Swiss day! Or something

We awake late and take a leisurely approach to todays aims: work, not going to Bern, drawing outside and eating ice cream.
As I have mentioned/bragged our house is in the centre of Lucerne, at Rossligasse, but from our apartment you can't hear any of the comings and goings of those outside. Hiromi and I take to the streets and like most saturdays its like running the gauntlet to move anywhere. We wander around a few squares looking for a nice little cafe, we take a look at some original 19th century etchings in a bargain bucket outside of a antique printers, when we hear Horns. No not air horns like Dukes of Hazzard, but the traditional long horns of Switzerland. We come to a square where nine men are belting out mournful tunes on their horns (I'm afraid there is no way of writing this without sounding coarse), we have time to take a few photos and then they finish,as they clear away we noticce something else in the square, cows. In ten pens sit about eight cows and two calfs(ves?), they are enormous handsome beasts shampooed to pefection and wearing their best sunday cowbells, although one is strangely dressed as a pirate, there is no explanation for this. We wander further to another square and discover a stage where preumably the cows were presented and possibly milked, as the competition is named 'Swiss milk star awards', nearby people queue for milkshake in the boling sun. We gently stroll around the river and it seems impossible to escape the traditional culture today, men lounge about in laderhosen drinking beer and holding horns, waving flags and so on, sadly there is no yodaling, perhaps we were too late for that.
We split a banana split and sit by the river drawing tourists and swans, peolpe amble around behind us trying to peek at what we're doing. Since walking around the town and drawing its people and buildings, I want to begin bringing colour and a sense of vibrance to my sketches, I might just be old enough now to consider watercolours.
The only thing to emerge from today was idleness, mission accomplished.

Friday Night

This week has mostly consisted of working in my room with the blinds shut against the glaring sun, while I scribble, working on my brief. This week has been collage, brush pen, pencil and ink. Perhaps when its nearing completion I will be brave enough to post some of it.
Tonight we are heading for a house party on the edge of town in the shadow of the mountain. A portuguese guy, Neuno, is having people over and we're all invited. There is a growing multicultural population in Lucerne, and tonight whwile on the way to the station as we cross one of the many foot bridges we pass some amazing buskers, one on acordian and tapping a tamberine, the other is a young lad of about 11 that is wailing with a saxophone. They play jaunty upbeat gypsy music, the perfect going out music. We lounge on the bus through the streets of Lucerne, the buildings slowly thinning out until we come to the last stop on the line, before us is Pilatus in a rosy dusk light, five lights crown its summit. Neuno's house is formerly an architects studio, the front room is 10/20m with a projector, some turntables,and a bath full of ice and beer, it backs on to a forest and then the mountain. To recap, this place is awesome. Despite the 30 or so people the room still looks empty, a game of keep ups with a football begins and there is still space.
We form an Erasmus table of students with Spanish, Dutch, Scottish, German, Suisse, Portuguese and more. We spend a good portion of the night learning how to clap flamenco style. We swap stories and take photos, invent hand shakes and plan further evenings out. We float back and forth from inside to out, the sky is magnifiscently clear the stars reign above. The wine, rum, appenzeller, fyodor, beer, and punch all flow nicely, and before we know it, its time to leave. We miss the last bus and have to walk for an hour, however we 'find' a football en route and this takes the edge off things. Near to starvation we walk and walk and walk, pleading for kebabs only to find a late night patisserie open, this is magic, nothing else but magic. It's 3:00am and we're suppose to head to Bern tomorrow, Our tucked up T-total Hungarian house mate is going to be disappointed.

Work and Weekend

I am now working on our first brief, its a thematic approach to illustration. We are each given a word (mine is crime) and we set about exploring the subject matter relating to it. Its a simple and very necessary approach to illustration, find existing methods and develop them as well as finding new ways of expreesing the old. For those of you that I have worked with in class you maybe surprized to hear that I am using a pencil, yes I know how to hold one and whats its for. I thought it was time to go back to drawing and set aside my computer for a while (well I am using it a little bit). I haven't quite entred the full spirit of HGK by working live in the studio, but small steps and I'll try it out this monday.
I have plotted out a few ideas and am reasonably happy with their present status. Mike has suggested that the way to fulfill this brief is to truely participate in the theme= commit a crime. I may be back in Bath before long.
The weekend comes around, and after pottering around with work during saturday we head into the forrest at Gutsch again and have another fire and beers. A German student comes this time (Felix). We sit talking and drinking in the darkness, except this week we have neighbours. 10 meters away sits a group of local Suisse, we can see each others fires but not each other. If I were in England I would feel uncomfortable being so close to others in the middle of nowhere. After a while they come over and ask if we have knife, we do and they take it, when they return they offer us some barbecued pork, which we greedily consume, they continue to come back and forth offering us alcohol and more. We finally join them and they lavish us with pineapple more beer, guitars and anything else they have. Only a few speak English, we sit listening and chatting in the dark until 3am and they leave us to the fire to try their luck in a casino. I feel my faith in strangers restored, they were some of the nicest people that we've met here, and I couldn't even see them properly.
Today is sunday, I put away my work and start to write the last two weeks of this blog that I should have been writing every other day. Hiromi and I have a quite cafe lunch in a little square, we hire a pedallow and go out onto the lake. The weather is baking hot, though the mountains still keep their snow. Out on the lake it is cooler and we bath our feet in the cool clean water. we watch boats to and fro, birds paddle and dive, the city looks much different here this low and far out. I don't want to leave here.

First days at school.

The week starts with me starting graphics as an almost foriegn subject, spoken in a foreign language. The week finishes with me studying illustration in the English language. I find the first two days a bit of a struggle, we're doing a predominantly photographic project (which I chose) and the Teacher doesn't seem to like speaking English, or translating. The flip side is that the students are very helpful and are happy to chat with us about whats going on. After two days I decide to switch subjects, I am afterall an illustration student.
My new lecturer is Mike (not sure how to spell his last name, apologies, will amend) Mcinney, illustrator of The Who album covers, and a lecturer of my University in Bath when it was located at Corsham. He's an enthusiastic and talkative man thats very welcoming, I feel much more at home working now and am finally settled. Along with Benno Zehnder (previously head of design at Bath Spa) who we met last week, we are establishing our own Bath Spa Frat club.
On wednesday we were invited to Bennos house for traditional Suisse food- Fondue. We meet his lovely wife Esther at our house and hop on the train for 45 minutes. Their house is situated next to a lake and nestled between gentle hills. We sit in their sipping wine and enjoying the sunshiine and cats. Dinner is announced and we adjourn to the dinning room for my first ever Fondue.
I was uder the impression that Fondue was the British equivillant to sunday roast, and that come Sunday Fondue was expected. This isn't the case. Once or twice a year they melt down a considerable amount of cheese until molten and with delicate little forks they skewer bread and coat with cheese. Its a very rich taste and see why it isn't every sunday. We drink some local farm schnapps which at 69% is very potent. We talk and eat the night away, the company is good and the drink flowing. Benno is a charming man and a wealth of knowledge, I quiz him on Switzerland and there isn't a question he couldn't answer. I'm told he is a Renaissance man, and can apply his hand to most of the arts, sculture, painting, illustration and design, thats how it was and perhaps should be now. Coming to switzerland has been through these people a little like coming back to Bath.

Day Nine-Ten

We spend the remaining days of holiday meeting up with the other erasmus students, drinking beer, playing aerobie and hacky sack. Hiromi and I take long walks together and discover the little streets and alleyways of Lucerne.
On Saturday Hiromi, Ben, mariann, Anna (German student) and myself walk up to Gutsch (a seasonal hotel now empty) and into the pine forrest. About 300 meters in is a designated fire site. We build a fire and watch as the light fades and the stars come out, the forrest is dark and dense the sky a brilliant blue, you can't see anything beyond the fire. We drink beer and tell stories, come home smelling of fire.
On sunday we walk around the old town, up the old defensive wall and eventually to one of Lucernes attractions, Bertel Thorvaldsens Lion monument, a tribute to the Suisse Guards that fell during the French revolution defending Marie Antoinette. Its a beautiful sculpture carved into a sandstone cliff sat on a large pond, a wounded lion lies dying on the Suisse shield.
With no work to do and little purpose the week passes slowly, which is great, everyday offers something new to discover, and I still feel there is so much left to uncover.

Day Seven

On Thursday we take on the mountain. Its a chilly misty day in Lucerne, and the mountain isn't visible from the city today. we take a 10 minute bus ride to a place called Kriens to take a cable car to the top. The cable cars are dinky, four of us inside a shell no bigger than a smart car, at most we are 40' from the ground. We pass over houses and roads, gardens and then grasslands, we make our way through an avenue of trees and into an alpine forrest, past log cabins and stores of wood, and then over snow. We oo and ah at everything beneath us, its muffled and ghostly under the cloud and over the snow. about half way we have to transfere to a larger cablecar. This one is manned by an elevator boy. About 20 of us stand together as we ascend into a soup of cloud. I'm thankful for the cloud, it hides us from our journey, there is nothing to see and nothing to fear, Until we pop out of the other side pass over a ridge and look into the void. we are easily 200 meters above the sleek slopes and climbing, its truely breath taking. Its an entirely different place up hear, the sun is blinding and we look out over a plain of cloud, islands of peaks poke throuh intermitently. Ben needs to sit down for 5 minutes and we all recover from the last leg. we step out on to a platform almost at the very top of the mountain, its 30 meters wide by 150 long, a man is blowing an alpine horn and people recline in sun loungers under complimentary blankets. Its cold but also quite hot, we climb the last few paths, up to the highest we can go, its simply incredible, civilisation is no more and all we have left is a fantasy world of cloud and spires of rock. After all the excitement we lounge in the sun drinking mulled wine and eat cake, its really very perfect. On the way down we stop half way and play in the snow making a snow man and through snow balls at anything, we're freezing, but continue to roll around like children. It has been a day of differences.

Day Five

Our second day is an Erasmus outing to a village called Hergiswil famed for its tradition of glass blowing, we have a hollywood video walk through tour of their history of glass blowing and then are genuinely awed when we reach the workfloor. Menare scooping molten glass from a huge furness, shaping glasses, plates, vases, glasses just about anything, in sweltering conditions. For a mere 15CHF hiromi is allowed to blow her own glass bauble (which proudly swings in our roof terrace). Today is incidently my birthday, and for much of the day I have a headache. With all the huustle and bustle I have almost forgotten it completely, that is until later when Hiromi lays on a banquet of pure sugar refined into many different shapes, cake , chocolate rabbits, pick and mix, smarties, its all there.

Day Four

So we have arrived and we are staring to get our bearings and a handle on our new situation.
On monday morning we meet all the other erasmus students, their are thirteen of us in total, from Spain, Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Zurich. We quickly learn that this week is essentially a holiday, and we have time to roam the city, we set about planning our week, we are urged to take in the mountains before all of the snow melts.
The best thing about today is moving into our new apartment, after only three days of living in hotels I'm already tired of them (fantastic traveller that I am). But as it turns out, the wait has been worth it. Our apartment is situated in a university building in the centre of town. We have a top floor apartment. Past five and at the weekends the whole building is ours, there is a courtyard bellow with a fountain, up three flights of steps and you're in our house. Light airy spacious, every room is clean and bright , we have a roof terrace with views of Pilatus (the biggest mountain) and of Gutsch a white castle (rumoured to almost have been bought up by Michael Jackson). Its a fantastic apartment. The four of us Hiromi, Ben, Mariann(hungarian student) and myself.

Day Three

The next day we are up bright and breezy. Yesterday we managed a pigeon German conversation with a local bike hire shop and this morning we are collecting our steads. The city is empty even at 10am. We pick our bikes up and race around the city only to discover that a marathon is going on. The streets are closed to cars, and we are able to safely go where ever we like. We ride up duel carriage ways the wrong way around the lake, ringing our bells at passing runners. The city has turned out to spur on the runners, shouting and waving rattles. We cycle around the city like children, getting in the way of the runners from time to time, riding around in circles, fixing slipped chains
It's sunday, and liek all good people we head to a nearby church, however our motives are purely atheist and aesthetic. In this church they have windows made by Marc Chagall, they rise 40' in a tryptich of green, blue and yellow. They are luminous giants. I was aware that he head been commissioned to produce a series of stained glass but I had no idea it was a stones through from our musical hotel.
We end our stay in Zurich here and head to the train station.
From Zurich to Lucerne is approximately 30 miutes on the train, but you hardly notice, as the scenery seems to swollow up the time, rolling, hills, lakes, grasslands and mountains, the sun is shinning and people are out.
The station is in the centre of town next to the lake, you step outside and after a few paces and walking through an enormous archway (a reminant from the old satation), you can see the lake, the surrounding mountains, and a city full of handsome buildings. Like ultimate tourists, we simply turn around in cicrles trying to take everything in. We walk toward our hotel over one of many bridges, the water is turquiose, and populated by an array of ducks and swans. We look and look again at the mountains, I've never seen something so highhalf of the town is encircled by a range of mountains, snow capped and wooded.
Our lodgings for tonight is an old prison (until 1998), and incidently situated behind our future accomodation. The walls are thick and the doors stout, everything a prison is, except you are given a key to your room. I lay on my bed thinking about who must have counted off time in this room, the prison is close to the centre of town, which must have been all the more unbearable for those within it.

Day Two

Despite being a saturday morning the streets are pretty empty, Zurich seems to hide its population well. We wander the cobbled streets in the chilly air looking for food and the museum for Art and design (Museum fur gestaltung und kunst). After a meandering journey through the city we find what we are looking for, inside we discover the competition finalists for the 50 years of Helvetica, 10 A0 posters fighting it out to best extoll the virtues of such a fine typeface. We also take in an exhibtion by Konstantin Grcic an industrial designer, and a resident exhintion about city planning with amazing scale models photography and topoograhic maps. This is watched by the bespectled staff members that seem to view us with a little distrust.
We have a look inside the Suisse museum, a mighty building housing a walk through Suisse history featuring Catholic ivory reliefs of Jesus, frescos, gigantic globes with illustrated constellations, preserved wood pannelled rooms, paintings, arms the lot.
We found that eating out is an expensive business and decide to take a tram in any direction out of the city in search for cheap food. After being told off by a tram driver for not knowing how to operate his doors, we end up in a suburb at an Italian restaurant ran by an Indian family, its a homely looking little place with good inexpensive food. Typically eating out is anywhere from 24-46 CHF (10-20 in old money for a single course).
We drink beer and retire to our musical rooms.

Day One

Our journey to Zurich is a simple and short one, However it was aboard an aeroplane you could have landed in your back garden, small. From the airport to Zurich is a ten miute train ride, which gives you an arm chair introduction to the sigts and scenery on offer in Switzerland.
Tonight we have lodgings at a hotel called ZicZac, which is a musically themed hotel, each room dedicated to a singer or band from the 50's onward. Our talking heads room is dissappointingly bereft of any reference to the band and only features a framed photo of LL cool J clutching his groin and Ringo Star with four arms, Bens room however, doesn't fail to deliver he has an 8' Elton John portrait to lull him to sleep. Better him than me.
We waste no time and set about exploring the city, and finding a beer. We sit by lake Zurich sipping beer and watching the locals, the skys are clear and there is still snow on the surrounding mountains. Now I have arrived I feel the past months preperation and anxiety ebbing away. Switzerland makes a good first impression, the air is clear the streets are clean, people are well presented (if not a little frosty), the city is a spiky skyline of churches and spires, the buildings are fantastic and the public transport seems a little over the top (bus, train, tram, boat), the only draw back so far is that things do seem a bit expensive.
All in all its a gentle and pleasing introduction to Suisse life.

Hello Hello

Hello, Hello and welcome to my Blog about Switzerland! I am a 2nd year student from Bath Spa university England. I am currently on a four month erasmus exchange programme to Lucerne Switzerland. I hope to share my observations, ramblings and photographs of my stay here.
My apologies for this default blogger page, but blogger will not allow me to edit any page elements. I will try to correct this grievous situation as soon as it permits me.