Lunching in Liechenstein

  Vaduz, Liechtenstein
Sunday, July 15, 2007

We left Andermatt this morning and after checking out the map to plan the route for the day, decided to head to Liechtenstein to meet up for lunch. The capital city, Vaduz, has a population of 5000,and the whole country is only 160sq km - in some ways, it seems like one of the things Liechtenstein is most famous for is just for existing as a country! We had some time to kill since we couldn't check into our room in Samedan until the afternoon, so decided to explore the town a little.

Fairytale Castle

We had heard that the Fine Art museum was really good, so decided to check it out. It turned out to be mostly very weird modern art, including a giant beeswax spiral, cow skins attached to electrodes, pressed ham (a little mouldy after several years of hanging there), a 3 hour long DVD of a snake sleeping (we kept waiting for it to wake up and start doing things, but it never did....), and a room full of 16th century art all depicting hunting and the royal family of Liechtenstein valiantly slaughtering woodland creatures. It was entertaining, if not enlightening, exactly.

Lich -tastic

After the art museum, we did some shopping for Swiss Army knives, which seemed to be abundant in the stores there, and had a humbling encounter with the shop owner. Gabrielle asked him politely if he spoke English, to which he replied, in perfect English, "Do you speak German?". Slightly embarrassed, Gabrielle managed some version of "Mein deutsch ist nicht sehr gut" (the terrible accent alone was enough to say clearly that her German was atrocious!), at which the shop owner smiled and continued to help us, in perfect English. Just another day in Europe with us both bemoaning our lack of a second language...or third, fourth and fifth language, which is more common in most parts of Europe we have been to so far.

Border Banter

After an entertaining afternoon in Liechtenstein, we drove back across the border, located on a picturesque bridge spanning the two countries, and jumped back and forth across the border between Liechtenstein and Switzerland a few times just because we could, then carried on. We made it to St Moritz by early evening, past literally hundreds of colourful kite surfers cruising the lake at Silvaplana (when you're almost 6000 feet above sea level, you have to get your water sports in where you can!) and on to the smaller town of Samedan. Unlike glitzy, designer-store filled St Moritz, Samedan was a cozy, pretty alpine town with tiny narrow cobbled streets and a church steeple rising above everything and church bells ringing at regular intervals. There was also a lovely little town nearby named Celerina, which had an ancient cathedral with a steeple like a flower opening and a perfectly tended cemetery behind. We had a great time exploring around there, and all went out for a wood-fired pizza dinner, our last dinner in Switzerland before we head to the border tomorrow!

Chapel at Celerina

All our best from Switzerland (and Liechtenstein)

Dan and Gabrielle