Luzern, Geneva, and the Return to the Island

Hopefully I can wrap up the retelling of my adventures in this post, so that I can get back to telling you about life on campus. To be truthful, however, there hasn't been that much to report, as the sad realization that classes only continue for one more month couples with the realization that I have four research papers due at the end of that month, which means most of my spare time is spent in the library or in my flat rifling through books in an attempt to get these papers done as soon as possible so I can go back to having fun in my life. I will report that we have recently purchased tickets to see Romeo and Juliet at the Globe Theatre in May. The Globe is a recreation of Shakespeare's original theatre, so that audiences can get a taste of how a production looked and felt when it was first performed (right down to 5 pound standing area--though we opted for seats instead).

But on to the main attraction.

We arrived in Luzern on Tuesday night, after a lengthy day of train travel. It was snowing, which was both beautiful and frustrating, as we had to lug our suitcases from the bus stop to the hostel, no mean feat on slippery walkways. Thankfully, Switzerland's transportation system is MUCH better than Italy's. In Rome, stops went unannounced, meaning you had to either know the route well enough to know where your stop was, or guess and hope it was the right one. In Switzerland, not only are the stops announced, but all the buses are equipped with monitors that show the route, the next four or five stops, and which routes you can transfer to at the upcoming stops. So much less stressful to deal with.

On Wednesday, we decided to do the tourist version of Luzern, seeing the historic sites and taking lots of pictures. It was then that we discovered that Fasnacht, Luzern's winter carnival (designed to scare away the winter spirits), was scheduled to take place the next day! You can imagine our amusement when we discovered that we were basically hopping from country to country, going from party to party.

By far my favorite site in Luzern was the Lion Monument. Carved into a cliff face, it is a memorial to Swiss mercenaries who died in the French Revolution.



As you can tell by my second picture, it was VERY cold in Luzern, much colder than we had anticipated. I ended up wearing close to five layers on the second day, and was still not completely warm.

Thursday was a full agenda for us. We got up early to see the sites at Fasnacht, which were some of the craziest antics I've ever seen. Essentially, Fasnacht is a city-wide festival, where everyone dresses up, there's a marching band on every street and in every plaza, and an open bar every few feet. It literally ran all day, and we could easily have spent our time in Luzern just wandering about Fasnacht, enjoying the insanity. We didn't, however, as we had already scheduled a different activity: SKIING!

That's right, Caitlin's first time skiing EVER was on the slopes of the Alps. We took an hour-long train ride to Engleberg, where we rented ski equipment and took a tram to the bus route. As four out of six of us had never skiied before, we started on the "easy" slopes (easy in name only, IMO). Hilary and Vanessa did their best to teach us how to do such trivial manuevers as stopping, but there's a point where you've just got to get out there and try it yourself. And oh my, what dubious results. After a glorious first run where I did everything perfectly, I was convinced skiing was a piece of cake. On my second run however, I ended up having to choose between crashing into the ski lift or a snow bank (I chose the latter) and had to reevaluate my initial assessment. Luckily I walked away with no broken bones (but several nice bruises). It was a glorious day, with the sun shining and a clear blue sky, and was great fun; skiing was over much too quickly.


We spent the night back in Luzern enjoying more of Fasnacht (which hadn't calmed down a bit since we left), but turned in early so we could get up in time for our early train to Geneva. We only spent one day there, but the goal was to cut up our train travel to Paris, where our flight was leaving from. With our Eurail passes, it was much cheaper to take a train and fly out of Paris than it was to fly out of Switzerland. At least, it was initally. As luck would have it, when we showed up at the train station ticket window the day before we were to leave Geneva, we found that they were all out of Eurail spots to Paris. Instead, we would have to Eurail to Lyon and then pay for a ticket to Paris. Forced with remaining in Geneva for the forseeable future or returning to England, we forked over the cash.

Geneva was still a good time. We would have visited the UN, but found a protest of considerable size going on outside, which both shut down the UN to visitors and ruined our photo opportunities. Not to worry, as instead we went to CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) where they keep a giant supercollider. While most of it went over my head, there were enough engineering majors in the group that it was a must-see spot.

After another night of wandering another city, looking at hotels named for Woodrow Wilson and Swiss Banks, we turned in early again, as Saturday included getting up at 5 AM to be sure to be at the train station for our 7 AM train (no mean feat when traveling in a large group). A whirlwind day of running from train platform to trainplatform, figuring out Paris's underground train (luckily everyone besides me spoke at least some French), landing in London Luton Airport, Taking a train to St. Pancras, a tube to Mile End, and the ordeal of lugging my suitcase up four flights of stairs, and I was able to collapse on my bed. Whew!

Thus ends my tale of my week on the Continent. I'm sure I've left out dozens of stories, but I can tell you all about them when I return to the States!

For now, here are my albums:

Fasnacht!
Luzern--the historic side
Out in the Cold...in Switzerland
Skiing!
Winding Down in Geneva

Enjoy!