Stein am Rhein
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
1
120
232
Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Konstance,
Switzerland
Thursday, September 7, 2006
Off to the doctor for those blood tests. Didn't take long at all and we were back at the house within the hour. I spent a considerable time on the net trying to find out the best ways to get to Vienna and back but with little success. I wrote a letter to Alamo asking for the admin fee back from the parking fine and a polite letter to Waterford council suggesting they be more explicit to travelers about their parking regulations.
Stein am Rhein was our destination in the afternoon. The drive there was so pretty. Green hills on one side, the lake on the other, fruit trees and crops on both sides. Stein am Rhein...what a wonderful place. It was spotless...but then it is Swiss. The cobbled main street was lined with houses designed in what we English call the Tudor style but of course that is not the name here for these medieval homes of timber and stone
Camping afloat?
. The criss crossed timbers and mostly white paintwork were all well maintained but what attracted the hordes of tourists to this town were the wall paintings. Not tacky graffiti but works of art depicting events from the town's history, religious scenes or simple decoration to enhance the beauty of the building. Some were very old and others more recent but they added so much colour not to mention the wow factor to that riverside town. Most of the side streets leading down to the river and the waterside cafes were of the same ilk. The sharply pitched roofs were all protected by shell shaped tiles, common throughout Europe we noticed, and the whole looked as if the streets and houses were scrubbed twice daily. It was not crowded but of those milling around it was obvious that 95% of us were tourists. Hardly an English voice though. Mostly Germans...just strolling and enjoying the day.
We stood on the bridge in the middle of the Rhine and stared downstream towards Rotterdam many hundreds of kilometres away. We then turned and watched the river flowing towards us from the Bodensee and the Swiss Alps. Some of the houses on the river's edge dropped vertically into the water at this point...so European. It had to be the prettiest village we had been in
Grafitti it ain't
. The plainest building was the church. Very functional, from the outside anyway, although there were some strange dragon like heads on top of the square concrete steeple. The road around the south of the Rhine to Konstance was equally as pretty. In fact the whole drive from Radolfzell to Konstance has to be one of the best in the world. It has no snow-capped mountains, deep gorges or lunar landscape...it is just so pretty and prosperous. A place where any 'Green Party' should have their political HQ. I wouldn't give you tuppence for Konstance though. Got a bit lost around there trying to find the way out to Radolfzell. In and out of Switzerland we went through the same border checks. I wonder what they would have thought a generation ago when they stamped passports!
My lack of interest was not shared with Anne. She was determined to go back even if it be on her own, she said. And she did...later.
