Missing life in Luzern

My things are packed, the apartment (almost) clean and ready for handover.  I have been reflecting on what I am about to leave behind - not just the place but the lifestyle.  I feel truly lucky to have lived this life in this place and hope that I'm able to carry some of this back with me to combat the hustle and bustle of US life.  At the risk of changing my mind here are some things I will miss about my life here in Luzern:

* Walking to the corner bakery (and there is one on every corner) for a fresh bit of something something for breakfast

* Getting a spontaneous call from a friend to meet up for a drink in 10 minutes

* Sitting at outdoor cafes

* The 22% tax rate

* Farmers market twice per week

* Stunning views of an Alp ringed lake outside my office window

* My 10 minute walking commute to work

* My clean happy white loft apartment and it's fab roofdeck

* Church bells marking the hour

* Sundays where you are forced to just enjoy yourself because nothing is open except above mentioned outdoor cafes

* Good yogurt

* Good jam

* Having a working wood fireplace

* Walking on cobblestones every day
* Being surrounded by 400 year old painted buildings

 

* Christmas market
* Hearing alpenhorns and yodeling in one of the old plazas

* Pretzel bread

* Being no more than a 2 hour flight from all the most interesting places in Europe

* Being free of the hassles of car ownership

* Experiencing winter without wind chill factors or snow boots

* Catching sight of the little old lady in the red Pope car
* Summer festivals - especially Blue Balls

* Witnessing Fasnacht (but once is enough)

* And soaking in the natural beauty all around me every day.  When I moved here I promised myself I would never take it for granted.  And I never did.

If you don't like the weather, wait a minute...

Like my fellow New Englanders I grew up claiming the most changeable weather on earth.  We New Englanders like to bemoan our erratic weather almost as much as we complain about our sports teams letting us down.  But New England has nothing on Switzerland for changeable weather.

In fact, the weather in Switzerland is not at all what you'd expect.  Let me guess... you're picturing sunny springs with wildflower covered rolling hills, cold snowy winters to put Boston to shame, Alpine peaks rising sharply white against a crisp blue sky, and a dreamy mild summertime where temps don't get much past 80.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I was interested to discover that summer can be brutally hot here.  I moved here in June 06.  That July was one of the hottest on record with temps almost every day in the 90s.  But here's the thing.  On August 1 the temps dropped to 60 and rainy to the surprise and frustration of my poor sister who came to visit that day for 2 weeks vacation in August with only tank tops, shorts and bathing suits in her suitcase after my warnings that she would need to try to stay cool.  Off we went to the store to buy her a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt in which she sulked for the next 2 drizzly overcast weeks.

And I was prepared for winter.  I mean, I'm a Boston girl!  I had the heavy coat, the snow boots, scarves and gloves galore.  I was prepared for whipping winds stabbing me during my 15 minute walk to and from work.  By December I was tired of waiting for the cold to arrive and left layers at home so avoid getting to the office sweaty and red-faced. My snow boots 4 winters later have never been used - the most snow I've ever seen on the ground is maybe 3 inches and that is usually gone by morning latest. Temps hardly ever dipped below freezing.  40 degrees is pretty much the norm every day November till march.

While the winter temps were a happy surprise, gray skies were not.  It's amazing to me that you can go weeks and even months and pretty much never see the sun.  I had no idea how clear and sunny Boston winters are.  Frigid, but sunny.  Here it's like November in Boston all the time - gray, drizzly and raw.

And now the crazy unpredictability.  Yesterday I walked to work and my AC worked hard to keep me cool in the 90s weather with the sun pounding through my floor-to-ceiling windows.  Just as I was leaving work, a charcoal colored cloud rolled along one side of town and the rain started falling.  I barely made it home when the sky opened up and the rain started coming down sideways.  Wind howling, rain pelting.  Pretty soon it exhausted itself and I got my AC going and fell asleep only to be woken up hours later by a violent lightening storm and more pelting rain.  Today it's hot and sunny.  You learn to carry an umbrella even if there isn't a cloud in the sky.  And at least once a summer here, there is a hail storm with blueberry-sized hail.

So, you might be surprised to hear that summer in Switzerland can be just as hot as Boston and winters are never as cold. But whatever the weather, if you don't like it, just wait a minute and it's bound to change.

Fasnacht - when the Swiss lose their cool

You've heard of Mardi Gras and Brazilian Carnivale but I'm sure you've never heard of Fasnacht.  But they're all the same idea.  Leading up to Lent, Catholics plan a week of crazy partying where they get all of their godless urges taken care of before Ash Wednesday.  A week of food, booze and fun culminate with Fat/Shrove Tuesday.  And the Swiss have their own bizarre version as well.

Switzerland is an interesting country.  There is very little power for a national government.  Most of the power is based within the canton.  A canton is roughly equivalent to a state in the US.  So, most of the rules a Swiss person would follow are dictated by the canton, rather than the Swiss government.  

Another interesting facet of Switzerland is that its citizens are mostly conservative and fairly religious.  Part of the monthly taxes coming out of your salary each month go to your religion's churches.  Each canton has its own identity and some cantons are Protestant and some are Catholic.  I live in a Catholic canton which means that we get Catholic holidays off and we have Fasnacht which is the Swiss name for Mardi Gras/Carnivale.  Luzern has one of the more well-known Fasnachts in the country.

I'll say it again - the Swiss are very conservative people. The culture is extremely rules oriented and propriety is extremely important.  They have rules about what time you can do your laundry, neighbors frequently complain about noise at any level, and even trash bags must be uniform in color.  360 days of the year, the Swiss are extremely controlled, proper and quiet people.

But then for 5 days chaos rules in Switzerland and it's called Fasnacht.  It starts like this: 

Thursday at 5am cannons boom in a main square in Old Town announcing that the festivities have begun.  Citizens start pulling on the costumes they have been painstakingly planning and creating for the past year (no exaggeration).  A remarkable proportion of the population takes to the streets as part of one of a hunded marching bands dressed in all sorts of fantastical costumes.  You have never seen so many goblins, devils, ogres and garden gnomes in your life.

And then - they march.  ALL night long the air is filled with the sound of marching band music.  They march, and march and march - almost the entire 5 days/nights.  

Confetti clogs the cracks in the cobblestone streets.  Eichoff beer cans litter the plazas and pretzels and sausages are sold by the thousands.  Every street in Old Town is packed so tightly at times you almost get lifted off your feet. 

Not everyone is a gnome.  You can see people dressed as fairies, animals, convicts - pretty much everything you can imagine.  A few times I swear I've seen some 70s porn stars reliving their days of glory:

But the Swiss don't entirely forget who they are during Fasnacht.  At about 8am each morning, cleaning crews pour into the streets cleaning up trash and excess confetti.  They use branch brooms to sweep around the feet of the drunk teens passed out on the park benches.  They get it all back to "normal" - clean and orderly - so that that evening everyone has a fresh canvas upon which to toss more confetti and beer cans. 

My first Fasnacht I came home from work to find a bandstand attached to my house and people setting up to party hard all night long:

Yep, that yellow house is mine.  Those shuttered windows are my BEDROOM.  Needless to say I had many many late night hours in which to get to know the entire repertoire of that particular marching band.

How do I plan to celebrate this year's Fasnacht?  In my quiet cozy house in Melrose, Massachusetts, U.S, of A.  You might say I'm the Scrooge of Fasnacht.  But don't judge until you've spent Fasnacht trying to sleep in your Old Town apartment.

Fasnacht is one of the coolest things to experience in Switzerland.  As long as you don't live in Old Town Luzern.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland - Luzern

This morning when I woke up it was snowing. Now, snow in Luzern is not like snow in Boston. I don't own a shovel. I don't have snow boots. Contrary to popular belief, a Swiss town in winter is not nearly as cold as Boston. We don't have a "wind chill factor" and I've never seen more than about 2.5 inches of snow standing on the ground. It never even gets cold enough for it to get icy on our wet streets.

So, given that there was a little dusting of snow on the town I decided to go out for a walk with my camera to give you a glimpse into my pretty town in winter.

Literally chestnuts are roasting on an open fire all over the town.  The building above is one giant advent calendar and all the bridges are strewn with garland.

December in Luzern

Winter in Europe is usually gray and drizzly. Happily, we've had a few dazzlingly blue sky days so far.

This is the quay directly in front

of our office. I never get tired of this beautiful view.

Here are some fun things to experience at Christmastime in Luzern.

Team Christmas lunch! We had a fabulous lunch at the Old Swiss House complete with giant Wiener Schnitzl made at our table. They are fried in a lump of butter the size of your head (not joking).

At our lunch we continued a new tradition with our 3rd annual Yankee Swap. While getting everyone to understand the concept of stealing other people's gifts took some time, the team is now fully fluent in the strategies. Including gag gifts like a fake mustache (or unibrow) and East German treats called Katzenzungen (Cat's tongues):

Christmas Market

It's very typical in Europe to have pretty Christmas Markets. In parts of Luzern's beautiful Old Town local artisans set up stalls selling their handcrafted goods for Christmas.

My place in Luzern

When I first moved to Luzern I lived in a fab 2 story apartment built when Henry VIII was king of England. After buying the Melrose house I clearly needed to go a bit cheaper so moved into a "1.5 room" (studio with kitchen) in the Old Town of Luzern. Here's the thing - I like it better

than the pricey place. I think I've sprinkled in photos here and there but I haven't done a blog on this place itself and it deserves one.

Everyone says the best part of the place is the amazing roofdeck and it's true. Not only is the deck huge and perfect for parties but the views are truly breathtaking. The shot at the beginning of the blog is one example of the view facing Mt. Pilatus. Turn 180 degrees and you're staring at the old medieval defense wall and towers and the sunsets here are spectacular. You should recognize the photo introducing my blog as my favorite all time photo of Luzern and it was taken from the deck of course.

Here is the inside - it's mostly one big greatroom on the top floor of the building. Tons of light comes in these huge windows

This is my fireplace and one of my favorite elements of the place. Almost makes you long for winter.

So, what's the downside you ask? Well, let's just say that some young couple in `76 must have been quite happy in this kitchen.

Bunker kitchen notwithstanding it's a cozy little nest for my weeks in Luzern.

Making cheese - Swiss cheese of course!

Here is our lovely team in Luzern at a cheese factory in Schwyz, Switzerland. It's a beautiful high quality immaculate place with a little historic cheese hut from 1859 inside for tourists to see. That's where we got to work making cheese.

Here is our salty tour guide. He's a Swiss farmer who is quite, um, passionate about cheese. Most of our 3 hours with him were spent trying to 1) figure out what the hell he was saying, and 2) pretend we were someplace else when he made one of his (many) dirty jokes. Here he is showing us how to stir the milk over the fire to get the curds to form. This copper cauldron is 200 years old. Obviously, they make their cheese in modern machinery when not courting the tourists.

Once the curds are ready, you wrap cheesecloth around a piece of metal and literally scoop it out like it's in a fish net. Then you put the bag of cheese in a box and press it. 3 months from now - voila - we'll have 16 individual cheeses of 1 kilo each to enjoy!

working on the roofdeck

All week the weather report has been saying rain but every day it's been sunny and beautiful other than an afternoon thundershower. So yesterday I went to the market and got a few flowers and worked on trimming back some of the plants on the roofdeck. Today am sitting here in the sunshine looking at the rooftops of Luzern and Mount Pilatus with the snow still sticking to its sides. It's probably in the low 70s today and the only plan is to play cards with some friends in the late afternoon at my favorite pub by the river.

I'll post some photos of what I'm looking at.