Mt Titlis & Lucerne, Switzerland

Wake up, wake up! I know it's been boring recently. I fell asleep writing the last few posts. I told you, the pretty northern cities of Europe are proper and perfect and clean and efficient and livable but boring. Guided organized tours make them even more so because they whisk you here and there just to take photos, never giving you time to explore and enjoy the places. Guided tours also take you to the same old places, such as Mt Titlis.

 Snow mountains, green rolling hills, no poverty and political neutrality made Switzerland the dream country, especially in the 70s when I was growing up. Switzerland still is the dream country for the people of India and Indians choose Switzerland over any other country as a tourist destination. That's what Rick Steves said in his book, Rick Steves' Europe. Rick was right because when we got to Mt Titlis, the bus coaches, the ski lifts and the restaurants were filled with Indians, the ladies still in their saris. You see how seriously the Swiss take the Indians when you go to the crappy restaurant of the ski resort and the food's all Indian.

Mt Titlis ranks as the biggest tourist trap on my trip. For 55 euros, you take a ski lift ride up to the ski resort where you step out onto dirty old snow.  The resort was probably in its heydays in the 60s and the restaurant, the shops, the silly ice cave that plays the national anthem of Malaysia, Switzerland, India and China (so you know who goes to Mt Titlis) are all  dilapidated and dated. Mt Titlis, the ski resort, is like an ex-beauty queen, a has-been. The mountains are beautiful, no doubt, but the resort is clearly abandoned by serious skiers and only silly tourists bother to visit and take photos to show the folks back home that they've been on a snow mountain.

Switzerland and Austria had the most beautiful scenery of all the places I'd been to thus far. I've never seen grass as green as those on the hills of Austria and Switzerland. Northern Italy shares some border with Switzerland and when the houses on the hills suddenly turn from being orderly and picture-perfect to bricky, rustic, old and densely spaced, you know you've crossed into Italian territory. Oh, btw, on the way to Switzerland, we passed through Liechtenstein, one of the 7 smallest countries in Europe. Nothing there.

 

 

I told you. Even the cut-out figures were of Indian actors and actresses.

From there, we were taken to Swarovski's headquarters where we shopped for the latest glass figurines at prices lower than anywhere else.

Our next stop was Lucerne, another place where we stayed a couple of hours only.

 

 

Our tour group consisted of mainly Chinese from China, a couple of Americans, Canadians (hi Ann & Harvey!Miss you guys!) and Hong Kongers. What was I wearing? I ran out of clean clothes.

It seems like the only place of interest in Lucerne is The Lion Of Lucerne, a carving of a wounded lion on a stone cliff. The carving of the lion is there to commemorate the massacre of about 800 Swiss Guards during the French revolution in 1792.

I found Switzerland the most expensive place of all. We wanted to try cheese fondue but couldn't find any restaurant that served that, except for one which was very expensive and totally empty. In the end, we settled for a giant burger in one of the pubs by the river. The meal above, including one beer, cost 25 euros/RM100/US$32. We beat the high price by sharing the meal. Another tip for surviving Europe.