Save the Whale of Lugano

Ahhh. It's summer in Lugano. Those hot, sunny days are the ideal setting for a walk on the lake promenade. You can enjoy the view, you can rent a paddle boat (so quaint!), and you can sit down under the trees and relax in the shade...

And of course, you can enjoy the whale.

Every City Should Have a Whale

What? The whale. Why? Yes, we have a whale in Lugano this summer! Or part of a whale - a tail, to be precise.

The Lugano whale is an art installation by Stefano Ferretti and Alex Dorici, called "Save the Whale". You can enjoy it as part of the LongLake Festival in Lugano. The whale tail is 7 meters long, and people are already in love with it, snapping photographs and selfies.

Also, I find it very funny that it confuses some people a lot. Is it art? Is it a floating device? Does it send some environmental message? Is it just a joke? Is the rest of the whale underneath the surface?

But most of all: Why?

The answer is that we don't know. All I can say is that the lake landscape feels completed by this big, grey sculpture. The whale will only be out for a month, but you feel like keeping it forever. It goes well with the mountains, the park, it just makes sense.

Who else wants to save the Whale of Lugano?

An elegant, posh, boring, ordinary Swiss city and a hell of a whale swimming in front of it. I say we sign a petition to the make the whale a permanent exhibit!

A video of the making-of can be found here. Some more information on the whale and the LongLake Festival is here.

Oh, and in case Lugano wasn't weird enough last weekend, we also spotted an amazing bathtub on wheels trained by a Vespa*! It was strolling around the promenade and Parco Ciani that same day.

*The name is Vespaqua and it is part of the Lugano Buskers Festival, one of the greatest summer events.

Who said that Swiss life is boring?