Voyage to Vitznau

During the lockdown I managed to write a 100,000 word novel called The Lemon Tree Forest. I’d dearly like to see it published, of course - but that is difficult for an old country hick like me.

But earlier I came across some camera footage which i shot the winter before last when I was in Lucerne with the Swiss Tourism people on a press trip. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the novel…

“The village of Weggis is the fourth port of call for the ferries that leave Lucerne, and the first stop after the boat crosses the entrance of a fjord-like bay that extends the lake north to the town of Kussnacht. After the gulf, Lake Lucerne’s northern shore is dominated by six thousand foot Mount Rigi and Weggis is located in a wide bay just beyond the junction of the fjord. The south-facing village extends up across the alpine slopes, which at this point are not as steep as they are further east. After Weggis the ferry goes on along this vertiginous shore to Vitznau, where passengers alight to take the cog-wheel train that climbs almost vertically out of the village up the slopes of Mount Rigi. 

It must be one of the most scenic boat rides in Europe. Great mountains come down to the lakeside and they seem to get bigger as the boat cruises east toward Weggis. It’s all  stunning, especially in evening light.  So scenic, that my sense of surrealism had been joined by a vague feeling of romanticism as I stepped down the gang-plank. 

Mark Twain visited twice and on the second occasion lived here with his family for ten weeks.  Who could blame him? I remembered the words he wrote after he climbed Mount Rigi and looked out at the view… "We could not speak. We could hardly breathe. We could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink it in.”