Month: August 2019

This is not Lugano, per se, but rather looking out from Lugano, on the northern coast of Lake Lugano:

A lot of people I know call it Arth-Goldau, but I think technically that’s the name of the railway station! The village in this snap below is Goldau, and it is pretty much smack dab in the center of a region called Arth.

Regardless or irregardless, it’s the Swiss countryside at its summertime best!

For this next attraction you have to go deep into Winterthur – very deep indeed, to a part of Winterthur that I think few tourists have ever seen or likely ever will.

With the Swiss being very proud – and rightfully so – of their thousands upon thousands of fountains that provide fresh spring drinking water, it is surprising you don’t see more things like this:

There is a small wheel that is turned by the water, causing the little metal blacksmith to bend back and forth and – believe it or not – hit his hammer on an anvil, giving a nice little chime.

Continuing the series, here a huge red kite is looking for a quick snack high over a farmer turning his cut grass with a rotary rake:

I took this magnificent panaroma snap from an area high on a hill in Winterthur, called the Goldenberg:

Here is a slightly different view, showing the incredible city far below:

One of my all time favorite movies is the 1959 Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Pat Boone and James Mason, based on the book by Jules Vernes:

My recent Journey to the Center of Lugano could not be compared to this at all!

Lugano is a wonderful city on a pretty lake in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland known as Ticino.

When you come to Lugano by train, you’ll either alight (if you are British) or get off (if you are American) at this incredible train station:

Then you’ll immediately walk outside, at which time, upon realizing that you, in actual fact, are hundreds of meters high above the city, you will either say “My word!” (if you are British) or “My goodness!” (if you are American):

At this point it will dawn on you: you are way up here, and the city is way down there. Arithmetically, you have to add the two ways, and that is a loooong way!

So to get ready for this loooong way, in time you’ll either gird your loins (if you are British) or get ready (if you are American) and start the long, long trek down into the city.

Well, that’s what I used to do, many many times – until I made a stunning discovery! Even though I am an American, I am a loin girder, and to properly gird my loins for the long, long journey down I decided to walk back into the train station to buy a bottle of acqua in bottiglia.

And you can imagine my surprise when I saw this stunning sight!

Yes, it’s a contraption!  But not just any contraption, this is a people-mover of sort of contraption that shuttles people up and down the mountain!

It was a beautiful day, I felt fit and strong, I needed a good walk – but I decided to throw caution to the wind and try out this contraption. What use is a contraption that nobody uses!

Well, here is a shot of what it looked like as this fully automated contraption was lowered down the mountain on railroad tracks but tied to a huge cable underneath:

Now, I have been on contraptions like this all across Switzerland, so I was ready – I was prepared – I knew exactly what to expect. A very important principle in experiemental physics is this: opportunity favors the prepared mind.

So I had my little point-and-shoot camera out, and I was ready for what I knew what would come next!

But in case you don’t know, in fact these contraptions have two cars that are each at opposite ends of a very long cable, so that as your car is lowered down, another car is raised up:

The rest, as they say, is history. Despite being am American loin girder I did not alight at the bottom but rather got out and continued on my way.

Here’s a nice shot of what the shoreline of Lugano more or less looks like:

And when I was there the city was filled with shiny metallic works of art, such as this one below that, at first glance, looks like a hole in the fabric of space and time:

Continuing the series, here are some stunning waste receptacles that I spotted in the southern Swiss city of Lugano,

One of the first reactions I have is buck the trend. There is a trend in the world today – and for some time – to replace well-built, long-lasting products with cheap and disposable ones. You see this trend in almost every aspect of life. So when you see this new trend to replace short-lived garbage receptacles with better built and more longer lasting fixtures, it is a step in the right direction!

The Swiss set out to fortify Switzerland long before World War II. To me that’s always been a very apt and fitting closure of the circle of fate, because – before the introduction of the long bow – Switzerland had the best and most well-trained soldiers and mercenaries in the world.  Probably, more lives have been lost in medieval battle at the hands of the Swiss than many other kingdoms combined.

Here’s what I see everyday on my long 15 km Nordic Walk through the Winterthur countryside:

But here’s what it looks like if you really zoom in:

That’s a bunker. You can’t see it in the snap, but it is situated in the hills high above the village of Winterthur, and the holes are pointing directly down into the village.

There are many, many tens of thousands of bunkers and fortifications all over Switzerland – so I’ve never really been inclined to start a blog series to photograph them. Just like a few others, this one just caught my eye.

Took this snap from my balcony using the telephoto lens on my little point-and-shoot camera. That’s a red kite (Milvus milvus) that lives near my building, and for over three years now cruises around looking for pigeons and crows to eat.    (In fact, I always know he’s out hunting when the zillions of crows somehow disappear.)

Interestingly, the area in which I live is almost entirely devoid of tiny birds, only massive numbers of crows, so I’ve often thought that probably the crows have pushed out the other birds.