There are many lakes in Switzerland. Water from melting glaciers in the Alps flows into rivers and creates lakes here and there. Lake Leman near the border with France in southwestern Switzerland is the largest lake in the Alps. Although Switzerland is a landlocked country without an ocean, it is in the spotlight for its refreshing scenery that is as refreshing as the Mediterranean thanks to Lake Leman.
● Montreux loved by the group Queen
The water of Lake Leman, where the glaciers of the Alps flowed, is very clean and clear. The emerald lake is clearly visible all the way to the bottom. The crescent-shaped Lake Leman is 72km long and 14km wide and has a circumference of 180km. It takes 12 hours to ride a bicycle without stopping.
![Alpine lake village where Queen’s music flows[전승훈 기자의 아트로드]](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/09/28/130120783.1.jpg "Alpine lake village where Queen’s music flows[전승훈 기자의 아트로드]")
The water that flows out of Lake Leman, which looks like an ocean, flows to the south of France and becomes the Rhone River. If Geneva, at the western end of Lake Leman, is a financial city where international organizations are concentrated, Montreux, at the eastern end, is an international resort city as good as Nice or Cannes in France. Geneva’s famous attraction is the Great Fountain of Geneva (Jet d’eau de Geneve), which is about 140 meters above Lake Leman and spews out water 24/7. The most visited place in Montreux is the Freddie Mercury statue at Place Marche.
The day the reporter visited happened to be the first weekend of September, the birthday of Freddie Mercury, vocalist of the legendary British rock group Queen (September 5th). The statue of Mercury, holding a cane in his left hand and raising his right hand, was decorated with flowers brought by fans from all over the world. There were male fans who came wearing Mercury’s trademark white singlets and mustaches, and female fans gathered in the square and danced to Queen’s songs.
At the Montreux Casino, about a 5-minute walk from the Place de la Marche, there is a studio where Queen’s albums were recorded. Montreux has been famous for the jazz festival held every summer since 1967, and thanks to this studio, it became the ‘City of Queens’.
Mercury said, “Montreux is my second home. He loved this city so much that he said, “If you want peace of your soul, come to Montreux.” The favorite restaurants where he enjoyed eating, walking, and composing songs during his lifetime are still popular and are called the ‘Freddie Mercury Tour’ course.
It is said that the members of Queen visited Montreux Studio to record an album in 1978 and fell in love with the beautiful lakeside scenery and state-of-the-art recording facilities. The following year, when the studio came up for sale, Queen bought it. Currently, this studio has become ‘Queen: The Studio Experience’. On display are the paper on which Mercury wrote his last lyrics before his death in 1991, as well as the guitars, drums, and keyboards played by the members.
If you walk along the lakeside from the Freddie statue for about 40 minutes, you will reach Siyong Castle floating like a picture on the shore of Lake Leman. This is the place that served as the motif for the castle where Prince Eric, the princess’s beloved, lives in the Disney animation ‘The Little Mermaid’.
Siyong Castle was also used as an armory and prison for the Savoy royal family from the 12th to the 16th centuries. In the underground cave, Reformation activist François Bonivard was imprisoned for six years from 1530, chained to a pillar. British romantic poet Byron (1778-1824) wrote in his epic poem ‘The Prisoner of Poetry,’ “Freedom, the eternal spirit that cannot be bound by chains! “You shine brightly even in the dungeon,” he sang. Thanks to Byron’s poetry, Siyongseong Castle became more widely known to people around the world as a sacred place for literature.
About 40 oak barrels for storing wine are stored in the underground cave. This is because they produce wine with their own label ‘Clos de Chillon’ using grapes grown in the Labo vineyard on the hill of Lake Levan.
The Lavaux district is a terraced vineyard that stretches for about 30km along the northern shore of Lake Leman from Montreux to Lausanne. The total area is approximately 830 ha (hectares). It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in September 2007. It is a trekking sacred site selected as one of the 13 hiking courses recommended by the Swiss Tourism Office.
If you walk for 3 to 4 hours from Lutry in the east to Saint-Saphorin in the west, you can enjoy the spectacular view of the vineyards with Lake Leman in the background.
Swiss wine, produced in the clean environment of the Alps, is considered a world-class luxury wine, but not many people know about it. Not only is the land so small that wine production is very small, but most of it is consumed within Switzerland and not exported. So, when traveling to Switzerland, Swiss wine is a must-try.
While walking through the vineyards of the Lavaux district, I stopped by wineries such as Domaine Bobi and Vinorama to taste wine. This region is famous for its white wines, but red wines such as the ‘Plant Robert’ variety, which is grown only in Switzerland, have a clear and clean yet heavy body and aroma like Burgundy wines.
● Take a cruise from Lausanne to Evian
Lausanne, a 40-minute drive from Geneva, where many international organizations are located, is home to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic Museum. The museum displays artifacts that provide insight into the history of the Olympic Games from ancient times to modern times. It is said that an Olympic memorabilia collection team was also dispatched to the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer.
Finding traces of Korea at the Olympic Museum is also a great pleasure. The names of Jeong Sun-man, Kim Won-tak, and Son Mi-jeong, who were the final runners in the torch relay during the 1988 Seoul Olympics, are engraved on the stairs leading up from the entrance, and Kim Yu-na’s name is clearly visible on the stairs engraved with the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Also attracting attention are T-shirts with the color symbol and Olympic rings from the Seoul Olympics, and uniforms for the unified North and South Korean women’s hockey team from the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
The Lausanne Olympic Museum is also a popular wedding photo location for locals as it offers a great view of Lake Leman. In particular, ‘Tom’s Café’, located on the top floor of the museum, is considered the most beautiful terrace seat in all of Lausanne. There is a constant stream of people coming to enjoy brunch while looking at the gorgeous scenery of Lake Leman and the Alps.
You can also travel around the Leman Lake by taking a cruise ship. One of them is a course that takes you to Evian-les-Bains, France, in 30 minutes by taking a cruise ship (CGN) from Lausanne’s Wuxi dock. You can find the source of Evian mineral water by getting off at the Evian dock and walking for about 10 minutes. This is ‘Cachat Spring’ decorated with pink tiles. It is said to have been named after Gabriel Kasha, who owned a garden here in the late 18th century.
It is said that the Marquis de Raiger, who came from Auvergne to escape the French Revolution in 1790, stayed at Kasha’s house for two years and drank water from this spring every day. It is said that he had bad kidneys and liver, but when he drank water from this spring, his illness was cured. As the rumor spread, people flocked like a cloud.
Kasha established a hydrotherapy center at the spring site in 1826, which later became the Evian bottled water company. The building that Kasha built as a hydrotherapy facility and hotel is currently used as the Evian Memorial Hall. Here, you can buy Evian water with your name engraved on the bottle label as a souvenir (2 euros).
● Switzerland, the country of chocolate
Switzerland is the country of chocolate. Switzerland’s annual chocolate consumption per capita (as of 2021) is 11.6 kg, ranking first in the world. The gap with 2nd place USA (9 kg) is quite large. While Belgian chocolate is mainly dark chocolate with a high cocoa content, Swiss chocolate is famous for its milk chocolate. It is said that freshly squeezed milk from the vast meadows of the Alps makes Swiss chocolate soft and creamy.
In Broke, next to Gruyere, famous for its cheese, you can visit ‘La Maison Cailler’, which made the first milk chocolate in Switzerland. Kaye developed milk chocolate in 1875 by combining milk and chocolate for the first time in the world.
There have been previous attempts to create a smooth taste by mixing bitter chocolate with milk, but solving the mold problem caused by moisture in milk was not easy with the technology at the time.
However, with the combination of Nestlé’s technology that saved newborns by developing the world’s first powdered milk powder, milk chocolate was able to be developed. At La Maison Calle, you can participate in a workshop to make your own chocolate and sample chocolate to your heart’s content.
2024-09-27 18:51:39