Sneha shot this picture of the street outside while shopping in Lucerne for Aaryana’s first watch—a lovely kiddy Swatch. Interestingly, the watch has a curious simile with the fenestration on the wall outside.

Pristine blue waters, gushing at a soothing pace before the rapids, is a sight to behold. On our way back from Winterthur, we spent a few hours at this lovely place.

Schloss laufen Rheinfall: Lauferstrasse 8447 Dachsen, CH.

The road to Engelberg—plush with panoramic vistas of the Swiss countryside—has the ability to lift gloomiest of moods. One look outside, and your spirits begin to break-dance. And if you’re lucky, sunshine over snow looks like it has been photo-morphed for your viewing pleasure. I can now better relate to what they perhaps mean when they say it’s indescribable.

We arrived at the foothills of Mt. Titlis around noon.¹ The view of snow-capped mountains around Engelberg is magnificent.

Although incidences like these are rare, Engelbergers don’t forget to mention their tryst with nature—about how the village was once covered by a series of avalanches, thus blocking all access week long to this traditional alpine place. Apparently, the Swiss air rescue was mobilized to help stranded people, get food and medicine into the village for those who couldn’t be air-lifted.

With vertical limits of over 10000 feet, Titlis is one of the few mountain peaks that promise powdery snow all year round, and inviting skiers and snow-boarders from everywhere. You can pick-up whatever you need at the Engelberg base station ski-shop—in case you forgot your gear, and brace yourself for a slide-down those snowy slopes.

We began our ascent at half-past noon. The journey to the mountain top is in three stages—the last of which is quite unique. The Rotair cable car rotates a whole 360° during ascent—providing a breathless view of the glacier.

Apart from virgin views from the top, Titlis offers a few activities for non-skiers too—most notable is the ice flyer. Get on one of those, and you can hear your heart beating like a Djembe drum.

Titlis is unlike anything we have experienced before, and is sure to leave a permalink in our memories. We hope to return in the future—better equipped and better trained.

Titlis Base station at Engelberg: CH-6390 Engelberg, CH.

1. On April 1, 2008.

Stabbed in the back, with the broken shaft suggesting the metal head still inside, this Bertel Thorvaldsen’s Lion Monument is a gut-wrenching masterpiece. Portraying a dying lion lay across broken symbols of the French monarchy, it commemorates the sacrifice of over six hundred Swiss Guards who died defending the Tuileries during the French Revolution.

We took a pitstop at the lovely Lucerne before heading further South, but not before a visit to the Lion Monument, and a walk across the Chapel Bridge.

Lion Monument: Zurichstrasse 12, Lucerne, CH.

This may not be obvious to a non-European, but Confoederatio Helvetica is surprisingly not part of the EU; and so we had to do some additional fact checking with the Embassy. It turned out that while a visa wasn’t necessary, we were advised to carry our passports and our resident permits along.

The border check-post near Basel only checked our windshield-affixed Vignette¹, and let us through. Currency is the other issue. Not all establishments accept Euros, or credit cards—we were informed. So the first thing we did, upon arriving at Winterthur, was to go a Western Union counter at the central train station, and convert some petty cash for use.

Zurich is no better than any other metro—perhaps only slightly better, when it comes to traffic. It was supposed to take us twenty minutes from Winterthur, but the weekday’s morning rush pushed us back by an hour.

And we just made it for our onward journey to the heartland.

1. A kind of pre-paid annual toll-tax, for using Swiss highways. It’s a good thing I had ordered it for our car via the Swiss Travel System site. You could, of course, buy it at border crossing too—for 40CHF.