Thursday Night Delight

I am sitting in my grandparents living room, watching Wolf Blitzer on CNN. I haven’t had a tv for two years now, and can’t help but be drawn to the sickening beauty that is German television as Dr. Sylvia and my grandparents play cards in the other room.

As you might have noticed, I didn’t get around to defrosting my freezer as quickly as I would have liked on Friday, and wasn’t able to blog my amazing Thursday night. Saturday I worked and then finished packing my stuff up and cleaning my apartment, and then coming here to my grandparent’s house in Baselland, which has no internet. So although I am writing this on Sunday, July 27th, who knows when I will be able to post it.

So, Thursday night. Thursday was a great day. Between amazing weather, getting off of work before lunch, and being given ninety francs as tip money after having one hundred francs suckered out of me a few days prior, I was set to throw caution to the wind and enjoy one of my last nights in Luzern. Around six o’clock I got a call from my old roommate, Paul. Paul called to ask if I wanted to take a ride on his boat, seeing how nice the weather was. At first I was hesitant, I was waiting to meet someone, and wasn’t sure how long I was going to be held up, but I asked Paul if I could get back to him in an hour, and hung-up feeling like I would be really missing out on an adventure by not taking up his offer. After taking a bus to a foreign party of the city, waiting in a seedy park with a kid name Paddy whose two front teeth had both died, and then getting back on a bus back to Bundesplatz, Paul picked me up in his white station wagon and drove to the harbor on the backside of the lake.

After Paul parked the car, he went to the trunk and pulled out a large vinyl bag and a hand pump, and he began pumping up a medium sized motor boat. It was a nice boat, and when he was done setting it up (all I really had to do was stand in the middle of the boat as he put the floor in place, which made me feel like I was a big help), we were soon already in the water. It was one of those boats where you have to sit on the side, and I was a bit worried about falling out at first (not just out of the boat, but I also was wearing a tube-top and was worried about falling out of that as well), but figured that if that was in fact going to happen, it would probably just add to the whigmaleerie (yes, that is a word) of the adventure. We took off from the dock at a smooth, slow speed (Paul had gotten a speeding ticket a few days prior), but after the first booye, he let loose and I found myself laughing to the point of tears as we jumped waves and caught air, blazing through warm water and past some of the most beautiful green hills and magnificent houses and mountains I have ever seen.

We parked in the middle of a part of the lake that is surrounded by five different villages, the sun hadn’t started to set but was getting there, Paul laying in the boat, both of us drinking beers and talking about the complications of falling in love, and how much more difficult Luzern can make it. As I looked around I knew that I couldn’t have planned a more beautiful finale for my last few days in a city that I had finally come to feel at home in.

As the sun started to set we were back on the move and headed back towards the city to catch some of the music drifting on to the water from the Blue Balls Festival (whoever named the festival that is a legend). We had ran out of beer, so Paul parked the boat in front of the KKL, a large modern building next to the train station, and I got out to go get more beer. After a good twenty minutes of navigating my way through the Blue Ball’s crowd and getting out of the packed grocery store alive, I was back in the boat and we were cruising towards the music. By this point the lake had turned the most wonderful shade of sherbet pink and purple, and the moon had begun to cast a beautiful shimmer of light on the mirror smooth water. It was almost audacious how perfect everything was. We didn’t stay long though, I had to work the next day and Paul didn’t have a light on the boat, so we headed back. I did however get to drive the boat back to the dock, and Paul even let me do donuts and then cruise up to some not-bad looking guy on the pier playing the guitar and gave him one of Paul’s beers (in true form I then just sailed away) and after Paul packed the boat back up, we shared a final beer and watched some of The Bucket List as it played at the outdoor movie theater next to the pier. Paul then drove me home, and as I hugged him good-bye, I thanked him for one of the best nights I have had in an incredibly long time. An evening that I will never forget.

It took me a while to get to sleep that night. Skipper called about ten minutes after I had gotten into bed and I relished being able to vomit the nights events to here while they were still so fresh in my mind. After we hung-up, I laid in my bed for what would be one of the last times, and fell asleep with the awareness that nights like that were few and far between, and that I was overjoyed with my good fortune to having been able to experience it.