Misty Mountains

 

Last week you could read about our rainy day in Luzern, and today we're just continuing with rain. We began the day with a good breakfast and a cup of delicious coffee - this, of course, is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth who every Tuesday get into the "drinking habit" with T Tuesday. Since we were in Switzerland we decided that we have to go into a grocery store and stock up on chocolate. Swiss chocolate is just the best. What you see here is just a small portion of the chocolate aisle.

We drove around Vierwaldstättersee while it was raining on and off. The mountains were hiding in the mist and we could only see in our minds what this place would actually look like on a clear day. But a clear day we didn't have.

And into the mountains we went. The Swiss are masters in building high elevation roads, tunnels and concrete protections from avalanches. I always find it quite exciting driving along those roads through the Alps.

We got higher and higher with less and less traffic - but unfortunately not less fog. It stayed with us throughout the day.

We chose to drive via Klausenpass which is a rather narrow mountain pass road with thankfully not much traffic on this misty day.

Halfway up we stopped at this bench that was on top of - nothing. You can see there is a protective fence in front of the bench. Unfortunately we couldn't find out what all the symbols meant - the clock, the hiking boot with flowers in it - but the five-to-twelve seemd like a warning.

On we went, up into the misty mountains. The road became even narrower.

It was just as misty and gray at the pass with the addition of some leftover snow and low temperatures. We walked around a little bit, but pretty soon got back into the car.

On the other side of the mountain the weather hadn't changed. This is Kanton Uri where Wilhelm Tell, the national hero of  Switzerland, came from (if he ever existed). The villages are small and picturesque and often have a monument of Wilhelm Tell with his crossbow (sorry, I didn't take a picture of one).

When it finally stopped raining, we found a place to eat our picnic, something we had bought in the grocery store in the morning. It was a nice location, heavily scented with wood and a view of the rising mist.

Not long after that we left Switzerland and crossed into Liechtenstein.

The Principality of Liechtenstein is a VERY small country, located smack in the middle of the mountains. The language is German, its capital is Vaduz and it's the world's wealthiest country. I can't say that it made any permanent impression on me.

We did find an old castle ruin, Obere Burg Schellenberg where we hiked up to. We had a lovely view from there and also used the opportunity to take a family photo.

I did like this reminder to pick up after your dog!

Only minutes later we crossed into Austria at the smallest border crossing I ever saw.

A Rainy Day in Switzerland

 

Last week I left you in Freiburg which is very close to the Swiss border. Switzerland was our next destination. If you happen to have paid for a vignette - the toll for Swiss highways - you can take the highway and reach your destination pretty quickly. After all, Switzerland is a small country that has four main linguistic and cultural regions: German, French, Italian and Romansh. However, the price for this vignette is pretty steep considering that we were only spending two days there (Switzerland is a very expensive country) and therefore , we decided to drive along the smaller roads. It's a decision that we didn't regret, even though our progress was relatively slow. There are a lot of mountains to cross - but that was on the second day and will be dealt with in a seperate post.

We have been to most of Switzerland before, but we never had visited Luzern (Lucerne), so this was the place we reached in the early afternoon. Luzern  is located on the shores of Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne) and its outflow, the River Reuss. Its main landmark is the Kapellbrücke (Chapel Bridge), a covered wooden footbridge with its octagonal Wasserturm (water tower in the sense of a tower standing in the water). The bridge was first erected in the 14th century (c 1365) and spans the river Reuss. 

It was dry when we arrived, but we did see some darker clouds gathering at the horizon. We decided to first cross over the modern footbridge (top photo) to the other side and walk back via Kapellbrücke and taking our sweet time with it. As it turned out, we pretty much hadn't a choice once we reached the covered bridge.

The clouds and the sky became dramatically darker and more ominous from minute to minute.

The first drops started to fall when we had just reached the bridge - we were lucky. We walked along the bridge, enjoying the still nice views. I loved the flowers at the side of the bridge.

The view through the sides to the shores with their old city buildings was quite impressive.

The Kapellbrücke (and two other wooden bridges in Lucerne) features painted interior triangular frames. This is unique since none of the other European wooden footbridges has this feature. The paintings date back to the 17th century and depict events from Luzern's history and were executed by local painter Hans Heinrich Wägmann. Originally, there were 158 paintings, but the majority were destroyed in a fire in 1993. Today. there are only 30 paintings that were fully restored (of the 47 that were collected after the fire).

Then the thunderstorm started.

Within seconds the bridge was wet on the inside, the rain came in from all sides and on top there was thunder and lightning. I'm not sure how sensible it was to stay on a wooden bridge in the middle of a river during the thunderstorm, but we didn't have much choice - we were stuck. I have to admit that it was quite exciting.

The thunder and lightning didn't last long. I tried to make a short video of the relentless rain. Turn up the sound.

After we were finally able to leave the bridge without getting completely soaked, we drove along the Vierwalstättersee to Buochs. Our hotel was right on the lake and if the weather would have been better, we would have had a great view of the mountains.

Instead we had low hanging clouds - they looked quite dramatic and I loved this moody atmosphere.

We had a delicious dinner in the restaurant of the hotel. I had filets of whitefish from the Vierwaldstätersee which is called "Felchen" (I couldn't find a proper translation, some call it a Lake Constance whitefish). They served Bavarian beer, so I had a dark Weißbier from the Erdinger brewery which happens to be one of my favorite Bavarian beers. This, of course, is for T Tuesday where I greet Elizabeth and Bleubeard with a cheerful "Prost" (German "cheers").