A challenger for the #1 spot: Lucerne, Switzerland

Not too long ago, I got to thinking about how I've seen a good amount of places now in Europe, and I would have an awfully hard time trying to rank them in any way when people ask, 'Where is your favorite place so far?" or "What's your top three?" The question inevitably comes up with friends or when meeting new people, etc. I've never given it a whole lot of thought; granted, I do have a few cities in mind that I would consider worthy for my calling "my favorite," but nowhere has been disappointing. 

When we got to Lucerne (Luzern) it was later in the evening (as we spent the day in Bern), so we weren't able to see much of it until the following day. Within walking around for a few hours, however, I quickly realized that if someone were to ask me right then, "Where is your favorite place you've visited thus far?" I would answer he/she almost immediately, "Lucerne, Switzerland."

I took maybe 100 pictures (and several videos) while in Lucerne and I could post all of them and have something to say (or in the case of the scenic pictures, let the picture itself do the talking). I have no idea where to start on how gorgeous and clean the city is, so here are just some pictures to get started:

Above: The Löwendenkmal, or Lion Monument, is a huge lion sculpture carved in the side of a short cliff in the heart of Lucerne. It's dedicated to the Swiss Guard who were killed defending the French king during the French Revolution. I sort of wish it was for something better than defending anything that is French, but I suppose I have an immense amount of respect for them given the circumstances (they were mercenaries). Why the Swiss are still amicable to the French is beyond me. Anyhow, enough of what I think and more on the monument: it is huge, it is beautiful, and it is moving. I recommend glancing over the article on Wikipedia.

Above: A shot of the Kapellbrucke--the Chapel Bridge. It's a Lucerne landmark: a wooden bridge first built in the 14th century. I just threw in some scenery on the side for good measure so you might get an idea as to how pretty the place is.

On Valentine's Day (February 14th), Lucerne throws a huge Carnival pre-party called Fasnachts-Määrt. Basically, the whole city gathers around this one plaza and watches as about ten different marching bands parade through the town square, then over a bridge, and finally performs a few songs on the stairs in the plaza. The awesome part is that all of the bands dress up in the most outrageous costumes according to their band's theme. I took a few videos of the bands playing but I don't have the fastest upload speed on the internet here, so I'll post some pictures now and I'll try and upload the videos later. 

Above, one of the first bands we saw perform, dressed up in all sorts of different wacky outfits.

Above, the Chartlebotzer playing. They were one of may favorites, they dressed up in these ridiculous gargoyle-like costumes with huge, almost scary masks. They also played "Walking on Sunshine" and my particular favorite, Bon Jovi's "It's My Life." There were just masses of people in all directions, and there were a ton of food stands serving sausage with a hunk of bread and liters of beer or hot cider (as it was snowing). The party goes on all day, there's an intermission for a light show over the river (which we saw and it was cool), and then the bands play encore performances at night while everyone is just bouncing from one pub to the next. I couldn't believe my already unbelievable Friday the 13th (which I'm sure you read about) would be followed by an equally amazing day.

Lastly, just a couple of photographs trying to personify the beauty of Lucerne I speak about:

Above: one of the towers along the walls that form the perimeter of the old city. Oh, yeah, those are just some wild buffalo hanging out. No big deal.

Above: along Lake Lucerne, you can see the split paths (one for pedestrians, one for bicyclists) set between a without-words-gorgeous gauntlet of snow-covered trees. Another cool note about Lucerne was the amount of bicyclists. Most people within the city just bike everywhere. Oh, another cool note, though I'm not sure you can really tell entirely from that picture, is that Lucerne has to be the cleanest city on the face of the earth. I could literally eat dinner there using the sidewalk as my table. 

Above: a beautiful sunny day by Lake Lucerne.

We visited the famous church in Lucerne, St. Leodegar im Hof, which was stupendous, but I preferred the Jesuit church just on the other end of the Kapellbrucke (above). Inside is one of the most stellar Rococo interiors I've ever seen (below).

Like I said, I could go on and on about Lucerne on a post ten times the length of this one. I just fell for it, hard, and my admiration and obsession for the city just continued to develop the longer we stayed there. I would say it's been my favorite city thus far on the trip. Then I got to thinking again that this should be mentioned: Lucerne is home to 60,000 people. That is about 45 times smaller than Rome. It would make sense that the place is far better preserved than a city that is exponentially bigger than it. Anyhow, I just thought I would point that out, but if you're not going to take scale into consideration, Lucerne is my Coaches Poll unanimous #1. It just might end up with a very different BCS ranking in the end (all things considered).

One more Switzerland update to come...

Friday, February 13: Best. Day. Ever.

So, I'm going to split this post in two: my Friday the 13th in general as well as our day trip to Bern (which fell on that fateful Friday). 

I really have no idea how to approach this, so let me just throw it at you all at once. On my Friday, February 13, 2009:

1. I jumped out of a helicopter that was 14,000 feet above ground. Yes, I went skydiving in the only place in the world where it is legal to skydive by helicopter. If you were to ask me what it was like or to describe the experience, I wouldn't be able to. I remember getting in the helicopter, thinking to myself that the last time I thought of helicopters was just the other night when I watched Black Hawk Down on iTunes, trying to forget the reception lady's answer when someone asked why Interlaken is the only place you can skydive out of a helicopter ("Because it is illegal everywhere else"), I remember peeking over the edge before the jump, and I remember landing safely in the snow. Honestly, I think I blacked out from adrenaline during the entire descent (apparently a 45-second freefall and then a one- to two-minute parachute descent). Nonetheless, while not being able to describe the experience, it was one of the best experiences of my life.

This is the only caption of that memory for me:

(Me giving the thumbs up in my skydiving suit, pre-jump).

After skydiving, we ate at the best Thai food restaurant ever (in Switzerland) and then hopped on a train to Bern (Switzerland's capital). Bern, like Switzerland in general, is just beautiful. Plain and simple, it is beautiful:

It also has one of the most famous churches in Europe, the Munstergasse, which of course was under renovation work when we got there. I have better pictures than this but I already have this uploaded (me in front of the sign as opposed to the pretty church spire):

But I've already gone too far astray. This is about Friday the 13th. So, we've covered that I skydived, but also on Friday the 13th:

2. I stood about fifteen feet away from a really, really big brown bear:

That is just how cool Bern is. They have bear pits in the middle of the frickin' city where there are bears. Just hanging out. Big. Bears. They come out of their caves, poke around their little pond, roll in the snow, and pose for awesome pictures (like the one above).

Not long after that, I saw the coolest fountain ever. Just a few minutes after seeing bears, on my Friday the 13th:

3. I saw an ogre devouring a baby:

Here's a better picture (not taken by me):

This is the Kindlifresserbrunnen, the coolest statue on top of a fountain, ever. It's a freaking ogre eating babies. How can you not like Switzerland? I just stood there and laughed to myself. If I'm a little kid in Switzerland, I'm behaving myself after seeing that thing. 

Recap, 13/02/09 (which makes more sense than 02/13/09):

1. Went skydiving out of a helicopter.

2. Saw big brown bears.

3. Saw an ogre eating babies.

And then we left Bern (after a nice 3-hour detour) and headed to the new love of my life, Lucerne. It's 12:30am here right now so I'm going to call it a night, but I'll be sure to get the last of Switzerland up soon.

You only live once: Interlaken

Okay, sorry it has been a while since my last post, but I just haven't had a decent wireless connection. So I need to catch up, I'm going to run through Switzerland with these next three or four posts.

After we (sadly) had to leave Geneva, we began our journey east to Interlaken. In and of itself, Interlaken is a small town that's wildly popular with the younger crowd in particular both during the winter and summer for its sports and bars. Nonetheless, it is still a very picturesque Swiss town, unbelievably beautiful, tranquil by day and loud by night.

Interlaken is in a part that speaks Swiss-German, so while I knew a handful of words in French that helped in Geneva, I was especially S.O.L. in Interlaken as I haven't a clue of any German. Naturally, this wasn't a problem as it is still Switzerland and everyone and their grandmother speaks English as if they were raised in California.

Those were two pretty pictures in front of signs that say "Interlaken" in case you missed that.

To be honest, the picture below I'm not sure what everything quite is in the background. All I know is that we were walking down a street and were stopped dead in our tracks by how beautiful the scene was.

Anyway, on to the good stuff. As I mentioned, Interlaken is great in the winter as it sits at the base of the Jungfrau, the tallest mountain in Europe if I'm not mistaken, and boasts some of the best skiing mountains. Avid skiiers would say the best skiing mountains in the world. Who am I to judge? I figured I just wanted to learn how to ski, and what better place to learn than in the Swiss Alps? To my cousin Sam, I wish you were here for this.

Lessons were cheap, a very nice English lady named Sue had me carving the slopes within two hours. After my time with her was done, I took to the green circle hills by myself. I did a good job not sticking out, as in Switzerland the green circle slopes are reserved primarily for first-timer two- and three-year-olds, as well as the occasional quadraplegic. So, being a six-foot-one American I blended right in with the locals, and was talking about how I'd be doing triple black diamonds by the time I get to the bottom of this "plebeian green slope."

Here is some evidence:

(Below) Still alive!

As a matter of fact, my rapid progression in skiing attracted a lot of attention of some Swiss regulars (former Olympic medalists, even) and by the end of the day people wanted to chant "USA!" with me as I went down the slopes. This random girl even wanted to be in a picture with me:

I hate when Natalya is better at things than I am (which happened... once... and it was skiing) but I'd say within a day or two I'll catch up... maybe. Sam: let's get a house in Switzerland and go skiing, like, a lot.

At this point in time, I need to change gears on you guys. I must now focus my attention on my Friday, February 13, 2009. I'm not trying to sound conceited or like a prick or anything when I say this, but quite frankly, my Friday the 13th was better than yours. In fact, I'm going to dedicate a whole separate post to it.

Geneva: Je suis désolé, je ne parle pas de français

French.

Just the word makes me shudder.

If there was ever a language that I just never really wanted to learn or make an effort to pick up, it'd be French (thanks, Albert (Al-bear from 2945)). I know a good ten words in French, and that's including the four-letter ones I use more frequently in my English.

Luckily, people in Switzerland speak every language under the sun, which is probably why everyone likes the country (on top of the fact that it is really, really easy on the eye). Speaking of easy on the eye, there's Geneva:

We arrived in Geneva around 2:30pm and checked in to the city hostel. The Geneva City Hostel, frankly, is nicer than most Italian three-star hotels. Probably one of the most readily apparent differences in Geneva compared to most of Italy is its cleanliness (in Switzerland is not only socially acceptable but encouraged to pick up after your dog, whereas in Italy it seemed to be punishable by stoning. So you're not worried all the time about where you're stepping... on the sidewalk). The total lack of graffiti is also a nice change. The metro and tram lines seem like they were reupholstered yesterday, or just installed yesterday, whichever makes them seem newer. For a small city (only about 160,000), Geneva is modern, clean, gorgeous, and affluent.

For the pictures and touristy stuff: obviously no trip to Geneva would be complete without visiting its number one employer:

Above, me in front of the United Nations building. I'd say sizewise the perimeter is five by five San Francisco city blocks.

The entrance to the UN building with all of the flags waving in front. Basically every diplomat's dream.

Of course, it wouldn't be a typical day in front of the UN building if there weren't some kind of rally or protest or demonstration going on out front! On the day we strolled by, there was a nice crowd of about 80 people chanting about human rights in Tibet (or I guess the lack thereof).

The three-legged chair monument directly in front of the UN building (this is where the Tibetan demonstrators were gathered). It's called The Broken Chair and serves as a symbol for the lives (and limbs) lost by land mines. I picked up that little bit of information from our visit to the Red Cross Museum:

Musee International de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge, above. On one hand, it's great to learn about the foundation and the origin of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, as well as all the calamaties it has served. On the other hand, it is quite the Debbie-downer of a museum. Pretty morose stuff. 

This was the exhibit on land mine awareness (above). There were some other pictures that were kinda graphic. They had a TV in the corner of the room showing commercials from different countries around the world on land mine safety. It was an interesting exhibit, I liked it just as much as the stuff on the World Wars and all the other major conflicts.

After the Red Cross Museum, we went south of the Rhone River in to the Old Town. At the park Place du Croix-Rouge there are bunch of big chess and checkers boards. The chess pieces are about two-and-a-half feet tall. I thought it was too cold to play, plus I did not see any masters that seemed like worthy opponents to me. Primarily the former.

Again, courtesy of The Pillars of the Earth, I just kept getting mesmerized by the insides of churches. This is the inside of Cathedrale St. Pierre. I took a bunch of other pictures, too, another "no-justice" kind of place. It's famous for being the home church of John Calvin and the Protestant Reformation.

This is just a random picture of the square in front of the cathedral. I loved all of the Swiss and Geneva flags flying all over town.

From Lac Leman, aka Lake Geneva, south of the Rhone. Those are mallards in the water. Some of them were trotting on land. They are so unbelievable stubborn I wanted to pick one up and punt it just to prove a point and send a message to the rest of them that they are underneath me on the food chain. Seriously, a pack of them will just lie around and look at you as you walk towards them as if they're saying, "Are you going to walk around us or what?"

 

Well I sort of posted these out of order, but anyway, this is from the north tower at the Cathedrale St. Pierre. It's the highest point in the city and just provides unreal panaromic views from every direction. I just noticed how good looking the sky is. Or "that guy is."

From the opposite end of Place du Croix-Rouge, I was getting nostalgic of Villa Borghese. This is also a very pretty park, though. It was a wonderful stroll.

On the east end of the park is the Reformation Wall. It's a 100-meter long wall dedicated to John Calvin and all of the other integral smart guys of the Protestant Reformation. This is just a portion of it, at the center. William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox, if you were curious, Purtill (or any one who's a fan of Jeopardy).

On our last night in Geneva, we went to a pretty famous restaurant, Au Petit Chalet, for some authentic Swiss fondue. Several pieces of mouth-watering bites of cheese-covered bread in to the meal, I was having some kind of bizarre epiphany that this is, in fact, my life right now: I am in Geneva, Switzerland eating cheese fondue, drinking draught Heineken, and doing nothing but loving life as if it were my job. I do nothing but go out, look at really pretty things all day, take pictures, eat really good food, and blog about it. That is my life. My travel companion clarified it for me quite nicely, I think:

"You must have done something right."

A piu tarde, Italia

On Sunday, February 8th, we hopped on the 11:45am train from Milano Centrale heading to Geneva, Switzerland. It took a while for me to realize, but I had to face the fact that our tour of Italy had come to an end, and the second country on our formidable itinerary had been crossed off. 

I was just starting to get a grasp of forming sentences by myself in Italian and was eager to start learning a ton of vocabulary so I could start speaking a bit better, but it was time to move forward. Nonetheless, I loved every minute of Italy. 

We are still eternally grateful to our family members in Italy for taking such great care of us while we visited. Grazie mille.

Arrivederci, Italia.

(A heartwarming picture of yours truly at Villa Borghese, still the prettiest park I know of).

Forza Milan

Before I get to talking about Milan, let me talk about the unusual wake up call I had the morning we were to leave Venice. At around 5:37am, an ungodly-loud alarm that sounds like one of those World War II air raid alarms--you know, the ones that tell you to get underground or whatever--goes off for a solid five minutes, with a number of beeps afterwards. Typical American tourist as I am, I simply dismiss it, reassuring myself that is indeed not 1942 and there will be no bombing.

The train that we'd like to catch leaves for Milan at 8:15am. We left with a 25 minute cushion, which was ample as the train station was about 1.5 kilometers away, and the first kilometer hugged the canal. Therein lied the problem. Unbeknownst to us, that alarm that sounded actually indicates when the canals have flooded. We walked out of our hostel and saw before us no less than eight inches of water covering the sidewalk in every direction. I drifted out a few yards to see if it clears up at any point, and it didn't, of course. All these Venetians, clad in their knee-high rain boots or thigh-high galoshes, were staring at the Americans, one wearing low top boat shoes, the other, plain leather boots. We thought we would be resourceful and luck out by wrapping plastic bags around our shoes, but that lasted for the first ten feet or so. After that, we just forded the river like a team of oxen in Oregon Trail. By the time we got to the train station, we missed the 8:15 train and we were completely soaked from the knee down. I didn't take pictures out of sheer frustration. Screw you, Venice.

Milan:

The next train left at 8:50, we arrived at Milan and fortunately for us it was not raining there. We actually only booked one night in Milan (we originally scheduled three); much to our surprise it was just too expensive to stay there. Our places was about 28 Euros per night, and outside of that, places averaged around 40 Euros plus per night. We still got to seeing some stuff, though, and we only had one goal in mind: go see AC Milan play football.

En route to buying our tickets, we happened upon this enormous horse statue at the horse tracks right by the soccer stadium. It's designed off a drawing by Da Vinci:

Cool. Moving right along, we hopped back on the metro and went to one of the few things either of us wanted to see in Milan, Il Duomo:

It sticks out like a sore thumb in Milan; this thousand-year-old cathedral in the center of a bustling and modern square. There's a huge thirty foot plasma big screen to the right of it, at the time we were there it was showing Italian rugby.

Directly adjacent to the Duomo is the shopping plaza. Basically a bunch of overpriced designer label stores. Part of the Milan experience is walking by a store and being jeered at by the fictitiously made-up women inside the stores, showering contempt over you as they're aware you have no intent on buying a $4,000 purse. They say Milan is the fashion center of the world, and a brief stroll through the plaza would probably confirm that.

This is the roof to the plaza. It looks pretty.

Now, time for the good stuff. We bought tickets for AC Milan versus Reggina, Saturday the 7th at 8:30pm. We were there about three hours early so we had some time to kill. Probably one of the most fun pregames I've had: we fought through the pissing rain and found a supermarket, bought a 1.5 liter bottle of Riunite Lambrusco (the real classy stuff, 3 Euros for the bottle), found a McDonald's relatively close to the stadium, bought some small drinks, and parked it upstairs and poured wine into the cups when people weren't looking.  We then strolled to the stadium, San Siro:

Yep, that's me double-fisting two small McDonald's cups of Lambrusco. I rule.

Next stop was actually inside the stadium. I like the setup: the fans are protected from the overhang, but the field is still rained on. I enjoyed not being in the rain for once and welcomed the reprieve (I was still a little bitter towards Venice).

From directly where we sat:

During pregame, Ronaldinho doing some sweet ball tricks:

During some footballing action, an AC Milan free kick:

Reggina, at the time, was the worst team in Italian Serie A. AC Milan was in 2nd place (to Inter Milan). Reggina scored first, but let me tell you, those AC Milan fans were as unphased as if the score was still 0-0. The atmosphere at the game is nothing short of unreal. The people in the blue section are screaming the entire game, singing songs, when there's a bad call by the refs people charge the gate behind the goal and scream even more, all the fans around us are cursing the hell out of the refs, the Reggina players, and bad plays by the AC Milan team (which were few). The game was tied on a Kaka penalty shot. Hey P Sir, I saw Ronaldinho, Kaka, Pato, David Beckham (!), and Sedorf all on the field at the same time. Sup?

Above, me in our seats after the game as the fans piled out (it ended in a draw, 1-1, and it was on the front page of every Milan newspaper the next day).

I wouldn't have been opposed to staying longer in Milan but I have a budget to mind. I just wasn't thrilled about how expensive it was to stay there. Nonetheless, I had an absolute blast at the football game (it's amazing how much more exciting they are in person as opposed to on TV) and wouldn't really say a lot of bad things about Milan, but then again I wouldn't say it was my favorite place in Italy, either.

What I probably should have realized is that I was going to Switzerland next... and I wasn't really in any position to start complaining about how expensive things are...

More updates to come.

An American in Venice

We left Florence and arrived to some overcast (but not yet rainy) weather in Venice. Our hostel was really more like a hotel, and although not centrally located, it was nicely positioned enough that walking to places wasn't a big deal. As you would imagine, I took some customary "look-the-street-is-a-river-and-not-pavement" pictures:

Above is one such example. Below, just after sunset outside of the Palazzo Ducale. 

Palazzo Ducale is just by San Marco, and when we were walking by the old prison (Prigioni Ducale), we saw that that night there was going to be a performance of two pieces of Bach as well as the headlining Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Again, thank goodness for student discounts. We actually entered what was the old warden's keep and listened to a string sextet perform that evening after dinner. It was so cool.

Now, back to the churches. If there is one thing Italy is in no shortage of, it's churches. I tend to think I'm going to get sick of seeing them, but sometimes, something like the Basilica di San Marco (below) pops up and I realize I could look at these things for days. San Marco was a welcomed change from all of the other Gothic-y and Medieval cathedrals I've seen. Quite frankly, San Marco is bizarre. It's exotic. I guess that's why I kind of liked it. It's modeled after Constantinople's Church of the Twelve Apostles, and the ceilings all alongside the interior are all done in the most precise and jaw-dropping mosaic. We paid a couple of Euros to see the Pala d'Oro, pretty much the most invaluable golden altar panel (of Byzantine craftsmanship) on the face of the earth. It was surreal.

After seeing all of the common touristy stuff in San Marco and all that jazz, we headed to one of the outskirts of the Venetian islands and found the Madonna d'Oro, a hidden jewel of a church just outside the Jewish ghetto. Reading a book on building cathedrals certainly helped my appreciation for the buildings, to say the least. Unfortunately for the Madonna, it's in the same town as Basilica San Marco. Tough break.

Speaking of the Jewish ghetto (below):

Some of the tallest houses were built in the Jewish ghetto, as the Jews were not aloud to expand outside of their neighborhood, they had nowhere to go but up.

While the weather was still favorable to us, I got this picture facing east along the Ponte Rialto:

And within a moment's notice, the rain came down, and it came down hard. But, the west of Ponte Rialto was just as good looking as the east, and this time its foreground is beset with just a pair of Americans in Venice:

Within all of the church-seeing (okay, two churches), we still managed to make our way to some museums, naturally. We went to the Galleria dell'Accademia which had quite the impressive European art collection that I would say was wonderful, except I was fresh from the Uffizi so it was less than remarkable for me. To be honest, I just wanted to see Da Vinci's The Vitruvian Man but found out (after walking around forever) that it is not on display and it won't be any time soon. Hate. After that we made our way to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, which is an array of modern art that has been assembled in Ms. Guggenheim's former Venetian residence. I walked away thinking that Jackson Pollock must have taken some serious drugs in his day, and I actually had a nightmare involving one of Salvador Dali's paintings (something about Liquid Desire). I'm just not cut out for modern art, I concluded.

I'm not going to lie, I arrived in Venice with a heavy burden of expectations and I'd say none of it was disappointed. It is extraordinarily beautiful; all the major landmarks and sites were all that they were cracked up to be. Leaving Venice was a different story, one I will share as the intro to the Milan update which will be forthcoming soon (I'm almost caught up to my present location!).