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Parcly Taxel: Whereas our previous two days in Luzern penetrated deep into the Alps via the steepest, highest and most technically involved of railways, this last day would stay within city limits. A fortunate thing, considering that it had rained heavily during the previous short night, continuing through when we were eating the hotel breakfast.
Spindle: Well, the “within city limits” part was only half-true. Rain and snow being a windigo’s best friends, I suggested a day-trip to Zürich, which Parcly agreed to without hesitation.
45 minutes was all it took on the InterRegio to Switzerland’s economic capital, stopping in the middle only at the medium-sized town of Zug (which also means “move” in the board game sense in German).
Parcly: My incorporeal companion wasn’t making things up – Zürich continued to receive rain as we strolled down its streets, including the priciest street in Europe, Bahnhofstrasse (Switzerland and Liechtenstein use no ß). We rested our hooves at the Fraumünster, lured there by a poster indicating organ music at noon, 10 minutes in the future when we arrived there… only to find “Thursdays” below the time, it being Saturday now when few ponies were working.
Spindle: Unlike the other churches we had visited prior in our holiday, Fraumünster charges for entry, but the fee includes access into its crypt holding a mini-exhibition about the church’s religious and architectural history through Swiss Reformation and beyond. Five stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall stand in its choir, but the rest of the building is rather unimpressive.
Rarity: Note the name Marc Chagall, since the next place in Zürich Parcly and Spindle, culture vulture royalty, went was the Kunstmuseum, recently expanded to become the largest of its kind in Switzerland by floor space. Wait, does Spindle hold any titles?
Princess Luna: [whispering] What would you expect from a windigo bound to a pony’s heart? She’s an ambassador.
Rarity: [blushes] Anyway, the array of artists represented in this two-building museum is as bewildering as the actual content. From the Old Masters to pop artists and Op artists. From bitcoin “receipts” to three gigantic Monet water lily paintings. From film to sculpture to coils of brass, CRT TVs, electronic ticker tapes, digitised sketchbooks, you know, that sort of found art, Yoko—
Sweetie Belle: Please stop, I’m bored. [repeats]
Parcly: Despite the museum’s stated emphasis on Swiss art, the majority of featured artists were non-Swiss. Monet was French and we visited a special exhibition on Federico Fellini, the visionary Italian film director.
Spindle: Not so special, really. All museums with a sufficiently wide scope have special exhibitions all the time.
But after swimming between dazzling, bland, gently provoking and violently in-your-face works of art in the aquarium that is the Kunstmuseum, my dear alicorn was half-frozen in her solid hooves and curious mind. She needed to thaw out with some food, for which we conveniently had a pack of Sprüngli macarons bought from their Bahnhofstrasse outlet earlier in the day. Now with renewed zeal under the hot afternoon sun, we found another small café and had iced coffee and a quiche slice.
Parcly: Somepony only looking down would not be able to distinguish Zürich from Luzern… they are equal in their topographic beauty, fronting crystalline blue lakes spanned by ornate yet not pretentious bridges. Their buildings evoke the same nostalgic, quasi-rural feel too; their churches are no exception, such as the Grossmünster which we entered around 5:30pm.
By then though I was getting tired of visiting all these middle-sized churches and sitting inside them, especially in the more Protestant Zürich where sacred dogma dictates modest architecture (contrasting with principally Catholic Luzern). And I was hungry again.
Coco Pommel: Moi ? I happened to be in the same place at the same time, under the Grossmünster’s twin bell towers and in front of the Restaurant vaudois Le Dézaley. Star-crossed as we were, its owner flipped the door sign open for dinner a minute after Parcly hoofbumped me, transitioning into a romantic evening dinner…
Spindle: …except for two things: the sky still glowed a brilliant blue – and would be so until we returned to Luzern – and the main course was cheese. Cheese fondue.
Coco: A guilty pleasure, the meal these thin creatures wanted to have at Harder Kulm but had no time for, now in front of three pairs of hooves! The molten cheese dip solidifies on the bread chunks as soon as the latter are taken out of the pot, and Parcly endeavoured to devour her share of the whole meal, including vegetables for palatability, down to the last bit.
Spindle: She succeeded – but only just. Thus with her brain stirred up by nightmare-inducing cheese, we briskly walked/floated back to Zürich HB in time for the dusk InterRegio bound for Luzern; at long last the light had scurried beyond the horizon when we alighted around 9pm.
The cities of Luzern and Zürich and their lakes and mountains form the nucleus of German Switzerland, and three nights from a Luzern base had serenaded Parcly’s mind multiple times over. Our schedule would not wait for those pleasures to sink in, however, so I cooled the genie’s body temperature just enough to lull her into a comfortable bottle sleep, then imbued that glass bottle with my spirit.
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