Merry Christmas!

I hope each of you have a wonderful Christmas day. Again, thank you all so much for your emails, texts, cards, calls, visits and prayers over the last month.

The Total Package sees his vision improve daily (your prayers, God's mercy). He's still off work, so we putter around the house like a retired couple; he gets groceries with me to test his sight. One month ago, a grocery store was a sickening, confusing swirl of color and shape. Yesterday a quick trip for flour and coconut was no problem.

A few weeks ago we put the stepladder in the driveway, sat the camera on top, and tried to get a few family shots. Always, this is a dicey affair.

But we persisted, and finally got a glamorous photo worthy of the Typical American Christmas card.

To God be the glory, great things he hath done!

So loved he the world that he gave us his Son,

Who yielded his life an atonement for sin,

And opened the life-gate that all may come in

Fanny Crosby

the Lions of Lucerne

So, this afternoon (Sunday, by the way) I called my dentist and described to him my PAIN.

"Sounds like you need a root canal," he said cheerfully. He's a cheerful man.

He called in a couple prescriptions, and now I'm taking an antibiotic and Tylenol/codeine, which takes the edge off the PAIN, but doesn't eliminate it. This seems like a good time to revisit Switzerland, to get my mind off the PAIN.

I enjoyed photographing the lions of Lucerne.  They were all over the place, fighting, roaring, grimacing, sleeping, crying and dying.

These three were all on the same building:

These two were battling above a church door, near our hotel. I couldn't decide which photo so share (flowers or no?) so I included both.

These were on the old city wall, roaring at one another across a coat of arms:

On a door...

I've saved Lucerne's most beautiful lion for last. "The dying Lion of Lucerne" is about thirty feet long. It was carved to honor a group of Swiss mercenaries who died in Paris, at the Tuileries, in 1792.

Long ago, Mark Twain stood at the same spot we did, looking at the lion. He didn't have a nice camera like we do, but he didn't need one, because he made people see with words.  He called this "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world."

White stone

It's stormy here, raining buckets, and Switzerland seems far away. I'm not finished blogging about it, but I'm taking a break to show you something I keep on my kitchen windowsill.

It's been there several years (last week on the beach, my dad picked up a similar one). I look at it sometimes when I want to scream and throw things and walk away.

He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth except he that receiveth it.  Revelation 2:17

********

Strength of my heart, I need not fail - 

Not mine to fear but to obey;

With such a leader who could quail?

Thou art as Thou wert yesterday!

-author unknown

Markt und Platz

Lucerne's old town is a jumble of cobblestone streets, alleyways, tunnels and squares, and if you walk around them you realize how things worked when Lucerne wasn't a city at all, but a little town on a river, seven centuries ago.

Our hotel sat in a little alley off the Kornmarkt, named because it was the site, long ago, of a grain warehouse. You can see our hotel sign above the archway.

The square is also home to an old bakers' guild hall. (guilds, by the way, were precursors to today's trade unions) Left of the red awning is a restaurant called Pfistern, meaning "bakers." This makes sense - after all, the bakers' guild should be near the stored grain.

Every morning we walked a stone tunnel (through the old guild hall) to another square called the Weinmarkt (wine market). We ate breakfast...

...looking out at this building. I think my favorite part was the roof:

On one side of the Weinmarkt was an old apothecary. The Latin at the bottom says, in effect, "No medicine can heal a broken heart."

And, since it was a wine market, across the square you can see the wedding feast at Cana.

Not far away is the Hirshenplatz, named after the restaurant there, with its golden sign.  Hirschen means "deer."

In 1779, the German writer Goethe visited Lucerne and stayed at the Hirschrnplatz, so there's a picture of him, with a "Goethe slept here" sign.

I haven't read Goethe, but he's known as the German Shakespeare, so maybe his writing goes something like this.

Romeo: Ich liebe dich.
Juliet: Ich liebe dich.
Romeo: Unsere familien sind schecht!
Juliet: Ja!
Romeo: Ich bin tot, Horatio!
Juliet: Nicht das richtig spiel, dumbkopf.

(That is my pidgin German, by the way, which I used several times in Switzerland. My listeners displayed a perplexing array of symptoms, like flushing, choking, or very nearly spitting out their food.)

Lucerne

Murren is a hard place to leave because it's lovely. It's easy to leave, however, in the most literal sense of the word, because the Swiss public transportation system is superb.

I could praise the tidy railway stations, the prompt train cars and the convenient schedules, but instead I'll rave about the snacks on the train.

Oh - and wait! Something delayed the server bringing our cheese, so she brought chocolate, too. Amtrak just doesn't hold a candle.

We were on a train called the Golden Pass, so I felt a bit like Charlie Bucket with his golden ticket. Especially when the scene out the window looked like a fairy tale.

After this countryside, can any city look good? Yes, if the city is Lucerne

Beforehand, I read  that Lucerne is 836 years old, that it was built on a hillside beside the River Reuss, that the old town is filled with car-free cobblestone streets, squares, churches, clocks and buildings with painted facades, and that the original, towered city wall still runs along the hilltop. But we stepped off the train - two typical Americans from a typical American bedroom community - unprepared for how pretty Lucerne really is.

This is the Kapellbrucke (1333), one of Lucerne's iconic covered bridges. Inside, the triangular spaces between beams contain paintings depicting Lucerne's history. The tower, called the Wasserturm, was part of the city's original fortifications and has served as an archive, a prison, and a torture chamber. We walked downriver and crossed the Spreuerbrucke ("chaff bridge" - 1408) also.  Its interior paintings follow a disturbing "dance of death" theme that makes the brothers Grimm tales seem benign and cuddly. I photographed it not.

This is a bronze (I think) map of Lucerne; the Total Package is pointing to our hotel in the old town, near the Kapellbrucke. The big building beneath his elbow is the train station, and Lake Lucerne is under his armpit.

We walked the old city wall, climbing into some of the towers, one of which contains a clock that's been working for hundreds of years. We stood beside the the cogs and wheels and giant pendulum, and shot arrows through the narrow slits, and poured boiling oil upon our nasty foe. Just kidding.

 

Of course every city needs a Starbucks. A tall black coffee cost about $7 American, so we shared, at an outdoor table by the river, and visited with a woman from Shanghai, who liked Lucerne as much as we did.

KIettersteig

The following is a quote from Rick Steves' guidebook on Switzerland, page 192.

Murren Via Ferrata (Klettersteig Murren)

Mountaineers and thrill-seekers can test their nerves on this one-mile trail along the cliff running from Murren to Gimmelwald.  A via ferrata ("way of iron" in Italian) or Klettersteig ("climbing path" in German) is a cliffside trail made of metal steps drilled into the mountainside with a cable running at shoulder height above it.  Equipped with a helmet, harness, and two carabiners, you are clipped to the cable the entire way...

...several hundred yards are literally hanging over a 2.400-foot drop.  I did it, and through the most dangerous sections, I was too scared to look down or take pictures...

Why I let the Total Package read the guidebook, I will never know. He doesn't even like guidebooks, as a rule, but now he knew about the Klettersteig. Here's a photo of the pictorial map; if you double click on it, you can see that the trail is an ominous bloody red line on the cliff between Murren and Gimmelwald.

"I have to do that," he said.

I considered my options, which included a nice walk above Murren, through fields of wildflowers with stops at dairies for freshly made cheese. However, we took this trip to be together, and besides, I know I would fret during every minute he was gone. So I went, like an idiot. Or like an awesome wife, according to the Total Package.

Most of these photos will be of me, because my husband carried his phone to take photos. Here is me, approaching the trail, blithely ignorant of my fate.

At first the trail wasn't bad, just narrow, with beautiful views.  We got an idea of our height, though, when we heard "woo-hoo!" and saw a parachute glide past.

You can see  him out there, looking like a fingernail clipping.  There were tiny towns in the valley below:

Next, we found a BASE jumping platform. BASE jumpers leap off wearing a wing suit, or parachute.  The console on the tree held a radio, so a jumper can call his/her team on the ground, and say "Goodbye, cruel world!" or something like that.

After that, things just went downhill. Wait. Strike that. I don't have adjectives to describe the way things got.

"You are amazing," the Total Package said, many times. I said nothing out loud, but over and over I thought, 'the Lord is my rock and my deliverer," and promised myself that afterward, I would find that passage in the Psalms and read it all.

We crossed three gorges, two by high-wire and the last and longest by swaying, swinging Nepalese bridge.

The Nepalese bridge can be seen from the Gimmelwald cable car. As I crossed, looking at nothing but my feet, the Total Package called, "You're being photographed!" Sure enough, there was the funicular next to me, with fifty people pointing their cameras my way. I dared taking one hand off the cable to wave.

The hike lasted ten more minutes after the bridge. From Gimmelwald, a cable car takes you right back to Murren. I napped that afternoon, then opened my Bible and found that Psalm.

Psalm 18

2 The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my shield, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

6 In my distress, I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God; he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

19 He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me.

30 As for God, his way is perfect; the word of the Lord is proved; he is a shield to all those who trust in him.

31 For who is God, save the Lord? Or who is a rock, save our God?

32 It is God who girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.

33 He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high places.

36 Thou hast enlarged my steps under me, that my feet did not slip.

49 Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord, among the nations, and sing praises unto thy name.