From: Rainer7735@aol.com
Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 22
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 18:44:11 EDT

Thursday, 10/15 -- part 22

Today we were going to "do" Liechtenstein.  We visited every city that
had a road going to it.  And there was still time left over.  Our start
in the morning to see Balzers actually took us out of Liechtenstein and
into Switzerland before we knew it.  This was pleasant detour since
Monika spotted a castle ruin on the top of a hill.  I took a very narrow
road (from now on I'm not going to say "very narrow road" anymore since
all the roads except the autobahns are narrow; if I say "road" I really
mean "very narrow road"; I'll only qualify the word "road" from now on
if it is extremely narrow or in some other way distinct) upwards near
the ruin.  We lost sight of the ruin for a while as we climbed.
Suddenly we were very close to the castle after driving through what
appeared to be a farmer's back yard, but that's were the road went.  The
paved part of the road stopped and turned into grass.  I squeezed the
car into a wider spot in case a cow or something needed to get by.  We
collected our walking gear, namely cameras, bird book, binos, and the
ever-present collection of passports, travel documents, and money) and
headed up the grass road towards the ruins.  The road led around one
side of the hill and then petered out just short of the summit below the
castle.  There were too much scrub oaks and nettles in the way to make
the scramble up the hill worthwhile, so we backtracked and tried walking
around the other side of the hill.  This time the plan worked and we
even found a very old, weathered sign on a metal gate that said "Zur
Burg", which is Swiss for "To the Castle".

Just a short climb further and we were able to inspect the castle, which
was indeed a ruin, from the outside and the inside.  There was a plaque
inside that dated a restoration effort from the 1930's which also put
the ruin under state protection.  There was no other information that
shed light on the castle's origin or age.  From the inside you could see
the holes in the walls where the timbers used to support the floors.  We
obviously in the basement or main entry depending on your point of view.
There were three floor levels above us and then clear sky.  We also
found what appeared to be a well on the top of the hill near the ruin.
One was constantly serenaded by the music of cow bells from the
surrounding fields and hills.

So, we headed back to Balzers, took a few pictures of the Rhine/Rhein
and the Liechtenstein/Swiss borders.  We visited another castle here,
not a ruin, but it was closed.  Then we went on to visit Bendern,
Eschen, Gamprin, Malbun, Mauren, Nendeln, Planken, Ruggell, Schaan,
Schellenberg, Steg, Triesen, Triesenberg, and the capital Vaduz,
although not necessarily in that order.  The traffic in Liechtenstein is
great.  However, since the country is in a valley, the roads (remember
that I mean very narrow roads) are quite twisty and turny and have speed
limits posted that are, in my opinion, quite ridiculous.  The
Liechtensteiners, like most Europeans, take "limit" to be a "lower
limit" and insist on driving at or over the speed limit on these twisty,
turny roads.  This is a place to have a brake repair shop!

We found the farm animals to be much cuter here than elsewhere.  The
horses, and especially the donkeys, are really nice looking.  Even
Liechtensteiner cows look nicer than most cows.  A wide spot in the road
where there were a couple of farm houses was called Gafli -- not really
one of the places on the map -- that was especially nice.

During the afternoon we visited the postage stamp museum -- so named
because of it's size.  Liechtenstein apparently is famous for creating
the engraved dies from which a lot of the world's postage stamps are
printed.  We also had our passports stamped at the tourist information
bureau.

Near the end of the day we visited Mauren -- last on our list.  Mauren
is a ski resort and we got there just in time to take the last chair
lift to the top of the mountain.  We were only allowed 10 minutes to
look around if we wanted to ride back down.  It was much colder up here,
and the bright sun that sun that had been with us through all the other
town of Liechtenstein gave way to the clouds that were forming over the
the Alps.  We took in the view, took our pictures, and rode the chair
lift back to the car and then down the mountain to Triesenberg.  Some of
the donkeys were walking along the road.  We stopped and looked at them
some more, then ended up back at the hotel.

The church bell was clanging and our stomachs were growling.  Dinner was
at Kainer's again.  We got to sit at a different table.  The
nosed-ringed served us again.  We ordered different dishes this time,
but roestis were involved.  Everyone likes roestis.  The table for the
locals was full again.  The cook came out after all the dishes had been
served.  He chatted with us a bit longer on our way out of the
restaurant.  He seemed pleased that we'd returned again and we
complimented him on his cooking.  The walk back to the hotel was a short
one and we stopped at one of the stone walls to look over the valley
that is Liechtenstein.

Back in the hotel we set about on our evening activities.  Even though
we had the right phone adapter to attach to the laptop, we could not use
it since the phones were neither rotary nor touch tone.  Turns out all
of Liechtenstein and probably most of Switzerland is that way.

My Mom was supposed to have returned home from the hospital yesterday,
so I called Scottsdale to say "Hi".  She was home but the news was not
great.  We talked for a while and I updated my folks about the trip.
They'd been following along with hard copies of the journal that were
being emailed to a local friend of the family.  The trip was now over
half over and my thoughts started to fixate on other issues.  I spent
a long time writing tonight -- but the effort was to be wasted tomorrow.