In a country often named the most beautiful in the world, Lucerne (or Luzern, as spelled in its native Swiss German) is consistently named its most beautiful city. In 1868, Queen Victoria came to Lucerne. For seven years she had locked herself away, mourning the death of Prince Albert, dressing only in black, and ordering her ladies-in-waiting to put out his clothes every morning. After more than a month soaking up the beauty of Lucerne, when she returned to England, Prime Minister Gladstone found her “kind, cheerful, even playful” again.
The Ride There
Janis and I caught inklings of that beauty as the Swiss Rail (SBB) IR-75 train bore us out of Zurich on the 50-minute journey to Lucerne (which would cost $27 apiece if we paid out of pocket, meaning $1,746 to go before we broke even on our investment in two first-class Swiss Travel Passes). We were a bit surprised to see graffiti in abundance as we left the city, but not even Swiss ingenuity had an answer for what neither the ancient Romans or Mayans could prevent.
But suddenly just a few miles south of Zurich the enchanting blue-green glacial waters of Lake Zurich appeared just east of the tracks. It was our first, “Oh my” moment, that first view of Oz from miles away that sent an electric shiver down Dorothy’s spine.
But the skies were overcast. Faraway views were shrouded behind a gray veil — shy Swiss Miss would not reveal her beauty too swiftly to us. The train turned gently west. City buildings retreated, replaced by rolling waves of green fields. We passed a second jeweled lake — Lake Zug (sister of Zurg who bedeviled Buzz Lightyear, no doubt).
Far to its southern end, the smoky silhouettes of dark hills — or were they mountains? — appeared in the mist, like parents keeping an eye on our courtship with their daughters. We didn’t know it at the time, but Mount Rigi, called the Queen of the Mountains, was there, who would spurn our love entirely in a few short hours.
Then before we knew it, we were pulling into the Lucerne train station. Hungry, jetlagged, and weighed down by our stuffed Alpa luggage backpacks, we stepped out of the station into a noisy crowd of travelers, workers, students, and pickpockets, speaking languages we did not recognize. So we muscled our way past the churn of flesh until we reached a place where we could breathe and look around us. At once, the same magic that went to work on Queen Victoria began to massage the life-weariness out of us.
We looked to our right and Lakes Zurich and Zug were immediately forgotten, like Leah from Jacob’s mind the instant he beheld Rachel. For here was the most beautiful of them all — Lake Lucerne.
White swans paddled near the shore of its Mediterranean-turquoise waters, alongside a glistening white passenger ferry that was about to carry a hundred or so nature-lovers out into the picturesque villages and mountains that surround the lake. “ A trip on that lake is almost the perfection of pleasuring,” wrote Mark Twain, when he chronicled his walk across Europe in his classic A Tramp Abroad.
Our afternoon plans suddenly came into focus. After checking into the hotel, we would forgo the afternoon nap and power through the jetlag — one way or another, we’d be on the next boat.
The Search For Mount Rigi
Bookended around Lucerne on opposite sides of the lake, Mounts Rigi (5,896 feet) and Pilatus (6,983 feet) call out to the traveler to come and play. Queen Victoria climbed both, but then she had five weeks at her disposal. Because I am a pastor, not a king, we had two days. Having to choose, we chose Rigi, because how could we go wrong with something that is nicknamed the Queen of the Mountains?
The journey to Rigi is every bit part of the pleasure. It begins with a nearly hour-long cruise on the fjord-esque Lake Lucerne which is worth the price of admission all by itself. (Speaking of which, one ferry ride with a return is $89. Deduct two tickets from our Swiss Travel Pass investment, we’re down to $1,569 till we break even.)
The lake is long, and from above looks like a giant sleeping mermaid splayed out on the ground, protected on all sides by mountains. Twain’s description is peerless:
The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. Sometimes they rose straight up out of the lake and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. Not snow-clad mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. They were not barren and repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.
We learned on this trip that the Swiss are the dwarves of Tolkien’s Midde Earth. Granite is their Playdoh. If they encounter stone, they will chisel it, grind it, drill it, smash it, sculpt it, or bore holes through it until it yields to their will. And so the Swiss have devised two ways up to Rigi. Either the ferry drops you off at Weggis where a gondola will take you to Rigi Kaltbad where you hitch a ride on a cogwheel train to the top. Or the ferry continues to Vitznau where you take the cog-train straightaway. Enjoying the ferry ride, we opted for the longer trip.
As the cogtrain clawed its way up the mountain on its 30-minute trip, we quickly realized that Twain was right — these mountains do touch the clouds. We found ourselves climbing into a thickening fog, and by the time we reached Rigi Kaltbad, a mountain hamlet two-thirds of the way up, we couldn’t see two-feet into the airborne tapioca. The dismal weather forecast for the rest of the day promised no end in sight either.
When relentless fog envelopes you, you can do two things. You can stay there and rage at cruel powers you cannot control. Queen Victoria refused to move out of the fog of grief that enveloped her. Lucerne showed her a way forward, but she soon after fell back into herself, and wore black for another 33 years, waiting for Albert to bound into the door, saying, “It was just a cold, not typhoid at all!”
Or…you can grieve the fog, then move out of it. It was a disappointing way to begin a vacation we had long prepared for. But daylight was fleeing and we already knew there was beauty below the clouds. And pleasures yet to be discovered. Chapel Bridge. Ancient churches. Fish and chips in an English pub alongside the Reuss River while an old codger played a mournful Swiss accordion, exactly as they’ve been playing for generations. Then a mile walk back to the hotel along Lake Lucerne, holding hands with my lady, lover, and friend of 40 years, while a lone swan chaperoned us in the water.
Bear Clifton is a pastor, writer and screenwriter. His latest book, “Communion With Christ” is now available through Amazon. His blogs and scripts can be enjoyed at his ministry website: trainyourselfministry.c
om and his writing website: blclifton.com. Bear is also the author of “Ben-Hur: The Odyssey”, and “A Sparrow Could Fall”, all available through Amazon.
Originally published at https://www.trainyourselfministry.com.