Lake Uri

In German, it's called "Vierwaldstättersee," or, "Lake of the Four Forested Cantons." Lake Lucerne (or, if you prefer, Lake Luzern), is a complicated, twisting canyon landscape with many deep branches and points. Though it's all one body of water, the locals call each of the different sections by a different name. There's the Buochser See, the Küssnachter See, the Alpnacher See and the Urner See. We spent two nights in Brunnen, camping by the waters of the Urner bay, which, in English, is called Lake Uri. It is a pretty, quiet part of central Switzerland, with a long and important history. These are the waters by which the Swiss Confederation was founded and on which William Tell sailed. It is here that the modern nation was born and where the canton of Schwyz - the namesake of Switzerland - rises up in forested hills.
Despite all of its history, Lake Uri is much quieter than the other, more westerly branches of Lucerne. Brunnen, where we stayed, is the largest town, but isn't all that big. We spent both days here hiking around the Swiss Trail, which stretches from Brunnen all the way to Rütli, which sits remote and misty at the point where Uri meets the Buochser See. Along the way, we passed through most of the little towns on the water. Some were actual villages, having a few cafes and churches. Some were little more than a ferry dock and two or three houses. Sisikon, where we stopped walking the first day, was one of the smaller towns. We waited at the dock for the boat, content in the sunshine. We were the only passengers getting on or off there, and were amusing to the ferry's crew.
Legend has it that William Tell, who was being taken across the lake to be executed after insulting the governor, was caught up in a storm. Fearing that the boat would capsize, his guards released Tell - who was renowned as a sailer as much as he was a marksman - to help them pilot the craft to safety. When they reached shore, however, Tell leaped onto the rocks and pushed the boat back out into the waves and wind.

Tell is a very famous figure here, with statues, shrines and streets bearing his likeness and name. Much of the mythology surrounding him was created - or exaggerated - by Friedrich Schiller, and the playwright is nearly as famous as his subject. There is even a gold inscription on a thirty foot high, natural obelisk in the lake that is dedicated to the writer.

The more salient historical points surrounding the lake, however, have to do with the founding of the Swiss confederation, which was signed into effect in 1291 here in Schwyz. The original cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden formed an alliance that was ultimately joined by the other five lake cantons, and then, gradually, by the rest of Switzerland. The spot where the document was signed is not far from the lakeshore, and is popular with tourists - we didn't visit, but we saw a lot of people going there on the ferry.
On the trail, high up above the waters in the alpine meadows, it's easy to imagine that nothing has changed here since the 13th century. The farmhouses are ancient, people still mow and turn their hay by hand and the plunking of cowbells is the only sound of civilization. The mountains, of course, are ancient and at the tip of the bay they rise steep and snowy.
The view from the campsite was tremendous, and we fell asleep listening to the lapping of wavelets and the distant churning of ferry engines. To the left, here, are the lights of Brunnen proper, and the entrance to Uri beyond.

The German - Swiss Link

For our two weeks in Switzerland, we decided to mostly focus on the German-speaking regions of the country, as opposed to the Italian or French. Having just spent 6 weeks in Italy/Vatican City/San Marino and knowing that we have a month in France/Monaco this Autumn, we figured it would be the best use of our time. Obviously, Switzerland is very Swiss, but it surprised me just how strong the Germanic influence is. Case and point: the WurstFest, which advertised itself with the tagline "All wurst or what?"
The 1st Annual Sausage Festival was taking place in Luzern during our visit. To be fair, it would have been difficult to miss the fest, as it stretches from April 15 - September 11 of this year. We discovered the news on a visit to the History Museum, which wasn't so much a history museum as a collection of odds and ends, artifacts and collectibles with barely any rhyme, reason or explanation. When I saw the above display in a glass case, I thought it was simply an arrangement of stones - until I realized that the long cylindrical ones at the center were actually sausages! Just like that, my interest in Wurst Fest was sparked.
The dedicated exhibit was definitely the highlight of our visit. A collection of wurst-inspired artwork filled a large pink room with "salami slice" rugs scattered about. At the center was a young man behind a counter cutting up samples. The enormous wiener in the photo showed videos of the link making process and the photos strung up on black paper were beautiful portraits of sausage-makers displaying their products. A mural that included Lady Gaga in her meat dress hung on a wall next to a group of heads created papier-mâché-style from sausage casings.
The work ranged from informative to whimsical to beautiful to just plain fun. These two boys spent at least ten minutes pushing these hot dogs around. Their mother seemed a little dismayed that their direction was being diverted from the permanent collection surrounding them. Though, again, I'm not sure how much knowledge about Swiss history they would have derived from the old ski boot display.
Visitors were invited to leave a piece of sausage art of their own. I thought that the wurst with swiss cheese holes was particularly inspired.
Of course, the best interactive elements of the festival were found outside the museum walls. You could sign up for a sausage making lesson at a local butcher or attend one of the themed theater events. We simply went right next door to the attached cafe for our free wurst plates. We'd already had lunch, but the woman at the museum insisted we take advantage of the complimentary sampler which came with our entrance ticket. Merlin reported that the yellow link, hidden below the others in this photo, was his favorite. Its flavor: cheese. It was served with two varieties of Thomy mustard ( a sponsor of the festival ) some salad and a beer. When informed that I didn't eat meat and didn't particularly like beer, the waitress gave me a truly pitying look and then supplemented a large salad and glass of wine completely free of charge.

Swiss Chocolate

Switzerland, to people with a certain gustatory proclivity, must seem like heaven. There is chocolate everywhere, and much of it is supposed to be of the highest quality. Unfortunately for our readers, Rebecca and I aren't big chocolate eaters. We don't dislike it, we eat it, but it isn't an obsession for us the way it is for some people. That means we aren't going to gush about Swiss chocolate at length, and this post will be mostly about how funny some of these wrappers are. Above, the funniest. It was actually quite good. The firm, dense filling made us wonder aloud about how many tons of hazelnuts must be imported every year.
Swiss chocolate is big business, of course, and not just the export market - Swiss people reportedly eat more chocolate than anyone else in the world. I'm not sure if that's true, though, or if tourists in Switzerland just buy a huge amount. In every town center of sufficient size, it seems, there's a bustling candy store. This was the packaged and bar chocolate corner of a large chocolatier in Luzern. The Swiss produce about 150,000 tons of this stuff a year.
One of our favorites was actually this friendly looking bar from a supermarket bin in Bern. It was full of honey nougat, which stuck to our teeth in a great way. The bear was printed on the chocolate too, though more crudely and with a strange, brown leer. Most of this had to be reconstituted in front of the air-conditioning duct in our car after it had been left for a few days in the hot glove compartment.
A more unsatisfying bar, with branding that seems suspicious. It wasn't all that good, despite having a (dubious?) pedigree and bits of cornflake in it. We noticed, too late, the caffeine part of the label. It was eaten a little too late in the afternoon for me - I usually don't drink coffee past one o'clock.
A strange one. I'm not sure why the note about banana-pulp is in English. Also, I'm not sure that they were telling the truth. It was a light, fake-bannana-flavored choco-chew. Not bad, but more perplexing than satisfying.

Finally, our favorite. A curious fact: Ovaltine, the name, is actually a result of a misspelling of Ovomaltine in the British trade registry. The original company was founded in Bern, where it is still produced, and the name has remained Ovomaltine here in Switzerland. Besides the powdered malt-whey drink, the brand also produces a popular chocolate bar. It is crunchy with malt shavings, not too sweet, very creamy and delicious.

Swiss Family Gerbe

Erlebnisbauernhof Gerbe run by the Gerbe family was our home for three nights and brought us a lot of camping firsts. It was the first time we used our new camp stove. It was the first time we’ve ever surfed the web while inside our tent (WIFI) and it was our first pitch on a working farm. There were a few animals around that were clearly just for the amusement of children, like the huge fat rabbit. As far as we could tell, though, these were working cows.
The goats, we’re not so sure about. We fell in love with this tiny kid, a fuzz ball who just hopped around all the time. When a storm rolled in our second night, I seriously contemplated bringing him in to huddle up in our tent. Merlin said he’d be fine where he was and I chose to believe him.
It was the first time that we were given the option of staying in a teepee. I never got up the courage to poke my head in and see what one was like inside. (wouldn’t want to barge in on someone smoking a peace pipe or anything) The campsite had so much quirky charm that the conical huts barely stood out at all. Just behind them, on a hill, was an enormous wooden, winged horse, which children could climb up inside.
Another sleeping option was kipping – sleeping in the straw. We want to kip before leaving the country, but with our tent right there available, it seemed silly. Also, I'm not sure igniting a camp stove would have been allowed in their hayloft.

The bathroom and wash-up area were attached to the barn. No matter what time of day or night we went in, the radio was blaring - presumably to keep the cows inside calmer. It was the first campsite bathroom that didn't have that cold, public restroom feeling. The building was coed (not the showers themselves) and the farm smell covered up the off-putting scent of our "lemon" dishwashing soap. Something about sorting our trash and doing our dishes on the porch while old man Gerbe passed by with a lawn mower made us so happy. It was a little hard to leave.

Yellow Rivella

I will admit to one thing: Rivella has become something of an obsession of mine. A little while ago, I did a post on the whey and lactose based soda. While I was researching the post, though, I found out that there's such a thing as "yellow Rivella," which I hadn't come across. In addition to the red (original), blue (diet) and green (green tea) versions, there was also the yellow - soy based, vegan - variety. Since learning about this, I've been checking mini and super market shelves for the stuff.
Finally, we found it. The label looks different than the other types, which might be why we didn't spot it earlier. It tastes different too, but not as much as one might expect. Rebecca thought it tasted alright - she said it reminded her of Mountain Dew - but decided that it smelled too awful to drink. I thought it was fine, but I'm not making the switch from Rivella red. The featured ingredient is soy, of course, so it's safe to say that we could call it a soy-milk soda, which sounds even grosser than milk-soda.

Verkershaus Der Schweiz

The Verkershaus Der Schweiz complex (otherwise known as the transportation museum) is the most popular museum in Switzerland. It's easy to see why. The exhibits are beautifully designed, interesting and engaging. We spent more time there than at any other museum on the trip, I think, and had a blast.
One of the immediately captivating exhibits is the one on cars and motorcycles. The vehicles are displayed in a huge, automated-parking system of shelves. A viewing station is set up where people can vote on the next car to be taken down and brought close. It was endlessly fascinating to see the huge trays slid in and out of their slots.
Trains, of course, took up a whole hall. There were a lot of people there just for the this section of the museum, if the number of conductor hats was any indication. One locomotive had been cut in two down the middle so that the inner workings of the steam chamber and engine could be seen. This "chocolate car" was pretty and was dwarfed by the larger carriages around it.
Being a Swiss museum, there was a whole floor of one building dedicated to ski lifts. A few gondolas, trams and t-bars were set up.
There was also a whole shipping building, a flight building and a large outdoor space where they had a 747 and some bungee trampolines. In the airplane hall, two flight simulator machines were drawing a crowd. We waited almost half an hour to fly the fighter jet thing, which spun upside-down and backwards and made us laugh harder than we expected it to.
One of the cooler things there, though it was slightly tangential to transportation, was a large room with a highly detailed map of Switzerland on the floor. Kids shuffled around in slippers, looking through microscopes at Bern and Luzern and the Alps. The image was put together from satellite photos taken of the country, and was pretty cool.
The whole museum was great fun: it seemed like every exhibit was surprising and put forward in a wholly new way. The curatorial work was more impressive, I think, than the collection, and that wasn't a bad thing. If you have an afternoon in Luzern, it's certainly worth tearing yourself away from the waterside to check out.

Show Me A Sign

There are enough marked walking trails in Switzerland to stretch around the Earth twice. Which means that there are a heck of a lot of markers. Great wanderkarts exist and can be found everywhere, but most of the time, all you need to do is follow the signs.
My favorite signs include the amount of time it will take to complete the trail. Not only does this allow you to look up and choose your path a la carte, but it gives you a time to beat. I’m sure not everyone sees the numbers as a challenge, but we sure do. Three hours and twenty minutes, you say? Pfft! We did it in 2:55.
Signs also give you a sort of relationship with the trail. You see a yellow fleck in the distance or the back of a clump of them, like above, and you scurry ahead to see if it says what you hope it says. Calling back to your walking partner that you’re going the right way is a great feeling.
It’s usually just when you’re thinking, “Damn, I hope we didn’t make a wrong turn” or “there hasn’t been a sign for a while,” that a marker pops up. Sometimes it’s just a sticker with a little Swiss walker on it.
Sometimes it’s a blaze painted on a tree or rock
Sometimes, a sign does more to confuse than to lead. Little walker man usually means to walk - - but he’s in a red circle, which usually means not to enter - - but there’s no red slash across the walking man. Ultimately, the huge tractor digging up the earth right beyond this sign gave the final word in the argument. Do not walk.
Like everywhere else in Europe, street signs are still terribly lacking here, but highway signs are definitely plentiful, as shown by this display at the Transportation Museum.
Little signs, big signs, yellow signs, green. They’re everywhere. Even where you’d least expect them.

Gypsy Kitchens: A Campstove at Last

We have put off buying a campstove for a long while. Not because we didn't want one - we really did - but because we couldn't find the right one. Finally, after about a month of searching, we came to grips with the fact that they simply don't have what we were looking for in Europe. Well, who cares. Our new Campingaz Camp Bistro one-burner is great. Two nights ago, at our campsite in Meierskappel, near Lucerne, we used it to cook a delicious, extremely fast meal of spätzle with tomatoes and sardines.
It was a Sunday dinner that was put together from things that we had lying around the car and that we could find at the local Coop store by a Shell station. We were unprepared for how closed down Switzerland is on Sundays - the Coop was the only food market we could find, and it was somewhat limited. The sardines we had, along with oil and garlic and the spices we used. I am now not entirely sure what seemed appealing about these fish when we bought them. They were entirely serviceable in our dinner, despite what they looked like. We bought tomatoes and an onion and - a miracle - a package of fresh spätzle. We won't bore you with the details of the supper. This post isn't really about what we made, but about where and how we made it.
We are often asked why we don't put more pictures of our accommodations on the blog. Most of the time, unfortunately, the places we stay aren't all that interesting. When it's warm enough, though, this is our home. A little tent for a bedroom, a little table for a kitchen and some kind of grassy spot in between.

It's exciting to have some means of cooking with heat. Whenever we've camped, the smells of various suppers cooked in the RV's around us has made us envious beyond belief. Cold salads and sandwiches are nice enough and satisfying to a degree, but we always long for the scent and sound of a sauteing onion.
Here's the dinner we made on Sunday. In retrospect, it looks a little dense and simple. At the time, however, it made us incredibly happy. A new chapter had been begun, we felt, and visions of a summer spent barefoot on the grass, spatula in hand, leapt into our heads. Last night, of course, it was hailing. We ate glumly indoors, our kitchen packed away, our tent miserable and sodden in the elements.

A quick note about the food - the spätzle was cooked without water, using only the liquid from the cooked tomatoes (they were cooked, the piece on top is garnish) and olive oil. We flaked and added the sardines at the end, so that they wouldn't get too mushy. It was much better than it looked. Then again, everything cooked outdoors tastes great.

Bern, Noticed

Bern is not Switzerland's largest city (Zurich) or its most well known (arguably, Geneva), but it is the country's de facto capital. I'm not exactly sure what separates it from being its capital sans the "de facto," but I keep seeing it referred to that way. We haven't been to either of the other aforementioned cities, so there's no way to make a comparison or a stern statement about Bern's supremacy - but, I do think it probably deserves a little more notice than it currently gets.

On a Saturday morning, we planned to visit some museums. There's the apartment Einstein lived in when developing his theory of relativity. The are world class art museums. But with the weather and the city being so darn pretty, we just wound up wandering around. In the span of an hour, we saw teenagers brown bagging it at the Rosengarten, a juggling mime, an accordion player, 20-somethings advertising "FREE HUGS" and a quartet of yodelers who chose their street locations with acoustic savvy. We couldn't tell if this was just an average weekend for Bernies or if something special was infusing the goings on with festiveness. Either way, the city just oozed character.
We climbed up the highest cathedral in Switzerland to get a good look at the whole Saturday scene. Bern consistently ranks in the top 10 cities, worldwide, with the best standard of living. Looking down on this family naptime alongside the river Aare, I could believe it. Seriously, though, there's under 4% unemployment and over 73% of the population have a university degree or higher. Momma Switzerland must be proud. No wonder its her 'de facto' favorite.
Just our luck, a Saturday market stretched through half of the city's streets. Billed as a "Fruit, Vegetable and Flower Market," it also included dried meats, baked goods, tapenades, jams and lots of cheese. The cheese carts were odorrific and showcased French and Spanish prizes alongside the abundant Swiss selection. We decided to direct our eyes and noses toward the flora, where vendors gathered magnificent bouquets while making small talk.
It was second nature for them to just grab a sprig of this to compliment a bunch of that and hand over something luscious and beautiful to a happy customer. It's moments like this that make you wish you had a home with a table and a vase so that you could fill it (and the fridge) with all the market had to offer. People rode their bikes away with paper cones filled with lilacs strapped to the back or loaded apples into the carriage next to their baby. Some men napped in parked cars with the trunks popped open in anticipation of their wives' return with full arms.
Like everywhere else in Switzerland, the best views of the marketplace were most likely aerial. This little Swiss Mister seemed to have picked out exactly what he wanted most, while his booster chair/father shopped for asparagus. Spargeln (as its called in German, the language spoken in this region of Switzerland) has been everywhere. Between them and the lilacs, it definitely feels like we are at the height of Spring.
At the bus station, a man handed out balloons to anyone that would take them - and we watched in dismay as one, then another, then another were carelessly let go into the air. Some kid's weak grasp or teenager's boredom with holding onto the thing just choked a whale in an ocean somewhere. Such a shame. This woman waited for the next red cable car to arrive.

Bürgenstock Felsenweg

Maybe we expected something a little more difficult, but we certainly couldn't have hoped for anything more picturesque. On a bright, hot mayday - equipped with hiking shoes and backpacks - we took a beautiful stroll along the Bürgenstock Felsenweg. "Felsenweg" translates to "cliff trail." I think that's a pretty good name for it.
The trailhead is actually located in the parking lot of the Bürgenstock resort. For the first twenty minutes, hotels are about the only interesting things to see. This is a popular tourist area, high up above lake Lucerne, and the early going was crowded with people taking their Sunday walk. Gradually, the path began to empty and climb gently, and the views began to open up.
The felsenweg was made between 1900 and 1905, primarily for the benefit of the Bürgenstock Hotel guests. Much of the back side of it was blasted and chipped out of the rock face that soars up above Lucerne's waters. Here, the cliffs are close to 1,500 feet high, and the feeling of looking outwards is closer to that of flying than anything terrestrial.
Eventually, at the point where two trails converge, we came across a rather terrifying contraption. Built at the same time that the trail was, the Hammetschwand lift is the highest freestanding elevator in Europe, and services the very summit of Mount Bürgenstock. It costs ten francs per person, which is outrageous considering that the ride only lasts fifty seconds. But it's worth it. In less than a minute, the little glass box rises over four hundred and fifty feet, which is dizzying. My ears popped twice, actually.

At the top, without much ceremony, we were dumped out onto a high platform at the top of the rock. There's a pub-like place there- people were drinking beer and the overriding scent was of sausage cooking. We used the bathroom and then began our descent, on foot, down the back way.
If you plan on going, don't bother with hiking equipment. It's an easy walk and some women were even doing it in pumps (though, of course, they were struggling). The trail is well marked, but you'll hardly have to look at the signs. Most of the way, the felsenweg resembles a pleasant sidewalk, albeit with great views.