The Lion King in Basel

After a bit of a busy time, in which I mostly concentrated on sleeping in the weekends instead of writing blogposts or comments (although I did read a lot) on dreamwidth, I have now decided that it is time to get back into the swing of things.

My friend E., whom I've known since elementary school, was the first person to visit me in Zürich. She stayed from August 21 until August 29 and we did loads of fun stuff. The first thing that we did was going to Basel for a little city trip and to watch the musical The Lion King: The Original Broadway version (great, because I probably wouldn't have gotten much fun out of a Swiss German musical).

After a swift train ride (during which we were wondering the whole time whether or not we had the correct train tickets, because it was my first 'real' time on a Swiss train) we arrived in Basel. As the musical only started in the late afternoon, we walked in the direction of the city centre, and soon came upon this beautiful church.


The Elisabethenkirche

Because it was so beautiful, we actually thought it was the Münster: one of the landmarks of Basel. However, the Münster turned out to be a little but further away. Also, this cathedral turned out to be a bit more.. red.


Münster

It was a really beautiful cathedral as you can see and I actually managed (and was allowed) to take a picture of the interior of the cathedral.


Interior Münster

Just behind this cathedral, there is a small square (Münster Platz) with a beautiful view on the Rhine that flows through Basel.


The Rhine and downtown Basel

Another important landmark in Basel is the Rathaus (Town Hall) on the market square. It really is a very impressive building, but again, I hadn't imagined it would be quite so.. red.


Rathaus

After a relatively cheap lunch in the McDonnalds (I say relatively cheap, because a menu costs 14 CHF, which is approximately 14 euro..) we explored the old city of Basel a bit more and found this lovely (slightly red) fountain.



And then it was time to go to the theatre!


Me & E. being very excited in the theatre before the show!


E. & me being very happy in front of the theatre after the show!

The musical was really great: it is such a spectaculair musical! I never really particularly liked the Lion King Disney movie, but the musical is really something. It is amazing how they can portray all the animals!

On the way back to the station, we stumbled upon another landmark in Basel: the Tinguely Fountain. This is a fountain that is great fun for kids (and adults) as the whole fountain moves and there are water spurts everywhere and it changes constantly. It is very fun to watch! And that was my first very fun time in Basel!


Tinguely Fountain

Swiss monopoly in Basel

Continuing the quest of visiting all the Monopoly streets in Switzerland, Basel turns out to have two Monopoly streets:

Freie Strasse..


.. and Steinenvorstadt


We are getting closer to winning this game!

Zürich Zoo with E.!

As E. is a big fan of zoos as well, we visited the Zürich zoo together during her stay. On this particular day, the lions and chameleons were very much into posing for my camera.





Also, because we are both a little bit crazy (and just because it is supercool!) we went camel riding. Oh Yeah.

Here is E. enjoying a brief ride on a camel:

Excitement when the ride begins!


Riding through an authentic Mongolian Steppe with yurts.


The end of the ride

Pictures from me on a camel! Oh yeah!


On the camel!!


Going around the yurts


And there I am again!

During the rest of E.s stay, we did other nice things (of which I couldn't take any pictures), which are worth mentioning here as well. We went to Donnie Darko in an arthouse cinema (because it is one of my favourite movies). It was actually a very cosy (gezellige!) cinema. I will definitely return there at some point, when they show other nice classics on the big screen. We also went for dinner and karaoke with some of my colleagues which was outright hilarious. I really liked it :) On the last day of her stay, we went swimming in the lake (because it was again hot!) and managed to evade the Street Parade (= thousands/millions of crazy people entering Zürich under the pretence of 'enjoying the music'). It was a lovely visit!

View from the office on a stormy day

Very suddenly there was a storm on an otherwise sunny day, which resulted in the following view from our office:


(Notice how the rainbow appears to be originating from the Swiss flag).

Swiss monopoly in Luzern

During my brief visit to Luzern, I also visited the one and only monopoly street of Luzern.



I haven't seen any of the monuments and landmarks Luzern is famous for though, so I have a very good excuse for returning to this beautiful city some day!

The Golden Round Trip of Mount Pilatus

One of the most epic days ever was when me and B. (a (Dutch) friend of mine, who is an exchange student at ETH for the next semester) went to Mt. Pilatus. After a train journey of about an hour to Luzern and a 15 minute bus drive, we boarded the panorama gondolas at Kriens to Fräkmüntegg and changed there to the aerial cableway up to the mountain to Pilatus Kulm. This was the first stage of the Golden Round Trip of Mount Pilatus from Luzern. The Golden Round Trip includes the bus, gondola and cableway up to Mount Pilatus and a ride with the steepest cogwheel railway in the world (more on that later) down Pilatus, followed by a lovely boat cruise on the Vierwaldstättersee. I can’t even begin to describe the awesomeness of this trip. I will however, try to show it to you via pictures.

Caution:
Prepare for lots and lots and lots of pictures.
Possibly too many.
Nope, scratch that: you can’t have too many pictures of these beautiful Alpine views!

Going up the mountain

One of the cablecars going up to Pilatus Kulm.

Once arrived at Pilatus Kulm, there were several hikes to beautiful viewpoints, even though there was also already a panorama deck at the Pilatus Kulm station. It was lovely weather: a very clear sky and sunny and not cold at all! We decided to do two walks: one 40 minute walk to the top of Mount Pilatus (2132 m above sea level) and one 10 minute walk to a 360° panorama viewpoint.

Hike to Tomlishorn: the top of Mount Pilatus at 2132 m above sea level

Of course we wanted to go to the highest point of Mount Pilatus. This was supposed to be a 40 minute walk with medium difficulty and an altitude difference of 60 m. However, they clearly didn’t calculate any time for taking pictures into the approximate walking time. As we stopped every 2 m to take a picture of the beautiful views it took us a bit longer than 40 minutes. But is was so much fun!
( More beautiful pictures of the hike )

At the top! - Tomlishorn

And then we made it to the top! Oh yeah! In the above picture you can see the starting point of our walk: Pilatus Kulm, where the cablecar stops: it is wedged between the two peaks. The right peak is the Esel, where we went for our second hike. Also note the lonely, white church at the left on the mountain. I just keep wondering who had the outrageous idea of building a church there. I mainly have 2 questions about this:
1. Why there? Are there so many people living there that there needs to be a church there? It seems to be pretty desolated, so why a build a church?
2. Who brought up all the materials? It must have been horrendous.

( More beautiful pictures at the top - Tomlishorn )

Hike back to Pilatus Kulm
While walking back to Pilatus Kulm, I just couldn’t resist taking a couple of more pictures. I like these pictures in particular, because they have nice artistic feel about them..


Look at the beautiful asymmetry!


A walkthrough bit with a fantastic view (again!).

Hike to Esel: 360° panorama view
As we hadn’t had a clear view of the Vierwaldstättersee yet, we decided that we really needed to do the hike/walk to one of the other viewpoints: a zig-zag path to the top. They said it would take 10 minutes. I was convinced it would take me way longer than that. B. was convinced it would take him only a couple of minutes. B. was right and managed to get to the top in no time. I was incorrect, but very pleased nonetheless as I made it to the top in 6 minutes. The difference in altitude was 50 m.



At the top! - Esel

Beautiful view of the Vierwaldstättersee!

( More beautiful pictures at the top - Esel )

Hike back to Pilatus Kulm
Just one picture on the way back, because it was such an ideal spot for making a picture of someone with the lake in the background. However, after this picture, we decided we actually shouldn’t stop every 2 seconds any more, because that would lead to us missing the train.


Needless to say, I did stop one more time (very shortly!) at Pilatus Kulm to buy souvenirs in the shop. As you do.

The steepest cogwheel railway in the world
With a gradient of 48°, this cogwheel railway is the steepest in the whole world. It was a pretty cool ride. Basically, the driver was braking all the time to prevent us from plummeting to our deaths.


Looks pretty steep, huh?


The train in front of us. Do you see how steep it is? Yeah? Did I make my point?

Boat cruise on the Vierwaldstättersee
After all this excitement, we were quite tired already, but luckily we saved the boat cruise for the end. Therefore, we now had the opportunity to relax and take in the breathtaking views from the Vierwaldstättersee from a different perspective. As the battery of my camera was dying at this point, there are not as many pictures any more.





Luzern
We concluded the day by walking a bit through the city centre of Luzern. We didn’t have time (or the energy, really) to visit any of the landmarks (except for the old city bridge), so I will have to return to Luzern at some point. I don’t mind at all, because it is such a beautiful city: very picturesque. In fact I’d like to go back now!