It has been pouring and pissing cats and dogs endlessly in the Netherlands, and this does really feel like a typical Dutch summer. But this time a lot worse actually, as I don’t recall I raining so much in weeks in a row after it had been super warm for a couple of weeks. But from where I do recall where this always was, was from the time that I used to live in Switzerland in the city of Luzern.
The locals there call it ‘the washing machine of Switzerland’. That is because all the weather bumps into towards each other hitting the mountains, but still driven by the oceans that are also still having their influence on the weather. And indeed….often it just was rainy grey over there. But when you would walk up a hill for just like 200 meters (Luzern is located on 400 meters altitude) then you would already hit the sunny region and it would be like nothing was going on anymore
This is exactly how this would look like. You could just see the layer of clouds hanging there, and after that the sky would be super clear!
The funny thing I always thought about Luzern is how diverse it is in terms of weather, mountain scenery, water sport life in the summers and skiing in the winters just all really close by. And yeah indeed….. it also was pissing a lot of rain very often. Better said, it felt foggy a lot and I remember one of my friends saying: ‘ein Richtinge Lozärnerin hent immer s Regenschirm’ which is ofcourse dialact Swissgerman, but the English version of that is ‘a real girl from Luzern always has her umbrella with her.’ And indeed…the thing totally was glued in my bag and always with me. But it didn’t feel like it!
This is what remember from summers over there. Clear blue skies with hardly any clouds and around the 1st of August which is a public holiday over there where the red swiss military planes would fly by, and where the hot air balloons would hoover in the sky. Far sights where you would be able to see the Rigi mountain, as well as the Pilatus mountain on the background. All beautiful vibrant blue and green colors. Damn I miss that!
Just this week a girl I know was telling me that she was camping around in Europe over the last couple of weeks and she also had visited Luzern. The place she stayed was only around the corner of where I used to live, and this is what started triggering back memories. And the funny this with all of these travel vibes is always that they are different when you are just visiting or when you stay there for a longer period of time.
That is when these kinds of people start to consider you as local as well, and they start telling about their weekend hobby like this, which is still kind of funny.
But daaaaaamn just look at these kinds of snowy mountains that were also so close by just for the weekends. Damn I just these mountains, and again….it is a reminder how diverse everything was. Is Switzerland the real Walhalla? No ofcourse not, like every country this also has its quircks and pro’s and con’s. But thinking back about these days….I think back about it with warm memories!