We’re in Montreux

 This place is SO Queenstown. This is Lake Geneva.

Montreux is famous for 3 things:

There’s the Montreux Jazz Festival, if that’s your jam. 

There’s the story about the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water”. Just listen to the lyrics. A flare gun was set off during a Frank Zappa concert in the casino, setting fire to the thatched roof, burning the place down. Smoke from the fire hung over the lake. Inspiration follows.

And then there’s this guy

He’s decorated like a Hindu god because there was some kind of Freddy Mercury anniversary or celebration of some kind. 

The recording studio that Deep Purple had been using became, after the Casino rebuild, quite famous for the recordings made here. Queen did a lot of recording here, and even owned it for a while. It has now been converted to a kind of Freddy shrine. 

For those who didn’t join the dots, the studio, and now the shrine, are inside the Casino. Odd place for a recording studio, I know. 

For the vicarious among you, this was lunch in Montreux.