bushfire smoke
sits in pits
of lungs flown
far away
the fight
still fluttering
ragged
animal fear
resides
human organs
overlaid
by today’s
hotgreen grass-smell
of primary school T-ball
in Lynden Park
can’t tell sometimes
sweat from tears from dew from bore water from
precious reservoir
can it be spared?
Saved?
Me? I am free
on knees
taller than trees:
to all of thee
Christmas merry x
Photo: Claire Doble
Canton: Lucerne / Luzern
Destination: Lucerne / Luzern
Special guest: Wendy Noller from Hey Mamalaide!
Interesting thing: Lucerne is Switzerland’s 7th largest city and Lake Lucerne gets the highest number of boat passengers per year (2.46 million) out of all the lakes in the country including Lake Geneva*.
I guess I’ve been to Lucerne about a dozen times already in the past four years. That’s many visits to the brilliant Verkehrshaus Swiss Transport Museum and includes passing through several times this year even (it’s a gateway city to a lot of mountains, eg: Stans in Nidwalden). It’s also where I did a very cool nuclear bunker tour of the Sonnenberg tunnel around this time last year, which I thought I’d written about but looks like not. Damn! That was fascinating, must tell you about it sometime.
Another cool thing about the trip to Lucerne via train is you get the familienwagen (family carriage) – for those who don’t know – it’s a playground on the train. The first time we encountered this we really thought we’d stepped into some alternate-reality amazing-world of family friendly public transport. Nowadays, I’m still impressed, although it was a relief to be travelling sans kinder and avoid the squeals and kiddy-fug that’s the inevitable downside of the familienwagen.
As well as venturing out alone, my Luzern trip was my first nighttime canton visit of the series. Alone! At night! Doesn’t happen very often these days.
I went to hang with friend and fellow blogger Wendy from Hey Mamalaide. Luzern was looking very festive and Christmassy and we had planned to go ice skating… But since we’re both Aussies and therefore not particularly competent at cold-weather sportings (that’s our story anyway!) we decided to stick with what we do best: drinking, eating and a good old chinwag.
Before we met up, I did take a short detour to the Weihnachsthotel to take a look (thanks again Tamara, part-time working hockey mum for the tip!). It was lit up like, well, Christmas, and looking pretty fab on a dark and frosty evening. I may have had a moment’s pang that I didn’t book us a table in the Rigi Hütte fondue restaurant there for dinner. No matter.
Wendy took me to Karel Korner, pretty much the perfect Wednesday night cocktail bar. Then we ate dinner at Jeff’s, which I can confidently say is the best (only) burger I’ve ever eaten in Luzern. (I’ve heard Jeff’s sister, Jill’s also does good burger). Caught the last train home and job done. And that’s my Lucerne post completed without one single mention of Kapellbrücke! Oh.
Four cantons and three weeks to go! : ) I will try to post another poem soon… have been writing but not publishing.
*Source: Swiss tourism in figures 2015
My latest “Roxette” haircut. Maybe another NYR should be find a decent hairdresser!
A few short weeks ago I was riding high. I’d had a couple of poems published and a story up in a local newspaper (43 Habits You’ll Pick Up Living in Switzerland). I’d just completed a rough draft of my first novel and poems and even a few short stories were falling out of me all over the shop.
And now… I’m the kid after Christmas. It all just feels a bit jaded and useless. Where’s the confidence-bordering-on-arrogance? The joie de vivre for this writer’s life?
A few things I was looking forward to got derailed. After a few months of little to no drinking, I got a bit festive and the wine intake has crept up again. I kicked Facebook off my phone and I feel better, but it’s created space for loneliness — amazing how social media sort of causes but cures that. Which basically proves it’s yet another addiction. David Foster Wallace (yes, I am that wanker today!) gave what I think is the best description of addiction. Or, if you prefer, Homer Simpson – “Here’s to alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”
I think I’m tired, it’s been cold and dry and dark but without the joyous surprise of snow. I think a few months of sitting still at my computer tapping out the words finally caught up with me physically and I’m feeling heavy, unfit and yuk. I miss my friends and my family. Even those who are nearby. I think finishing things and achieving things, while wonderful, does result in a bit of comedown afterwards. It can be hard to keep the momentum going, especially at this time of year when things are winding up.
But anyway, it’s inching towards 2017 now and I’m trying to look forward. Play it forward.
Last year’s New Year’s resolution was to make some small, incremental changes that would hopefully make a big difference to my / our lives and I think I’ve achieved that. (Interesting to look back actually – in 2015 it was about surrendering to my fate and a year or so before that it was Don’t Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread… something I may have to re-examine given my furious forward-pace of work recently. Ha!)
So I think 2017 is going to be all about consolidation and possibly realignment – shaving off the excess to concentrate on the main game. I’ve put in some amazing groundwork in 2016 and I want to build on that. This means not getting distracted by stuff, no matter how important it may seem. And this is going to include saying no to paid work if need be, which is slightly terrifying when I think about my bank balance! Hopefully it’s all to the greater good though and the fact I’ve made this commitment to this Writing for My Life thing will eventually start to pay off, literally.
So I’ve come up with some more ideas – why not. And because this has worked for me in the past, I’m going to make it into a statement of intent. With SMART goals even (yes, I’m that wanker too today)…
In 2017 I would like to
PLUS – I’ve also had an idea for this blog that I’d like to reclaim some of the travelogue stuff and so Himself, the kids and I are going to do a 26 Swiss Cantons in 52 Weeks challenge where we’ll visit all 26 cantons of Switzerland throughout 2017. I’ll aim to take at least one photo (if not a whole gallery) of each and do a writeup of something we saw or somewhere we went. We’re planning to go alphabetically but we’ll see how it pans out.
Phew – that should probably be enough for now. I’d better go get some rest before NYE ! Oh, and I’m hoping to do a year-in-review of this blog at some point in the next week or so as well… stay tuned. 🙂
It’s been snowing for four days straight in Zurich and it looks so pretty! Wow, the huge picture-windows of our apartment really come into their own right now. We can laze around in a post-Xmas haze watching the snowflakes fall, float and flurry from all different angles. Which is pretty much all I’ve been doing. At the risk of sounding lame: it’s quite magical.
Despite living in Europe for 8 years, I’m still a relative novice when it comes to snow. This stuff is light and fluffy but DEEP now: 20-30cms where it sits undisturbed on top of fences and cars (including ours, which seems to be the only one in the street that hasn’t moved since the snow started!) What I didn’t realise is how it also piles up so tall on tree branches; it looks like a scene from one of those soft-glitter Christmas cards. Whatever divine designer sketched out winter trees to be dark and leafless during snowfalls really had the right idea. Very stylish in black and white! At night it’s not as dark because of all the whiteness around… maybe that was part of the idea too. To brighten up those long winter evenings. heh.
Even the snowfall itself – so much gentler than rain. The flakes hang softer in the air, tumbling downward but also sideways, circling and eddying about. They’re bigger than raindrops – pure-white dust bunnies or feather fluffs -and it feels like you can almost see each individual one. Sometimes a gust of wind will throw a thick white shower off the trees, it’s like powder or dry ice skooting along the pavements and gusting past street lights.
Snow is weird though – because suddenly there’s all this extra… stuff… in piles around the neighbourhood. Like, how can the world produce all this additional substance coated over everything? And when it melts it’s just kind of … gone. Maybe I’m not making much sense. But what else is like snow?
Part of me feels as though I should be making more of it. Taking P out to build snowmen and go sledding (HI just bought a sled so we’ll ride the hills of the chuchgrounds opposite our place over the NYE / weekend break) but the snow is still falling, it’s slippy out there and my centre of gravity’s completely thrown by the baby bump right now. (I’m not just being paranoid about snow danger: even trams are coming off icy rails and careening into our local supermarket!) So I think we’ll just stay put and enjoy the spectacle. The pics really don’t do it justice.
clairevetica 