Alpine Fantasy

Hugh and Colleen Gantzer go dragon hunting in the magical heights of Lucerne in Switzerland

A captive balloon rises above Lucerne as a cruise ship drifts on the lake

The blue of the lake is deceptive. Its glacial melt water is so clear that it reflects the blue of the high sky above it. The beauty of Lake Lucerene, or Luzern as it is sometimes called, set the course of its history and its legends. Three hundred years ago, monks were attracted by the serenity of the lake and built the Monastery of St Leodegar on its shores. The labourers attached to the monastery settled around the great dwelling of the monks, and, in course of time, the settlement grew into a small village of fishermen plying their trade on the rich lake. Prosperity, however, really came to Lucerne when the famous St Gotthard Pass was opened through the Alps in 1220. The trade route from Italy to Germany now lay through Lucerne and the seeds of its commercial importance were firmly sown. This beautiful Swiss town has never looked back.

We got an excellent view of the city on our first evening. We were in the Castle Gutsch, a castle-hotel on a wooded hill rising above the lake. Below us spread the tiled houses of Lucerne with the River Reuss rushing out of the lake and through the town. Mount Riggi towered beyond and, behind us there were the grey, grim, folds of Mount Pilatus. We left the elegance of our hotel, with its chandeliers, suits of medieval armour and spears, and boarded the steep funicular railway down to the town. Our walk through Lucerne in the evening became a stroll through time.

The Swiss take great pride in preserving their architectural heritage. Old houses are loved and protected and, in most places, even new buildings have to have a charming, traditional character. We walked down narrow cobbled streets and listened to a quartet playing light classical music in the Weinmarkt Square. When the flow of commercial traffic, via the St. Gotthard Pass, increased, trading became a major activity. In the Middle Ages, wine traders set up their establishments in the Weinmarkt and Passion Plays were performed here. People, in those days, took much of their social and cultural inspiration from the Bible, they knew its tales and thronged to dramatisations of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Leaving the Weinmarkt behind us, we came to the old Kornmarkt. The grain traders seemed to have been a shade richer than the wine merchants: the facades of their four-storey houses were as richly painted as if they had been paneled in tapestry.

Judgment Day on the Spreuerbrucke

All this proud display of wealth clearly called for some security measures in those tumultuous old days. About a century after international trade started flowing through Lucerne, the good citizens walled in their city, and the route that lay through it. They even enclosed the left bank of the river for good measure. And then they built bridges across it, but even the bridges were works of art. We walked down the famous Chapel Bridge, with its Watertower, and returned on the Chaff Bridge or Spreuer-Brucke. The first was built in 1333, the second in 1407. These bridges formed part of the defences of the city but, so interwoven was the civic life of the people with their faith that, in the 17th century the citizens had religious paintings put up along the entire length of the Chapel and Chaff Bridges. The Chapel Bridge was damaged by fire in the last century and so many of the paintings have not retained their original vitality. But the Spreuer-Brucke, so called because the millers used to dump their chaff off it into the river, retains its 400-year old Dance of Death paintings.

Death is a normal adjunct of the profession of arms. Lucerne also supplied professional soldiers, the famed and unflinchingly loyal Swiss Guards, to the royal houses of Europe. We walked up from the lake, past an attractive square where the franchisees of Victorinox products fed a quacking family of wild ducks, and on to a beautiful little garden and a pool set against a limestone cliff. A large alcove had been carved into the cliff and in it sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen had carved a dying lion. This was the famous Lion of Lucerne and it commemorates the sacrifice of the Swiss Guards who had died defending the last king of France, Louis XVI, during the French Revolution. Today, only the Pope has a Swiss Guard; and they still dress in their colourful medieval uniforms and carry the weapons of that distant age.

Not quite so old is the Church of St Francis Xavier. When we entered it we were surprised to find how much it resembled the World Heritage Jesuit churches of Old Goa. But we really shouldn't have been because, from 1574 to 1847, priests of the Jesuit order, to which St Xavier belonged, shaped Lucerne's religious and political life. And also this church.

The restored old Chapel Bridge of Lucerne

We were happy that we had left a fair amount of time for the Swiss Transport Museum. It was fascinating and we could have spent the whole day here. There were locomotives, interactive displays and simulators. Children shrieked and rushed to see little trains race around a model rail track, superbly coordinated with each other. In an IMAX theatre, with its giant screen, we trekked through the Andes and paddled down the Amazon. And then we soared 170 meters above Lucerne in a Hiflyer tethered helium balloon for an eagle's eye view of the lake with its paddle-wheel cruise ships and the red cog-wheel trains of the funicular Pilatus Rail.

Once upon a legendary time ago, we were told, dragons had their lair atop Mount Pilatus, a shade over 2,000 meters high. But though they were scaly monsters, they were fairly benign creatures. Once, they even fed and brought a lost traveller home, and dropped a magical stone which is said to be a panacea for all ills. They probably migrated to more distant places when tourists invaded their sacrosanct domain because they are now remembered only by their writhing image. It identifies Pilatus today. When our cruise ship tied up at the far end of the lake, we walked down a flower-divided road, bought tickets at the Pilatusbahn rail station, emblazoned by a white dragon on a red background, and boarded a train for our journey up to the Dragon Mountain.

Each rail-car has its own driver and when we started up the 45 degree gradient, we were pushed back in our seats: the nose of the car was higher than the back. But we did manage to look around as the car went clackety thud every time the cog wheels connected with the toothed track.. Meadows with chomping cows slipped past, followed by coniferous forests, bare rocks, jagged boulders like the fangs of carnivorous dinosaurs, bare patches of mountain with goat trails snaking down. It began to drizzle. We stopped to let other cars pass. Then we started again, crawling along the edge of a cliff and through three dark tunnels. Finally, at the end of the line, a circular station, like something out of a James Bond movie, appeared growing larger and larger as we approached it, filling our vision. With a slight jerk, the car docked, the doors opened, and we emerged into the warmth of the terminal.

Pilatus is as high as many of our hill stations but, because it's much further north, and it's bare, there's a strong wind chill factor. We were glad that we had brought our anoraks. The views from the Dragon Mountain are impressive. Framed in a window cut into the living rock, we saw mountains cascading down to other ranges blued with distance. And, in the middle ground, a lonely white church stood at the edge of a cliff, a testament to the courage of faith: we would have had to think more than twice before attending a service in that precious shrine.

A tunnel winds through the perimeter of the mountain. In it are murals depicting the legends of the dragons of Pilatus. There are restaurants, conference facilities and an interesting Alpine Wildlife Museum without dragons. Parties come here for a sunrise breakfast. Then there's also a hotel if you want to stay above it all and hole up far from the madding crowd. In fact, it's been marketed very effectively as a destination in its own right. But we caught a cable car…yes, they also have those...back to Lucerne, walked in the dusk, and then hopped a tram, disembarking and heading for an arcade under a row of beautiful old houses. We dined in a pleasant lakeside restaurant surrounded by happy people chatting in at least five different languages. And then, to our surprise, we heard a deep and musical, roar.

Three alphorn players were serenading us on their four-metre long pipes. The horn-blowers were dressed in their traditional costumes and they looked as if they had stepped out of an old woodcut in a book of fairy tales. In Lucern, to our delight, even the music is legendary.