Apfelsaft in a Wine Bottle

5:47 PM Lucerne

                WE’RE FINALLY IN LUCERNE! IT’S EVERYTHING WE HAD HOPED IT’D BE! Everything went SO smoothly this morning that it almost felt like this how travelling is for people who aren’t as naturally as unlucky as we are! We got up at 5AM – so early – and I had had maybe two hours of sleep because there was a huge shift and people staying in our room and all the newbies felt the need to introduce themselves and small talk in the room at 11PM the night that we have to be up at 5.  With maybe a total of 2 or 3 hours of sleep at best, we got up to head to the train station.

                Before I go on about our travels to Switzerland, Andy thought I should mention a funny conversation we overheard yesterday at dinner.  Seeing as the blog is called Two Engineers Take on Europe and so far, nothing has really mentioned why being an engineer would make us any different than ordinary college aged travelers.  Yesterday at dinner there were four middle aged people at a table, a Canadian couple and a Dutch couple.  The Canadian woman was talking about all sorts of topics that she really didn’t know much about but one made Andy and I stop our conversation to listen to her.  It went something like this “… well in Greece you see solar panels everywhere! We need to do something more like that. Say, I have a black hose that I use to water my plants and in the summer, it absorbs so much heat that it takes like 15 minutes of running the water for it to cool off again! I should be able to run this hose along my roof and use the heated water for my house!” lol, right?  A whole lot is wrong with this idea… even entertaining the fact that it actually did take 15 minutes of running water to get to cold water again (I think our hose is 45 seconds at most in the summer), that would be enough water for maybe ¾’s of one person’s daily shower?  Also the whole point of a parabolic solar trough is to take advantage of more area to collect the sun’s energy and focus is on a section of a pipe – therefore getting more energy per unit length.  The pipe (or hose??) doesn’t have enough surface area to absorb radiation to make it an efficient system.  Winding your black hose around your roof for your water supply? So silly. Anyway, these are the kind of things we’re talking about regularly.

                Getting back to our travels to Switzerland and onto my next rant about hating the US company called Rail Europe or Eurail.  This is the company I bought my train passes from (about $444 each, btw).  The website is absurd and tries to make it seem like they’re making your life SO much easier by allowing you to do everything through them and not through the European rail companies, while nickel and diming you all the way through.  Here are my guidelines for taking the trains in Europe:

   1.       If you plan on taking the train (high speed or normal) more than 4 times in one trip, it’s worth your while to buy a rail pass from Rail Europe

   2.       Here’s where it gets tricky – some rail companies in Europe require “seat reservations” and some don’t.  If you don’t make reservations (ie, just hop on with your rail pass), you can be fined, in some cases.  Rail Europe likes to say, just make your reservations through us! No problem! So Andy and I try (not wanting to repeat our cargo hold train ride) try to reserve our seats for our long ride to Munich this week.  Rail Europe tries to charge us $13 each for the reservations and then another $36 shipping and handling… and get this… the ONLY OPTION for s&h was overnight shipping to my house in Waukegan. What.

   3.       Andy and I, furious at this point, say forget it. We’ll deal with this at the station

   4.       When you go to the train station, your first stop should be the information counter. They always speak great English! Present your Rail Pass and Passport and they will activate it for you.

   5.       At this same counter, make all your seat reservations.  Most of the times you don’t need one and these people will KNOW (better than freaking rail Europe) when you need one and when you don’t.  Oh and the cost? 5 Swiss Francs. Or approximately $5 and some change.

So after taking a train from Amsterdam Central to Schipol Airport, we hopped on our Easyjet flight to Basel Switzerland (one hour, nbd), hopped off, hopped on the 50 Bus to Basel SBB train station, got our rail passes activated and hopped on the 10:17 train to Lucerne.  So easy.  In Lucerne, we stopped in the Swiss Travel Agency who took care of all our seat reservations through Munich (absolutely no hassle and CHF 10 total cost).  My advice? Don’t be afraid of the European rail companies. ESPECIALLY in Switzerland! Haha. This country really has it together.  The American company is nickel and diming you for crap like reservations and such – also reading their schedule is difficult and frustrating.  They’re the only company you can get the passes through, though, so just get your passes and handle the rest through the European companies.

It was raining in Lucerne by the time we got there, so the walk to the hostel was pretty grey and wet.  We’re literally staying in a dorm that has the bottom two floors as a hostel.  We have our own balcony and we’re 2 minutes walking from the beach!  We walked up to old town and saw the famous Lucerne bridge and bought some lunch from a bakery and some fruit from a market.  We bought a bottle of wine on a whim because it was such a good deal… only to find out it was actually apple juice.  Andy’s German is pretty rusty… “ apfelsaft” is apple juice. Not wine. Who puts apple juice in a wine bottle?! Anyway, as I write this, I’m swigging my juice from a wine bottle. Picture that.

        Everything is expensive here… we knew that coming in.  Two peaches and two nectarines cost us CHF 5.60 (about 1 to 1 with dollars) and our sandwiches were CHF 5.80 each.  We also bought huge slabs of chocolate which was really not cheap… CHF 22.70… buttttt we’re in Switzerland and it was made right here! The Lindor truffles are only CHF 2.80 for a box, though. WOW. The town is mostly peaceful and full of locals… but the bridge… just loaded with crazy tourists! It’s like the busses just dropped them off right there and that’s all they do. 

        Back at the hostel, we walked to the beach and ate our sandwiches and stalked by a very angry swan (what is it with these birds?)… who actually scared us away.  He was terrifying and charging all the other birds.  So obnoxious.  When the coast was clear of devil swans, we enjoyed the rest of our food and the view… our view was the lake and many churches, homes and other buildings scattered along the hillside.  On the other side, our view was picture esque mountains with snowy tops and clouds formed around them.  None of the pictures I took did it justice.  Switzerland is breathtakingly beautiful.