Part II

So there’s this lion carved into rock in Lucerne. It commemorates the Swiss Guards who died in 1792 during the French Revolution when they tried to help King Louis XVI. Designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen and hewn in 1820–21 by Lukas Ahorn, it’s one of the most famous monuments in Switzerland, visited annually by about 1.4 million tourists.

My husband and I visited the lion the day after we arrived in Lucerne, a Sunday. At one side of the monument there were some pictures of American GIs looking at the lion after WWII. Of course this interested me, as did the fact that Mark Twain thought it one of the most “mournful” monuments in the world. The lion has been around a long time.

The next day we took a train ride from Lucerne to Mt. Pilatus, a towering Alp. We took the cogwheel train up (the steepest in the world, which was fun in itself.) Unfortunately the day was so cloudy and rainy, we could see little of anything from the top. Before we hiked around Mt. Pilatus, we were standing outside in a cloud, bemoaning a bit that we could see so little of the grandeur of this vista. I thought I heard something below, just after a man at the station played his alphorn. Tingling, clanging, and jingling. Invisible cows, probably in the hundreds, were moving below us, coming up the mountain to graze. Their cowbells were jingling and clanging. This musical sound occurring while I was staring into a sea of white mist was just magical and meditative. I could listen to that sound without seeing anything for hours. (Sorry, I had trouble trying to insert that little movie I recorded here. I have a lot to learn about WordPress.) We hiked around Pilatus and saw some mountain goats above us–how do they get up to these heights?

Eventually we went down the mountain in a smooth riding cable car, also fun but for the condensation of the clouds on the glass. At the bottom, we met an Indian family, a couple with a tween girl. The husband informed us we could catch a quicker bus back to Lucerne if we followed them instead of waiting there at the station. As we did, he struck up a conversation with me. It turned out they live in Long Island. I told him we lived in Cincinnati. He said he had toured Zurich the day before, and that real estate could not be found for under a million dollars (he was talking about real estate in terms of buying a house in Zurich.)

Then his wife asked me, “What’s there to do in Lucerne?”

I said, “You can look at the medieval bridge.

“Yes, I saw that.”

“You can go see the Lion.”

“What lion?” the young girl asked.

“There’s a lion carved in rock that was made long ago after the Swiss Guard suffered losses in the French Revolution…” I continue to talk about the lion but eventually noticed that the wife and daughter began to walk more quickly away from me and the husband began to drift more slowly behind me. I stopped talking about the lion. It didn’t seem to interest them. Could it be that I was boring them to death? I felt a little warm around the neck. It was a humid day but I suddenly felt my face flush with shame for boring them so that they wanted anything but to hear about the lion.

At the bus stop there was a pharmacy. In Switzerland, the pharmacies are not like CVS or Walgreen’s. They tend to sell skin products. I kept my mouth shut and did not say anything further about the lion.

The wife said, “Ooh, let’s go inside and look.”

The husband said, “No, let’s not. The bus is coming.”

After a moment, the wife began to walk into the shop. The young daughter followed her, giving an apologetic backwards glance to her father, who resignedly went in after them. They did not get on the bus back to Lucerne with us. When I last looked, the wife had engaged a saleslady to help her sample the products.

If I need to point it out to you, that was the chuckle I promised. We spent two and half days in Lucerne. I think we needed only one and half days, in order to see Mt. Pilatus. Just sayin’.