Lovely Lucerne

By Wendell Gaa

My summer workshop experience in Switzerland this year enabled me to take side trips to enjoy the amazing alpine mountains and lovely lakes which this beautiful and picturesque country is so well known for.

After successfully completing my workshop over in Basel, I finally took the time to fully engage in the fabulous mountain attractions and activities which is synonymous with this lovely, landlocked country.  Basel is a charming city intersected by the mighty Rhine River which is located in the northwestern region of Switzerland just right near the borders of both France and Germany

From Basel, I took a two-hour trip aboard a typical fast and efficient Euro train which is the commonplace continental mode of public transportation.  I then arrived in beautiful Lucerne in central Switzerland, over in the nation’s German-speaking region.  This city is famous in all of Europe for its scenic and serene lake.  I had previously traveled here just a week prior with some of my workshop course mates and new lifelong friends on one of our free days when we took the opportunity to explore by foot the city’s charming and modest architecture, as well as gorge ourselves in some fabulous-tasting steaks at this fine Swiss-Italian restaurant.

As we took a walk literally around half of Lake Lucerne, the combination of seeing signs at the various shops and eateries in both English and German, along with seeing visitors from literally every part of the globe here, surely added to the cosmopolitan air of Lucerne.  We then stopped over at one beach spot along the lake which is open to the public for a price. 

The summer heat in the whole country at this time was literally sizzling, so all of us decided to use this moment to take a swim dip into the lake and savor the summer delight of Switzerland, a notion which might be unthinkable for some who always envision this mountainous country as being cool all year round.  In fact, the sun heat was quite intense enough to give me a suntan in some parts of my body, albeit not permanent thankfully!

Now on my second particular trip to Lucerne, I had the wonderful chance to reunite with an old friend and former colleague of mine from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila together with her family who are all now based in Geneva. She had also been my tour guide on my visit to that international city located in Switzerland’s western French region over a decade ago. 

It was now then time for us to relish in the iconic Swiss alpine beauty, and we did exactly that by driving up the mountains overlooking Lucerne.  We then parked right nearby a cable car station where we divided ourselves into two groups to ride on the lifts which would transport us all the way near the mountaintop where we could purchase tickets to experience the country’s famous rodelbahn, or summer toboggan run, which is essentially bobsledding for families of almost all ages.

Of course, while riding the cable car we got to take our time to enjoy the gorgeous panoramic views of the lake below and the mountain peaks surrounding Lucerne. This experience brought me flashbacks of similar breathtaking cable car rides I’ve had in the past at such destinations as Queenstown, New Zealand and most recently in Bursa, Türkiye.

We finally disembarked at the final lift stop and then proceeded to the rodelbahn toboggan run station where we purchased our tickets. After waiting for some time in the queue lines together with several other travelers, we then boarded the toboggan bobsleds one-by-one.

After getting some brief instructions from the station guides on how to properly steer the sleds, we then surrendered our anxieties to allow us to just sled downhill through the long mountain runway.  For a recreational sport which grants you the chance to appreciate scenes of green mountainside beauty and hefty Swiss cows grazing over grass, while concurrently giving you a rush of adrenaline and excitement, it surely doesn’t get any better than this!