The family I'm nannying for runs an advertisement company whose main client is Smart Cars. You know them, the funny-looking half-car. Every year they have an event called Smart Times in a different European country; this year was in Buochs, near Luzern, Switzerland.
First off, owners of Smart cars are kind of nuts. It's almost like a cult.
This exists.
We stayed in a beautiful hotel that overlooked the Lake of Lucerne. I had a room to myself, and every morning I woke up to a gorgeous view.
This. I woke up to this.
We fed the birds nearly every day.
I had some free time our first real evening there. I took myself to Luzern and walked around. It has a surreal quality. I wish I'd had more time to learn about the history.
They had these beautiful wooden bridges spanning the river.
This says the bridge was built in 1408, destroyed by a storm in 1566, rebuilt in 1568 and renovated in 1889. This bridge is older than our country. By, like, a lot.
The bridges were adorned with paintings. Many were missing because of a fire that damaged one of the bridges in the 1990's. They depict various scenes from throughout Luzern's history and date back to the 17th century. There were originally 158 of these (not all containing skeletons), but only 47 were recovered and 30 restored after the fire. I'm glad they chose this one:
Oh yeah, that one time there were skeletons everywhere.
I'm disappointed to report that in the week I was in Switzerland, I failed to see a single cuckoo-adorned clock and only found three specialty Swiss chocolate shops. They were excruciatingly expensive, but I bucked up and bought some chocolate for my mom. I did, however, find and buy a Swiss Army knife.
This place has an absurdly high standard of living. They're all paid quite well, but they'd better be to afford living there. One evening I was on my own and bought a chicken hoagie sandwich, some french fries and a cup of tea. The total came to 28 Swiss Francs, or $30 freaking US dollars. Yikes.
During the time I was there, Luzern was having some festival celebrating 75 years since it's founding... or something like that. Every night they highlighted various bands that played throughout the city: some in front of churches, some in front of fountains, in the streets, on stages in front of their art museum. It was great. The first night I was there I treated myself to a fancy dinner outside listening to a band. Wunderschön.
Not too shabby for the looking-at, either.
Frida and I spent a lot of time together during Smart Times, because both her parents were super busy with the event. At the beginning, we got along very well, but she's used to having her parents around a lot, and started to get very upset by their absence. By the end, I think she blamed me for it, or at least associated me with being sad about her parents. A week later, and she's just now able to have fun with me again. I think having me gone for a long weekend helped. But, we had some really good times.
The first day we went to Wirzweli- an amusement area for kids at the top of a mountain, accessible by gondola. It had a playground and and alpine slide. Apparently there was more, but it was more than an hour long hike away from where the gondola landing was. Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to take a 4 year-old on that long of a hike? We tried to find it, but got lost a few times. The locals tried to help, but their German is unintelligible for actual Germans, let alone me. It's very bouncy in cadence and hard to follow. Poor Frida trooped on for probably 4 miles, round trip. But it sure was pretty up there.
She cracks me up.
Aren't we cute? Yeah, we're cute.
At Smart Times they had a kids corner, which saved my ass. The girls working there were all very sweet and hung out with me and Frida. They had a face painting station, which had hilarious results.
The second day, the paint dyed her eyebrows bright pink. They stayed that way for 4 days. I laughed every time I looked at her, which really pissed her off. Which made it cuter. How 80's punk is that?!
In the end, I was somewhat happy to return "home" to Vienna, even though the drive was interminable. 11 hours in a car with three tired adults and a 4 year-old who hates you is pretty miserable. But, Switzerland definitely bought its way into my heart with low clouds, bright green grass and fresh air.
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