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| I was hoping for some fanfare for completing all the levels, but it just went back to the skills screen :( |
First and slightly unrelated, I finished Duolingo's German program. Sounds like the perfect time to spend three and a half weeks not using any German (I head to the States on Friday)! Time to switch to French or Spanish before Swedish gets through beta.
I had been to Luzern/Lucerne thrice before. Once with my mom (where she was in awe of how expensive french fries were), once for the swiss national championship, and most recently just to the train station to get picked up to go to Lecco, but neither time was really about seeing the city. This trip was for my department's annual excursion.
We took the train from Zürich and then a bus to the other office building of our research institute, which is outside of Luzern. Situated on the lake shore, it is where all of the fish researchers do their work. The office is at least a 10 minute walk from the nearest bus stop and the first floor smells like you would expect it to with dozens of aquariums around, but they have a really nice view and a cup of coffee costs less than half of what it does in our restaurant. The social scientists that I work with were pretty excited to see a "lab"!
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| The warm fish room. They look into the rapid speciation occurring in some of Africa's lakes from both ecosystem and genetic perspectives. |
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| Fish boxes with a view (an a nice vineyard to the left). These are for studying how certain fish modify their environment and how that affects their progeny. |
We then took a boat across the lake, back to the city center where our scavenger hunt began. We split up into four teams and followed different trails of clues. I was not looking forward to it, but it ended up being pretty neat. It took us through parts of the city that a tourist usually wouldn't see.
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| Hill top conservatory with real musicians... |
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| and a great view. |
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Sad lion commemorating Swiss mercenaries who died while protecting Louis XVI during the French revolution.
Mark Twain was quite impressed with the monument as were the hundreds of tourists trying to take selfies with it.
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| It wasn't totally un-touristy, concluding with a trip across the Chapel Bridge. |
My team was the Siegergruppe, not that it was a competition or anything. The day around town was followed by an apero at the department leader's house and dinner at a nice restaurant (still thinking about that chocolate mousse) that was decorated with colorful circles strewn with googly-eyes.
