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Lucerne and the Sunrise
Lucerne, Switzerland

The sunrise over Lucerne’s most acclaimed peak, the 2132 ft. Mount Pilatus, has hypnotized hikers and artists for centuries.
- Lets Go: Europe 1998

So read the first sentence of the short description of Lucerne, Switzerland, that I studied as I hunkered down for the one-hour train ride from Zurich. It’s noted that Wagner composed his masterpieces here. It boasts the steepest cog wheel train in the world. I later learned that the height of the mountain is actually 2,132 meters, or 7,000 feet. But all of this was lost on me, because despite ten hours in the city, I never got to see it.

My impulsively conceived plan, naively jammed together as I watched the sunset over the Zurich Sea, was to make the quick trip to Lucerne for the night, move on to Interlaken in the morning and still be back in Florence in time for a loosen-the-belt meal and long sleep before class. I was barely 20 years old, had never traveled alone, had just read On The Road for the second time, and in my what-would-Jack-do frame of mind, each developing step of this plan became more ludicrous. While the original plan was to find a hostel shortly after arriving at the train station, that sentence set off a dim light bulb in my head. I would see the sunrise.

By my calculations, which of course were not based on any foundation of research, the sun would rise around 5:45. Through warped reasoning I concluded it would be ridiculous to pay 30 Swiss Francs for a hostel when I was going to wake that early. My train would arrive at nine in the evening, and by the time I finished wandering the night streets of Lucerne with its sidewalk cafés and Lake Lucerne mirroring the imposing Mt. Pilatus, it would be well after midnight. My decision was made. I would spend the night in the train station.

Obviously I had not pioneered this concept. It’s been done before, continued since, and as I would discover, is quite popular in Lucerne.

Immediately upon exiting the station, I was in the middle of a carnival that was being held between the station and the lake. People screamed on amusement rides, children cheered at the activity booths and local teens stood around looking tough. I was trying to locate Mt. Pilatus, but it was too dark. I found a billboard map and studied it, realized it was in Swiss German, and then stared at it more intensely to try to memorize the maze of streets and also to exude the image that I knew what I was doing. This, of course, did nothing for me.

There is always a touch of excitement when you are in a new country. You have arrived after carefully planning (or complete disregard for planning in my case), and you are now walking amongst people bound to a completely different culture. Most often you don’t understand anything that anyone is saying around you, which adds to the excitement. Some of these people may be debating the best way to steal your backpack, but you are oblivious and happy. I felt this way until I suddenly realized that someone was actually talking to me, which usually causes a rush of adrenaline, in turn prepares me to fight, run like Carl Lewis or, hopefully in an extreme case, speak in tongues.

My routine for these situations is moronic – I shake my head and say “Americano.” A thin middle-aged man started speaking to me in Swiss German. I performed said routine and he immediately made the switch to English in mid sentence. Did I need help? What was I looking for? How long have I been in Lucerne? Don’t I love it here? Where am I from? Gee, that’s a nice backpack.

I tried to answer each question but all I could think was that this man, maybe 40 or 50 years old, was hanging around a carnival. He had no wedding ring and no kids with him. I asked him where was the best place to see the sunrise and he told me to follow him. After I laughed he went into a long speech about how Lucerne was crime free and how he was not dangerous. I realized that the guy was just being friendly, and most importantly, that I could probably win in a fight, so I walked with him along the lake a bit.

It turned out he had done a lot of traveling in the past and always received help from strangers so he was looking to help travelers. He specifically told me about his travels throughout the heart and soul of America with the help of numerous Americans. I couldn’t help but feel unpatriotic because he had seen way more of my own country than I had.

He was a genuinely nice person who truly wanted me to fall hopelessly in love with Lucerne but he had a strange tendency of leaning in way too close every time he wanted to make a point. This continued until I was sure Lucerne was about to have an immediate surge in crime, so I told him I had to go. He made sure I had a place to sleep and I insisted I had a hostel although I couldn’t think of a name for it and was not sure where it was. We parted and I hit the streets.

I walked for hours and found nothing. Everything was locked up and silent. Whatever voices I heard were far away. I strained my eyes to spot the mountain but it was too dark. By midnight I was back in the train station.

Within 20 minutes of settling down in the waiting room with my walkman and journal, I was kicked out. I was sitting across from the glass entrance door when a German Shepherd suddenly ran up and leaped at me, thrusting itself up on its hind legs, covering the glass with fur, claws and teeth. To my horror a man appeared and opened the door, but he yanked on a leash before the dog had the chance to go for my jugular and turn me into something resembling a Pez dispenser. Two security guards stood before me, one yelled out some Swiss German. I went through my routine and the same guard told me in perfect English to leave.

I had no luck at my next spot either, a bench on the main platform. There were no more trains coming in and none would leave until morning. I was soon the only person that didn’t have a uniform and a vicious attack dog. A younger guard approached me and told me that I would have to leave but that I could go down to the lower level and hang out there.

At 1:00 I was on a cold metal bench listening to my Walkman when two young Mexican girls came down and sat on the bench across from me. They took one look at me and one of them began asking me questions in English about hostels and if sleeping in the station was allowed. I told them what I knew and we sat around chatting. They had been traveling around Europe for over two months. Only one spoke English, the other sat quietly on the bench staring at us as we spoke. I had studied Spanish for six years in school, which basically meant I knew how to describe myself in general terms and inquire about the location of the bathroom. I did ok and we got along fine. Soon the quiet girl curled up and went to sleep. Shortly after that the other placed her head down on her arms and didn’t raise it again until much later.

I sat for another hour. The temperature slowly descended until I was eventually wearing two T-shirts, a long-sleeve shirt and two fleece pullovers. Then the bench went to work on me. My lower lumbar felt like it was full of broken glass. The back of my thighs were numb from the cold metal. Through a newly-evolved set of reasoning, I decided that I would definitely wake up for the sunrise if I went to sleep. I transferred all valuables to one pocket and stretched out on the bench, valuables sandwiched between me and the metal, my arms and legs so intertwined in the straps of my backpack that later it would take me several minutes to get free.

I woke up at 3:30 to discover that the temperature had dropped even more. My shivering now bore more of a resemblance to a seizure. I sat up and noticed another boy was sleeping on one of the benches beside the two girls. I stood up, jumped around to get some blood flowing and then sat back down with my Walkman. Within minutes Van Morrison took on the deep, drawn out tone of a record being played backwards as the batteries and any enthusiasm I had left surrendered.

I lay back down. As I approached the brink of sweet ignorant sleep, I was suddenly shaken awake by some frantic, dirty, speed freak who held his face inches from mine and asked if I had any cigarettes. I told him to leave me alone in the most creative way I could conjure. He proceeded to wake everyone else, leaning into them, rocking from side to side. I tried to return to that brink, but it was too cold to even clear my mind. I sat up, frustrated.

The speed freak had gotten his cigarette and had promptly passed out on the bench with it burning between his fingers. I hoped it would give him a nice burn. Then I remembered that this train station had been built to replace the original nineteenth century station that had burned down in 1971. Paranoid, I stood up, slapped it out of his hand, stomped on it and lay back down.

The station was filling up with the escalating voices of what sounded like an approaching mob. Why they decided to come to the train station at 4:00 a.m. was beyond me. I had already confirmed that I could not speak the language so couldn’t ask. I sat up and prepared for the worst as the teenagers, four guys and three girls took up the benches behind mine. A big billboard ad separated us, but I could hear their conversations simmer down as they realized that I was there.

Eventually one of them came around to get a look at me. He was maybe 16, with a jacket so big and puffy that he could have weighed anything from 90 to 190 pounds. He fired out Swiss German, I did my routine and he asked, Where you from? I said New York and this made him bow his head slowly and unzip his jacket, revealing a Tupac Shakur T-shirt. He told me he loves New York but has never been there. Then he pounded himself twice on the chest and told me that he loves Tupac, who had been killed two years earlier. Now, in the much publicized East Coast/West Coast rap wars of the mid-90s, Tupac was West Coast and if I had a certain allegiance, I assume that being from New York would classify me as East Coast. The thought of this occurred to me rather quickly. Thankfully, not to him.

Soon he got fed up with his English and went around to get his friend, a girl who didn’t speak English any better but spoke Italian. I was trying my Italian. The kids were around me, amazed that a New Yorker was dishing out lingo they learned from hip-hop lyrics. I was kind of digging the attention after being alone all night.

Then entered three prostitutes, storming through the station in leather suits and knee-high boots purposely trying to wake up everyone by shouting and laughing at everything and everyone they saw. No one seemed to notice this but me. They shook the mysterious sleeping boy and began to chat. Meanwhile another teen came around and was better at English so she wanted to talk about, what else, New York. Here we were – the prostitutes and the boy speaking Swiss German, teens singing rap songs, the speed freak passed out, me speaking English and Italian and now the Mexican girl was awake so I was speaking Spanish to her. All of this madness was going on at 5:30 in the morning with the sun nowhere in sight. I later found out that the train station is the only thing that’s open at this time, so the local all-nighters come down to be loud and socialize with people like myself.

I had to scram. It was getting to be too much. The prostitutes were annoying and some newly-arrived drunk guys wouldn’t leave the Mexican girl alone so she woke her friend and the three of us hit the streets. We found absolutely nothing in Lucerne at 6:00 a.m., especially not the sun. So we went back to the station and walked around looking for a café. We found one that was just opening. I bought them both a cup of coffee and for the first time since I’d met them, they smiled.

Traveling builds short-term bonds and relationships with some people. I wondered if the two Mexican girls would remember me. I didn’t catch their names and it seemed like I was already forgetting their faces. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, faces distort to someone you know. Maybe they had the same problem. But at least they’d know I was there, I existed, and that was good enough for me at 7:00 in the morning in Switzerland.