Milk, Yogurt, and Cream Cheese

Monday was a really busy day. We met at the train station at about 8am and took the train to Bern, where we had an organization visit then 3 hours free before our train to Luzern. In the morning before leaving I met up with Erin and Ria at this bakery that we love in Rolle, and I got myself a sandwich for lunch. They only had cheese and foie (liver) sandwiches so I went with the cheese. Turns out it was a sandwich with slices of brie I think and lettuce and tomato and it was really, really good. We sat and ate our lunch in Bern watching some old Swiss men play life-size checkers, then wandered towards the bear pits. We passed Münster, this famous church that was pretty magnificent, but it wasn’t open to go inside. We had to cross the river to get to the bear pits, and luckily for us it was a beautiful sunny day with blue skies, and the trees all around were turning colors. Erin thought we should be able to see the mountains but it was kind of hazy and unfortunately we couldn’t. Then we got to Bern’s famous bear pits – bern means bear in German, and the pits have been there since 1513, when the “victorious Bernese soldiers brought a bear back from the Battle of Novara,” according to my Switzerland book. They were kind of sad because it was a couple of bears literally living in a pit with some dirt and trees, and people can buy “treats” of fruit and feed them. The bears were really cute though, we wanted to cuddle with them except for the fact that they had giant scary claws.

Walking back towards the train station we stopped in this cool store that is sort of like a wine bar in the U.S. but it also had olive oil tasting and a bunch of homemade alcohols like crème liquors and cognacs and whiskeys and kirsch and grappa, which I learned is made from distilled grapes. It’s not wine because of the distillation process (according to the girl I talked to), since the grapes aren’t pressed. Anyway you get to taste whatever you want and then if you want to buy anything you pick your size and type of glass container and they fill it up and cork it right there for you. I ended up getting this chocolate cream liquor that was basically like chocolate syrup, and I’m sure would be delicious on like ice cream sundaes or in baking maybe. We also saw Einstein’s house, but didn’t take a tour because it cost 6 Francs and we didn’t really have time. Finally we went to Merker, this amazing chocolate store that I think is a chain in Switzerland but it’s like this amazing giant store of chocolate! Erin and I joked about how our goal is to visit all the Merker stores in Switzerland, which we’ve already done so far in all the cities we’ve been to.

Then we hopped on the train to Luzern, took a bus to our hostel, and checked in. Afterwards we grabbed dinner, and really wanted to try some German food like spatzli and schnitzel and streudel. Well we didn’t find a ton of German restaurants in Luzern, and the few we did were often not in our price range. Originally we were going to go to this restaurant place that does folklore performances with the costumes and traditional music and dancing but knowing our timing it was closed until the day after we left. We ended up finding this place called Pinocchio’s restaurant run by this lady who took our order and cooked our food in the small kitchen right next to us, but the place was very cozy and named after her dog and there were all these Pinocchio puppets and decorations on the wall. We all got pork sausage with roasted potatoes, and it was very German and very delicious. For dessert we went to the Mövenpick restaurant we found – Mövenpick is one of the main brands of ice cream here and it is freakin delicious. I got this sundae with a scoop each of pistachio, hazelnut, and maple ice cream, and it was so so yummy. I decided I have quite the love for all things hazelnutty or amaretto, which works out well since there are a lot of praline/hazelnut-flavored things here in Switzerland. We hung out there for a while and just talked, then were tired from our long day and went back to the hostel to watch the new episodes of Grey’s Anatomy I had downloaded to my computer

I was pretty much in love with Luzern from the night we spent there, even though I hadn’t city yet, and even though I don’t understand any German! The city is really beautiful and peaceful, situated in the heart of Switzerland by a lake and right next to the Swiss Alps and Interlaken. Tuesday we got a tour of the old city, where we learned about how the frescos on some of the older homes and buildings were symbols of wealth and also often advertising, such as for jewelry-makers, or they would show what the owners did such as being soldiers or their handiwork. We also saw this pretty, old Jesuit church and I learned that 70% of Luzern is Catholic and that there were lots of weddings there such as one this summer during which the whole place was covered in sunflowers, and I took both of those as signs that I had to come back and see and live in Luzern. Unfortunately again our timing sucked as it was raining the entire day, and during our whole sojourn in Luzern we didn’t see ANY alps. For lunch we searched for cheap food at the train station, and I just got a quiche and potato salad. We went to the train station because we wanted to plan our trip to Interlaken, but then we learned that the weather wasn’t looking too good and we didn’t want to waste a trip to Interlaken if we weren’t going to be able to see any of the amazing views. However after hearing about the snow in the mountains and visiting a sports store during our shopping I really wanted to go skiing!

We saw the famous Chapel bridge and market that was required for Luzern to be constituted as a city, as well as a little bit of the city fortifications from way back when. Most of the afternoon was spent shopping since it rained and was freezing cold all day, but Luzern was a pretty good shopping place, especially in the main part of town. I mostly got souvenirs, as well as a few things for myself since I found a LUSH store!!! They have these new solid products like solid shampoo and solid perfume which were created with the concept of being easy to travel with. I bought some of the shampoo and it was really cool, it’s like a bar of soap but you rub it on your hair then lather it and it actually foams, which I didn’t expect. It was cool, plus everything from Lush smells delicious. This time Orlando joined Erin, Ria, and I, and he wanted to go to Pinocchio’s so we went back there for dinner and this time I got Viennese sausages which kind of tasted like hotdogs but with tougher skin, and homemade potato salad. We also went back to Mövenpick for dessert because it was so amazing, although we felt slightly lame for doing the same thing two nights in a row. It’s okay though, the food was good both nights, this time I got a Passion-fruit Mango Lassito, which is sort of like lassi – it had 2 scoops of ice cream, yogurt, and buttermilk blended together. We left this morning on our way back to the Geneva area, and it was disappointing that we never got to see any mountains which look so amazing in the pictures, but I think I would have been upset if today was a nice day and we had decided against going to Interlaken. I hope to go back anyway when my parents come, and do some skiing even in the Swiss alps!! Anyway, I absolutely fell in love with Luzern and can’t wait to go back… hopefully with the prospects of better weather! Fall in Switzerland is absolutely beautiful, we have been passing these hills covered in red, gold, and orange trees and I think now we are pulling out of Bern. I can’t believe it’s already going to be November… I only hope it isn’t too lonely since we don’t have classes together so we might not see anyone, but I think we’re going to try and make plans to do library trips together and get lunch and stuff during the day so we aren’t all alone. I’m home for a couple of days then I leave for Barcelona!! Auf wiederschen!