orwellianTwo

It’s time to leave Lucerne, and what better way to do so than by boat.

Lake Lucerne is about thirty kilometres long from its north-western point at Lucerne to its southern tip near Altdorf, which is where we’re heading. With the various jetty stops the ride will take over two and a half hours and every minute will be glorious.

About, ooh, halfway through we reach one notable stop, at Rütli.

Just to the left of this photo, rather rushed as the ships crew were organising the deck in preparation for anchor, there is a patch of open ground called the Rütli Meadow. A sacred spot for the Swiss, it was where, legend relates, representatives of the three founding cantons swore the Rütlischwur, the Rütli Oath, that marked the creation of the Swiss Confederation. A big photo to get for a blog that purports to talk about the history of places, so I tried to grab the shot as the boat moved in towards the jetty

Useless I am.

Fortunately, the scenery here never disappoints.

A few minutes out from my destination, we reach the chapel at Tellsplatte.

The Tell relates to that man again.

Once Tell had split the apple and saved himself and his son, Gessler noticed that he had an extra arrow in his quiver and asked him why. Tell, who had either no legal representation or a very bad lawyer, replied that if he had hit his son he would have fired the second bolt at Gessler. Who was not impressed.

Tell was therefore led away to lifetime imprisonment and taken onto Gessler’s boat. A storm broke and Tell, being a hero and brilliant at everything, was allowed to take the helm to get the boat to safety, whereupon he steered it into the rocks here and escaped, leaping onto this spot, Tellsplatte, Tell’s Slab.

The chapel marking the spot is sixteenth-century and note the paintings, they describe the legend. There’s a boat stop nearby and Swiss youngsters are dutifully led down to the slab to learn all about it. See the two arrow-like structures above and to the right of the chapel? Once Tell got away from his captives he followed the light from a torch held by his close companion, Robin Hood, and the arrows mark the spot where he met his secret lover Marilyn Monroe. The two shared a passionate kiss, jumped onto Shergar’s back, rode into the forest and were never seen again. No, I don’t know what those structures are for. Probably the top of a staircase.

And so we reach the shore near Altdorf, and the end of our wonderful ride. To the left is the small settlement of Flüelen. Ahead of us the mountains lead down into the Gotthard, the rugged massif that separates central, German-speaking Switzerland from the Italian-speaking south. Home of the famous Gotthard Pass that connected the two, it was of enormous key strategic and commercial importance as the Gotthard is almost impossible to traverse by other means.

Unless you build a railway through it.

The nineteenth century came along and with it, the railway. There had to be a faster way of connecting northern and southern Switzerland, otherwise for one thing trade between the North Sea and the Mediterranean would bypass the country. So the great Swiss industrialist and railway builder Alfred Escher decided to build a railway through the Gotthard and down to Lugano.

And our train is here and it’s time to get onboard.

The Panorama Express tourist train runs along the original line and is one of the world’s great railway experiences, another two and a half hours of your life that you won’t regret. The main coaches have large wrap-around windows so you can take it all in, but they are a little reflective so I didn’t manage to get many great snaps. The best place to take photos is to go to their special carriage with open windows, but be careful about leaning out. Here’s the church at Wassen.

And here it is again!

No, that isn’t a model railway, that really is the line we were on in the first photo.

Built between 1872 and 1882, the Gotthard Railway was recognised at the time as a world-class feat of engineering. Here at Wassen they had to wrap the line around the mountain in three spiralling levels of tunnels and embankments, meaning you get to see the church at three different levels. There’s another example of a switchback loop south of the main tunnel.

Main tunnel? At some point on the route engineering ingenuity was no match for the geography, and they had to roll up their sleeves and dig. When they were done, they had created the Gotthard Tunnel, at 15 kilometres the longest in the world at that time. When the tourist express reaches twelve kilometres in, it slows to a crawl, they turn the lights down and an audio-visual show plays out on the tunnel wall; sounds of workers digging, clunk of axe and spade on hard wall, pictures of diggers, pictures of Louis Favre, the engineer responsible for its design.

An interesting display, and sobering. Like any such undertaking at the time conditions were difficult and the work was dangerous. 199 workmen perished during the construction. Favre sadly died of a heart attack in the tunnel inspecting the work, and never saw its completion. Even Alfred Escher, overworked and stressed-out trying to get the thing finished, died in 1882 before he could take a ride himself.

Over a hundred years later, an even longer tunnel was built – the Gotthard Base Tunnel, at 57km the longest in the world, and the tunnel that carries the scheduled service between Lucerne and Lugano. The old tunnel is only used for this tourist train as well as a few local services. But of course, travelling in a 35-mile long tunnel means you miss a lot of the incredible views.

Which, well yes, I apologise for not taking more photos of. I eventually managed to make it to the photo car, but then I met up with a fellow passenger and got distracted, sorry.

To be honest he didn’t say much. But then again Herr Escher had already spoken loudly enough by giving us the magnificent railway we were travelling on. Good to see he had been given the chance to ride along it after all.

Eventually the train rolls into Lugano, in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino, at the very southern tip of Switzerland. Warm, Mediterranean feel, palm trees. Some photos from Lugano to make up for the lack of pics from the train.

And there’ll be a few more to come as I’m here for a couple of days. Ciao!