European Mountains and Rivers Day 8 – Bern and Back

Early start this morning as we headed for the village of Weggis on the shore of Lake Lucerne.

It was from here that we caught a cable car to commence our expedition up Mount Rigi.

At the end of the cable car ride we transferred to a rack railway to reach the top of Mount Rigi.

The views up here of snow fields stretching as far as the eye could see were truly incredible. Cameras really cannot do justice to the awesome magnificence of this scene but here is a small sample.

We then boarded our rack railway for the return journey but this time we stayed with the train to the end of its line at the edge of Lake Lucerne. Here is a shot of Jeanette on the disembarkation station talking to strange men again. She told me he was a very good listener.

From this point we boarded a boat that had been chartered for us and it took us across the lake to the city of Lucerne.

Lucerne is famous for its two covered medieval bridges that date from 14th century.

There were originally 153 painted panels in the roof of one of these bridges. In 1993 there were still 147 in existence, however, in that year a powerboat crashed into the bridge and the resulting inferno destroyed a large section of the bridge and many of the panels. 47 panels were saved but only 30 could be fully restored. These remaining 30 can still be seen on the restored bridge

Jeanette got her church visiting fix in when we checked out the Jesuit Church which had been built in the Baroque style in the 1670s.

Our final visit in Lucerne was to the Lion Monument. This giant dying lion was carved into a cliff of stone as a memorial to the 600 Swiss guards who were serving as Louis XVI’s bodyguard and were killed by the revolutionary mob. It is a very moving tribute.

Lucerne was absolutely teeming with tour groups, the majority of which appeared to be Indian but there were a few Chinese groups there as well. We were glad to escape the throngs and catch the bus to our beautiful city of Bern which apart from us seems to have totally escaped the tourist mobs. This is hard to understand as Bern is much more beautiful and has escaped the blight of major modern development.

Arriving back at our Bern hotel, the Bellevue Palace, we set out to find the nearest Laundromat which we were told was called the Wash  Bar. We had tried to find this the previous evening following verbal directions from our tour guide but failed. This time Jeanette had spoken to the hotel receptionist for directions which she had kindly drawn on a map. With a backpack full of dirty washing, we set off following the map to the spot marked but still no Wash Bar. We did find however another couple from our tour group equally lost.

We asked locals who sent us here and there with no success. Finally I fired up the map on my phone and got directions. We had to walk very quickly as the phone was just about to die but down a city block and up an alley we found a premises called the Wash Bar.

There were tables out the front with lots of smart people drinking and talking. Inside the place the tables were packed with smart young things socialising . A live band was setting up on a stage. I was starting to despair when I noticed behind a glass screen on the back wall was a double stacked row of front loading washing machines.

We went around there and sure enough there were dryers and washing machines. Each machine had a name painted on it like Harry or Greta.  There were no slots for any coins. We loaded our clothes into one machine pressed all the appropriate buttons and the wash cycle started. Jeanette snapped this shot of the oldies on the other side of the screen doing their washing.

One of the staff, a nice young fella, came over to us and explained the system. It cost 7 Swiss francs for the use of a washing machine and dryer if you did not buy a drink, but only 5 if you did. So we bought some drinks. And since washing does take a bit of time, we finished our first round of drinks and then bought another. Then the nice young fella came over with a tray of complimentary shots so we had one of those each as well. It was a very merry group that headed out into the night back to our hotel with loads of clean washing.