Europe Trip Part 6 - Switzerland

We need not have taken the trouble to get the Swiss Visa at all, I guess, because no one checked as we entered Swiss from Italy.
The drive to Lucerne next day, was slow because it was snowing and foggy.
We crossed Lake Lugano enroute. It was a huge lake. The bus drove along the periphery of the lake, and we were able to see the lake in its entirety. The lake was surrounded my small mountains.





Once we crossed Italy and entered Switzerland, it was like entering God's own country. It was out of the world.

We drove through Alpine mountain range. The little we could see amidst the fog, was beautiful views, mountains and valleys,

A picture is worth a thousand words. So I am skipping writing a few words here.





It was snow capped mountains, not tiny ones, like what we saw in Colorado and Utah, but huge ones, all the way till we reached our destination. It was like being in a movie, or inside a picture. I keep thinking that I am done with clicking enough pictures, but I kept seeing more beautiful views which I wanted to capture.



And as I was busy with my camcorder taping away, I did partially hear what Luc had to say about Switzerland and its people. Switzerland was kind of a no-mans land for a while before the masses of people from neighbouring countries started migrating. Siwtzerland is surrounded by five countries, Italy, Germany, Austria, France, and Liechtenstein. And since Switzerland is largely made of migrants, there are four languages spoken, in the four regions of Switzerland. In the parts closer to Italy, they speak Italian, in the parts closer to France, they speak French, a major population speaks German, and the remaining speak Romansh.

We went through a lot of mountain tunnels. These were long tunnels. The largest was supposed to be about 10 minutes. I can totally believe that, seeing these huge mountain ranges, that I could see till in end of my seeing zone. As we entered Switzerland, we were obviously in the Italian speaking zone, where everything was written in Italian, and we then we crossed this tunnel and Lo! it was the German zone. Everything, the directions, boards were in German. German writing I should say looks strict. And sounds harsh to the ears. And we could not understand it at all, even a few syllables here and there like Italian. Lucerne was located in the German zone.

Swiss folks were mostly farmers, now I guess most of them are involved in tourism, but the few things Swiss is famous for are the Swiss knifes and the Swiss watches. Of course not leaving Banking.



With so much snow, one would think the springs and little channels of water bodies would have gotten frozen to ice, like in Wisconsin, where the whole lake freezes and people can walk over it. But that was not the case here. The weather was a decent cold, and it was picturesque to see a little spring running by the road, completing the picture image.





As was the case with every place we visited, I could not just imagine, people actually living there. With a view of the amazing Alps out their window. How lucky would they be?

As we reached Lucerne, we drove past another lake. Lucerne was located at its banks. I just have no words to describe the beauty, and out-of-the-world-ness of this place.





We first visited the famous Lion Monument, and then some Swiss watch shops.

We reached our hotel close to noon, just left our bags with the bell-boy and proceeded towards Mt.Pilates.

[Gee, writing about it makes me want to go there again! ]