CherryPopper

Switzerland the land of Chocolate, watches and Nuclear Bomb shelters? Yes that's correct the Swiss are nuts, paranoid to the max. These guys have explosives on all the tunnels and bridges surrounding the boarder, all their airbases are under ground with the runways made to look like roads and the hangers all being underground or inside the mountains. They have underground cities with supplies to last a few years for a few 100,000 people, all their tunnels are curved so that if a rocket is fired into it the entire tunnel can't be destroyed, military service is compulsory and if you don't your thrown in jail for a month. To top it all off all the houses built since the 80's have had nuclear bomb shelters. All for a country that is neutral? Sure they have Chocolate but its not worth going to war over.

We were lucky in that Lucerne is normally a quite place but when were were in town there was the "Blue Balls Music Festival" on. It was a blues festival and the place was just one big party town, which suited us perfectly. Add in the fact that our hotel got changed to one that was a block from the festival and that equals all of us parting our pants off. But ouch were the beers expensive... around $10 Australian for a pint and the swiss beer is crap. Lucky for us they had some quality German beer

The next day we hit Mt Pilatus for a view of the spectacular swiss alps and Lucerne. It was also the first time we had felt temperatures under 30 degress since we were in the clouds. It was nice to not sweat again even if it was for only an hour or 2. One thing we also saw up there were mountain goats, these guys were nuts going out on ledges just to get grass when the entire valley below was full of grass.

We went up the mountain in a cable car and we went down via train and then back across to Lucerne by boat. It was a nice way to relax and take in the sites of Lucerne and Mt Pilatus. A few of us went shopping for watches (got my mummy a nice watch & myself a small pocket knife) and walked around the city. Its quite small Lucerne as you can walk round the city in around 30 mins so we covered the city's sites pretty quick so most of us headed back to the hotel for a nanna nap before hitting the town again for the festival.

Later that night we went out for dinner and a cultural show. This is when we really found out how nerdy the swiss are. They played these massive horns, a broom, bowls with rocks in them, a saw and had a flag throwing dance. All this was going on while we munched on some cheese fondu and other swiss goodies. Most of us snuck out early and headed to the blues festival and enjoyed some real music and entertainment. It was another good night and Lucerne put on a good show.

Next we were off to our last city