Le Monde - A Poetic Travail » Switzerland

Lion Sculpture

Cuckoo — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:15:10 +0000

The Lion Monument in Lucerne is a giant dying lion carved out of a wall of sandstone rock above a pond. The monument designed by Thorwaldsen on then a private property, commemorates the heroic death of more than 700 mercenary soldiers from central Switzerland who lost their lives while serving the French king Louis XVI during the French Revolution. In 1882 the monument was bought by city of Lucerne.

The dying lion of Lion Monument

The giant sculpture is 20 ft high and 33 ft long and one of Lucerne’s major tourist attractions. The latin inscription HELVETIORUM FIDEI AC VIRTUTI means “To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss”.

There is no entrance fee to see this.

Note:- The photo is from a film camera. And while scanning I have zoomed in but you can still see some water at the bottom.

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Tamil signboard !

Cuckoo — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:48:35 +0000

We had gone to mini Switzerland open museum in Lugano. There were signboards everywhere in different languages telling us not to touch models and other materials. OK, German, French, Italian.. .. I can understand but what caught my attention was this signboard written in Tamil ! Switzerland and Tamil ?? Now that was something unexpected.

If you can read it, please use the comment section.

To talk of Tamil, it is one of the official languages of Singapore. I was amused to see Tamil appearing next to English on every board at railway stations and bus stops there.

Note:- The photo is from analogue camera.

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Travel and me

Cuckoo — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:11:47 +0000

Geneva was the first city I was posted and so it has a special place in my heart. I had seen some places before, but this was the first time I was on my own and alone. I was excited.
During my tenure I tried to grab as much as possible. Keen learner and an observant person that I am, there was so much to see, know and learn. I wanted to know what the locals eat, how they eat, how they speak and so on. I was keen to know about their culture, behaviour and tastes.

I wanted to explore the world. And it all started with weekends.

In spite of very hectic and tight schedule (at times working as much as 14 hours a day is no joke); I could manage to free my alternate weekends to visit places. I would work more hours on other days to get a full weekend.

I started with the city I was in. I used to walk down to various places in the city. That’s the best way to know insights of any place. Old city, lake area or the big park. The place was enchanting. Everything is closed on Sundays so Sundays were reserved to explore free parks and other outside beauties especially the lake area.
Take a novel, walk down to the lake, sit or lie down and enjoy your day basking in Sun. The first book that I read there was Kane and Able, my all time favourite book.

Or you can feed the ducks and swans or simply watch people parking their cars and cruising their yachts towards other cities. I could see so many people doing the same. No kids or dogs disturbing you, no hawkers pestering to buy their stuff and no staring eyes. You just have to relax. You are out there in open and still no one is intruding in your privacy.

Parked boats at Lac Lemon. You can see water jet in the background

Then slowly I started going out of the city either to a neighbouring country or to a different town of Switzerland. After St Gallen’s scary experience I made my Schengen visa and I was ready. Whenever I came to know of a group going to some place, I was always more than eager to give them company.

It was hard to resist. No one waiting at home and no one to report to. And it was so easy and safe to travel compared to my own country.

I knew travel bug had bitten me. It had started as an innocent infatuation but slowly I could see myself thinking about my next stop. Instead of reading novels in free time I had started reading maps. I would fantasize about living with ‘Travel’.
And thus began a journey. A journey never to end.. ..

Note:- The photographs are scanned from analogue camera prints, hence the quality is not that good.

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A garden with a difference

Cuckoo — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:57:51 +0000

The other day I was helping my friend plan an itinerary of his honeymoon in Switzerland. He had some constraints such as no. of days, budget and also, he had a friend in Switzerland with whom he wanted to spend sometime on the only weekend available. So after discussing quite a few things we finalized the places to be seen and also the route.

While doing that I promised him to write some more posts on Switzerland. Though I’ll not to, but if you find an overdose of Europe here in next one month or so, blame him not me.

I’ll not speak about the tourist places alone but something about how I lived and breathed the place. How I enjoyed or hated it. The small anecdotes with even smaller details.

I’ll start with Geneva.
After initial settling down I had become friends with an Indian family. On some Sundays we used to meet for lunch. Once they invited me to a strawberry garden. I was bemused.

Only after reaching there I came to know it was a garden with a difference. You could eat as much strawberries as you can. Yes, this was a place where you could eat the produce to your heart’s content without shelling out a single penny ! I must say, it was fun plucking fresh strawberries, filling your tummy and watching so many others involved in the same activity.

Only condition, you can not take it home. You have to eat there itself. Do you think I was a bit covetous ?

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