To: euro@neurostyle.net From: Emilio GonzalezSubject: 5.28.00 - 20:52 - lucern, switzerland ahhhh, switzerland. pretty much everything i expected it to be, beautiful lakes and rivers, mountainous countryside, banks, victorinox - tourists. lucern is a small city, about 60,000 people, situated next to (get out your thinking caps, people) lake lucern, filled with ducks, swans, and incredibly clear blue-green water. it's wet and cool, perhaps depriving me of some beauty, but it is beautiful nonetheless. there isn't a whole lot to do here, which can be a Good Thing if you want to relax for a couple of days - sit on the lake, hike on beautuful mount pilate, or stroll around downtown and window shop. the hostel here, backpacker's, is great. clean, nice people, internet access, and a kitchen - letting me satisfy my itch to cook. i left munich yesterday at 5:30 in the morning, so, naturally, i didn't go to sleep. it took two trains to get to oberndorf, a small industrial town not far from stuttgart (pity i didn't know it was close when i was in stuttgart). it's surrounded by forest in a small valley, where it was grey and drizzly, but clear enough to see the surrounding hills. lo and behold, heckler-koch wasn't actually /in/ oberndorf, even though the address i had for them was, but the museum i was going to visit was in oberndorf... which actually WASN'T run by hk, it was just some museum they had there that had some hk and mauser (also in town) products there. i got there 4 hours early, which meant taking a nap in the basement of the building until the museum opened (my mistake)... granted, it might not all have been worth it, the museum was rather small, but it did have an interesting history of the area, from roman artifacts to early industrial activity, and i /did/ get to see a g36 and g36k, mp5-sd, g3, and the highlight of it all, by far, a g11 /and/ a psg-1 (i don't expect any but perhaps 2 or maybe 3 of you to fully understand the importance of that). A PSG-1 AND A G11, PEOPLE. leaving oberndorf, it took me 3 trains to get to lucern. one was a stop in zurich, but unfortunately i didn't have any time to stop there, since it was a whopping 6 minutes until my next train left. i wanted to (and still kind of want to) open a bank account here, because face it people, being able to say "deposit it in my swiss bank account" is /so/ damn sexy. i'll be in lucern for another day before traveling on to interlaken, a city that attracts a lot of backpackers - for a reason. it's said to be very beautiful, with a multitude of things to do for the active traveler. love and swans atttacking ducks for pieces of bread -emilio