[🏔️ yodel ⛰️] Day 3: Lucerne and Mount Pilatus
"Grüezi!" We'd just settled into our seats at a local tavern, Wirtshaus Galliker, when one of the hostesses ushered a group of three old gentlemen to our communal table. They were all swarthy and had heads full of white hair, and all seemed to be very good friends. None of them spoke English. So we just said, "Hallo!" meekly and they returned to their conversation.
When our food arrived, they said something complicated in Swiss German (SD and I can roughly understand some German if they have similar sounding English words) which I interpreted as surprise — we ordered something strange, probably even by Swiss standards — and I asked them if we made a good choice. Something was lost in translation and they ended up asking the hostess what we meant.
As I grow older and travel more, I've started to think more about speaking in other languages. I try to say "hello" and "thank you" in the language of where I am, if I'm sure I'm not mangling it, but there are times when the people I'm speaking to seem to insist on speaking in English. So I just try to be as polite and respectful as possible. It always smooth things out and niceness begets niceness.
Grüezi from Lucerne! It's our second day in this small city and we're getting familiar with the routes from our hotel to major transport hubs. It's surprisingly quiet, especially if you're not along the main touristy stretch of riverside restaurants. Other streets are empty, and traffic clears out by around 7pm. It seems like everyone either heads home or out for dinner. Stores don't open past 6pm here so there's no after-work shopping.
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We've been experiencing a range of different Swiss service standards since arriving, and it's been interesting to observe how different people treat customers around the world. Here, they treat you with respect and expect you to do the same. No one is going to bend over backwards for you if you aren't even going to be polite.
Some observations:
The Swiss generally want to help. We've had counter staff proactively ask us if we have certain travel cards or passes that would qualify us for various discounts. The staff at the Bourbaki Panorama were really sweet and made sure we knew where to go, because the initial wayfinding was a little obscure. The lady at the Glacier Garden was also lovely.
They can be curt and ignore you if you're rude, or being difficult. There was an exceptionally brusque man who was trying to get some travel info from our hotel's receptionist and she was not 👏 having 👏 it. I think it was because he was very demanding and giving her (nor his girlfriend) any chance to speak. In contrast, the hotel staff have been exceedingly helpful and polite with us.
We had lunch at an American-themed diner and it was slightly odd to have our server behave exactly like an American host/hostess would. She was extremely chirpy and kept checking in on us. SO much that we felt we had to finish and leave. We did not give her a tip. 👀
Otherwise, Swiss waitstaff seem to want to leave you alone. A lot. Maybe too much. We had a bit of trouble getting the attention of anyone at Pfistern, a touristy riverside restaurant. Coming from Singapore where it's efficiency is the name of the game and not being on the ball is a sin... Dealing with waitstaff in Switzerland was definitely a culture shock. Even at Wirsthaus Galliker, we had to wait to get the attention of our hostess so she could give us our check. And even then, we had to wait again for her to return with the receipt, and next, the payment terminal. If this happened in Singapore, they'd get a ton of complaints on that Facebook group "Complaints Singapore".
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Despite the weather forecast insisting that it was going to storm atop Mount Pilatus today (spoiler: it did not), we decided to take our chances and go with the flow. So we caught a leisurely boat ride from Lucerne to Alpnachstad.
We sat at the back of the boat, surrounded by a bunch of Germans, many many Americans, and a Spanish family.
Some observations:
Americans and Germans talk a lot and very loudly. I could hear everything.
There was an American family next to us. The son kept his eyes glued to his phone and only looked up to take some photos, and his mom felt a little uninterested in everything. The dad was the only one who seemed really invested in the boat ride and kept trying to get the others to join him in spotting interesting sights. I kind of felt bad for him.
Asian influencers are everywhere. I walked in on a Thai lady with a whole camera-tripod set-up and her own personal camera-man — I mean, boyfriend.
There was an old American couple who had their own personal guide. He was so interesting. I loved eavesdropping and learning about how this place is a quarry, that boat was probably locals fishing, and other odd tidbits.
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Here are some odd things I found in Swiss backyards:
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Coming from Singapore, the views here are spectacular.
It's kind of unreal how lakes of this size exist, and people live in honestly pretty remote towns like these, and have boats, and are just surrounded by mountains and extreme expanses of land.
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Remember how I mentioned that we ordered something odd for dinner? Well, that something is called Riz Casimir, or "Rice Kashmir". (We also ordered a terrine made of veal fleisch but still not as weird as Riz Casimir.)
We first found out about it after watching some random food videos about rice. Someone from Switzerland made Riz Casimir and we couldn't get over how putting pineapple, cherries and other random fruits over curry and rice was a thing.
Wikipedia describes the dish as:
Riz Casimir (also Reis Casimir ) is a Swiss dish made from rice , sliced veal , curry sauce , pieces of banana , pineapple and peach , garnished with slivers of roasted almonds and served in a ring of long-grain rice...
...According to Sidler, it is a dish that reflects the increasing prosperity of post-war Switzerland and the people's wanderlust. However, others dispute the fact that this is really a Swiss invention, especially since the recipe is said to be derived from Kashmir dishes from Indian cuisine .
Friends, ours came with dragonfruit, melon and kiwi. I cannot even begin to describe how much this kind of works in an extremely bizarre way. The tartness of the fruits went well with the salty, savoury curry. The curry is nothing like the curries you find in Southeast Asian. It's a kind of watered down, much more heavily spiced version of British or German 'curry'. It's not a typical dish most tourists eat when they come to Switzerland, but hey we like weird shit.
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Before I end off, here's a site detailing the architecture and some side altars at the Jesuit Church of Lucerne. I wish I remembered more from Sunday School and Catechism classes from when I was a kid, but alas I was more interested in pranks.
Tomorrow we're going to Mount Titlis, where it's supposed to be sleeting. I cannot wait.
Ciao!