Appenzell and Lucerne

Friday, September 27, 2013

Janet is gracing the Chapel Bridge in Lucerne. Today we visited Appenzell town, went to the cheese factory nearby, and then embarked on a grueling trip to Lucerne. We had no map, and had to stop numerous times to find our way. It took about four hours. Yet, our walking tour in old-town Lucerne was wonderful due to its beauty and charm. Like this wooden bridge, built in 1333.

We woke up grumpy due to the incessant church bells.

There's the culprit - a modern church, just across the street. Maybe we could have forgiven it a little had it been an 800-yr-old beautiful cathedral, but this little thing just made us mad! When we went to breakfast downstairs, the woman asked how our night was and I mentioned how it was difficult sleeping due to the church bells; she said cheerfully that some people just can't get used to it while others do. La de dah!

The breakfast was yummy, including Appenzeller cheese and a nice selection of breads and meats. When we arrived downstairs, we were the only ones there, but when we left it was jammed with the local workers.

Here is our Gasthaus. Our room was directly above our car. We drove the short distance to downtown Appenzell. Of course, Appenzell is more that the little village -- it's the entire Swizz canton we'd been in since the previous evening. It's most famous for its "cow" culture and the fact that it is Switzerland's most traditional canton. It also includes the tall mountain range capped by Mt Säntis (8200 ft), which Janet and I could see off to the east from where we were. 

Once in town, we tried to park where our tour guide said it was free - in front of the Appenzeller Bier Brewery. All spots were taken, so we squeezed into a spot on the road while the beer factory workers cheered me on.

Here I am where we parked, with the brewery right across the street.

Another view across the street at the brewery, this time with that decorated truck waiting to be filled.

We walked 100 meters across the river and were in the center of this touristy town with its beautifully decorated buildings (Lüftlmalerei). We met up with another couple doing a walking tour, and they were from Coure d'Alene, Idaho. Interestingly, they had stayed at a hotel right there in Appenzell, and the big church across the street had kept him up all night too.

See the attractive buildings, with the distinctive roofs and decorations? I could have taken 20 pictures like this one. We went into a store called Salesis House, from the 16th century and the only free-standing stone building in Appenzell other than the castle. Outside of it we saw Appenzeller cheese cycling kits, on sale for only $53. I tried it on, and Janet encouraged me to buy it.

Cool-looking, isn't it? Of course, this photo was taken once we got home. I love the black strips with the little golden cows, herdmen and carts.

We continued walking around the village, admiring the charm and shopping for a cow bell.

More town color, and another Appenzeller Bier truck.

And this photo includes a Nestle truck, and more pretty buildings. I don't seem to have a picture of their large town square where in-person voting, using raised hands, takes place once a year. They had a postcard showing the square jammed with citizens with their arms in the air voting "yes" on something, and it made us wonder what they had to do if a vote was close? It would certainly take all day to count each hand in the air for yay and nay.

Even the Three Kings Hotel had cool paintings. Perhaps the most painted was this store below that we shopped in for cow bells, but still we didn't make a purchase.

Not only painted walls, but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on the balcony top, and other figures. Even a gnome on the top of the pole on the right. Note the name of this shop - Hersche. Say it aloud. Sounds like Hershey, doesn't it? Well, that's no coincidence. They are the family of Milton Hershey, who immigrated to Pennsylvania from Appenzell. If you look REALLY closely, you can see a Hershey Bar wrapper on top of a little white post above the 2nd "A" in Bazar. Here, let me zoom it in for you:

We drove north to the nearby town of Stein, where they had a cheese factory and museum.

This was a kiddie playground in the form of the famous Appenzeller cheese, just outside the factory. Also outside the factory were several "cow benches". Janet wanted to get my photo sitting in one, so down I sat, and...

...oops, there was a puddle of water on that bench! My pants were drenched. Luckily, our luggage was in the car a few meters away, and I was able to change into dry pants.

We toured the museum, featuring Appenzell Canton culture, and the photos I took were cowbells and cow parades.

This particular cowbell was interesting in that it looks very much like the one we eventually bought for our souvenir (in Munich). The two little cows and herdman near the top are what are all over the cycling jersey I bought earlier in the day.

In the cheese factory next door, the best feature was watching the film about the Appenzell cow culture. It was half informational and half advertising, but we learned so much about this interesting part of the world. Their cow parades are steeped in tradition. We chuckled at their cheese advertising campaign in which they play off the "secret" recipe that only TWO PEOPLE are privy to.

We left Stein to drive to Lucerne, using only a map of Appenzell to get us, supposedly, on the correct road heading out of the canton. The "correct road" was told to us by the woman in the tourist office in Appenzell. It turned out she led us on the long route, which was so convoluted that it required I stop three times to ask directions. Some of the roads during the first hour were tiny, with no center line, and they curved up up up and down down down. We had some nice scenery and lots of cowbells ringing, but the road just never seemed to arrive where we were wanting to go.

Finally we reached Rapperswill on Lake Zurich, and the signs started showing Lucerne as a destination. We followed those, and eventually we made it, four hours later. I have looked at a map since, and by golly did we ever take the convoluted route. Thus, when we finally parked and began our walking tour in central Lucerne at 4:30, I was pretty well wiped out and frazzled.

After walking along the beautiful Lake Lucerne, however, and with Janet being so loving and calm, I soon settled down and enjoyed the walk.

Here is another view along the lake front, and I thought it was funny to see this couple taking their own picture. It was a Friday as work was getting out, so it became very busy on the streets.

Here is a view from Chapel  Bridge, looking down the Reuss River and at the open-air cafes on a warm evening. Seeing that boat is a reminder of what happened to the Chapel Bridge on my birthday in 1993. A small boat was tied to the bridge, and caught fire. It quickly spread to the bridge, made entirely of wood, and destroyed almost the whole thing. After careful restoration, no boats may tie to the bridge!

In the 17th century, they added these triangular paintings for the entire length of the bridge, and unfortunately, they too were destroyed in the fire. 147 original paintings were here before the fire, and now only 30 have been fully restored.

This photo of me is from the far side of the bridge, of the water tower. However, the tower is not a water tower in the usual sense, but the name comes from the fact that the tower is standing in the water. The tower predated the bridge by about 30 years. Throughout the centuries, the tower was variably used as a prison, torture chamber, and later a municipal archive.

Following our tour book's guided walking tour, we then walked a few feet to the Jesuit church.

As usual for our churches in Europe, it was overly ornate. Built in 1666, it is dedicated to Frances Xavier, who our local Cincinnati college is named for. Out in front, a group of young adults were playing guitar and singing what sounded like folk songs.

They had this low dam holding back water so that it would be "lake like" under the Chapel Bridge in the background. The dam also diverted water to several mills in years past. In fact, if we turned the other direction, we saw...

Mill Bridge. That one, too, is covered and has interior triangular paintings just like Chapel Bridge. Luckily, they are still original and undamaged. At the far right side is where all the mills were. When we walked to that far side, they have an 1889 turbine to see, which generated power. Actually, there is still a generator here providing power for thousands in the area. Notice too, in the background on the hill, are remnants of the original city walls and two of its towers.

On the other side of the Mill Bridge we were back on the "old town" side of Lucerne. What impressed us most were the Lüftlmalerei paintings on the buildings. The picture above is in the old wine market plaza, and represents the Wedding Feast at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. 

This painting is just to the right of the one previously, and the inscription just above the portico roof says, in Latin, "No medicine can cure a broken heart." This building used to be a pharmacy.

This painting on a Gasthaus shows an extensive family tree.

In a different plaza, they had a painting of Göthe (the German Shakespeare) because he stayed there in 1779 (it says so in the painting).

We considered eating in this restaurant, but it seemed too expensive, despite the urgings by the maître d. But the wall painting had an interesting story: It features symbols from Lucerne's annual Mardi Gras festival, called Fasnacht. Notice the name - Restaurant Fritschi. Well, the real Mr. and Mrs. Fritschi (who are still the restaurant owners) are shown at the top wearing masks and throwing oranges, and the rest of it tells the story of Fasnacht.

We completed our walking tour and then found a small cafe to eat. Yummy, but expensive. Janet had spaghetti and I had a simple chicken paprika, but it cost $50 (with beer, of course!). We then went back to the car to find our apartment in the nearby suburb of Littau. Without too much trouble we found it, and went up to the third floor to meet the owner. Very pleasant, and she soon departed for a party, leaving the entire place to us. I walked up the street to a small market to buy some beer and chips, and sat on her deck to enjoy them. Janet worked on her computer. It was nice to relax at the end of a long but fabulous day.

Principality of Liechtenstein

Thursday, September 26, 2013

How many people have been to this tiny country? We hadn't, and it was a delightful visit. For one thing, it stopped raining during our 2-hr stroll. It was fun getting our passports stamped, and sending ourselves a postcard so that we could have one of their postage stamps.

The day began very leisurely. We didn't depart until 10:20. I again walked to the bakery for breakfast sweets to go with our coffee. It was raining from the start, and continued all day. The only two times it stopped raining were the two times we went outside to walk around, so we were lucky. It was a long day of driving across Austria to Switzerland, so it didn't matter that it rained today.

The autobahn as far as Innsbruck was all repeat for us. From the car we saw again the Kufstein Fortress, the Schloss Tratzberg, the medieval castle ruins on hilltops, and Innsbruck. The scenery as we continued westward from there was new, although the clouds and long tunnels we went through kept us from seeing the full scope of the Alps on either side of us.

The only stop we made in Austria was for lunch, and it was an interesting one. We randomly chose a place to depart the autobahn, and it happened to be in Landeck (and, it happened to stop raining right then!). We stopped at the first Gasthaus and went in, but they told us in broken English that lunch was now over, but they could offer us wienerschnitzel (after huddling up with the chef to see what they still had). We said no, and continued into town. By golly, everywhere else in Europe there would be numerous places to eat, but we seemed to have chosen a city where there were no restaurants. So, we stopped at a grocery store that had a sandwich-counter deli. We each ordered a sandwich from the display, and ate in the car! Why? Because we had two bottles of beer in the truck that were still cold.

Wasn't this elegant? Oh well, it worked, and tasted just fine.

As soon as we got going again, the rain returned. We continued through many tunnels as we made our way to the offramp for Liechtenstein. By then it was about 4 pm. Interestingly, the signs for Liechtenstein used the letters "FL". It looked like "Florida" to my brain, but the "F" stood for Fürstentum, which is the German word for Principality. 

Going south only a couple miles off the autobahn, we entered the tiny country. It's only 12 miles by 6 miles, with a population of 35,000. We drove to the capital city of Vaduz and found a car-park. Luckily again, it stopped raining once we became walking tourists. 

This is where the royal family lives, in a 700-yr-old castle. Thus, you cannot tour it. It dominates the scenery when walking around Vaduz, because it's just on the hill overlooking the city. 

Here's what we learned about Liechtenstein: It has the highest gross income per person in the world (based on actual currency purchasing power), and has the world's lowest external debt. It also has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world at 1.5%. It is known as a principality because it is a constitutional monarchy headed by a prince. The billionaire Prince Alois, married to Dutchess Sophie of Bavaria, wields more political power than any other member of European royalty. In 1719, the Liechtenstein royal family, which had been a wealthy land-owning dynasty since the 12th century, bought this chunk of land. From whom? From the Holy Roman Emperor, who was Charles VI of the Austrian Hapsburg dynasty, which Janet and I had learned about when touring the Hofburg Palace in Innsbruck (he was Maria Theresa's daddy). During Napoleon's reign, when the Hapsburg Empire ended, Liechtenstein was given true independence. 

The Liechtenstein princes, however, viewed their country only as a status symbol, and lived in Vienna. A prince never even set foot in the country for 120 years (in 1840). It wasn't until 1938 that the prince and his royal family moved into the castle to live permanently.

After exchanging money for Swiss Francs, we strolled around the pedestrian zone. This is the parliament building, although we didn't know what they did if the prince has absolute power. It turns out they essentially serve as advisers to him and he then decrees a new law, and they implement the laws.

The royal castle above was never out of sight. The prince can always look down on his city to see how things are going. One of the things we wanted to do was get our passports stamped, so we went to the tourist office where they do this. It cost us 2.5 SF each, or about $2.75, to get them stamped! We also bought one postcard of the royal castle, and sent it to ourselves using a Liechtenstein stamp as a souvenir.

We tried to visit the country's museum behind us, but decided not to based on its closing time; by then, it was getting pretty late in the day.

Another view of the pedestrian zone (Städtle Street) with more government buildings and the edge of the castle walls at the top. We then strolled back to a sidewalk cafe and decided to try the country's only beer.

This Brauhaus beer's motto was "One country, one beer". In ordering this beer, we realized how expensive Switzerland was going to be, based on the exchange rate we'd just gotten. We looked again at souvenir cowbells, since Janet had proclaimed ever since our cow parade in Kitzbühel that we would be taking home a cowbell. We decided not to buy one just yet, but to keep looking. 

We departed this little principality (at least the car park turned out to be free!), and once in the car, it began to rain. Soon we were in Switzerland on the autobahn headed north, after crossing over the Rhein River, and it was pouring so hard that we had to slow down to be able to see. We got off the autobahn to head west into the Swiss canton of Appenzell, where we wanted to find a Zimmer Frei for the night. A nice, inexpensive zimmer frei. Any zimmer frei. Why weren't there any zimmer frei as we got closer to Appenzell city? The road was so very narrow and winding up and around vast green hilly pasture land with the sounds of cowbells. It seemed like we were on the "back road" approach to the town of Appenzell since it was so narrow and steep, and later we discovered it WAS a secondary road used only by locals. We had no map, and the sign did say Appenzell, but we should have taken a more direct route...which may be why there were no zimmer frei and no Gasthaus in the tiny villages. 

Eventually we came to a Zimmer Frei sign in front of a Gasthaus in a small village. I went in to inquire, but she said they had no vacancy. I mentioned the big sign saying that rooms were available, but she brushed me off saying something I didn't understand. So we continued on, and it was getting dark and late. Over hill, over dale we went until I came to a T. To the right was Appenzell city, but to the left was the small village of Eggerstanden. Would it have a Gasthaus? I turned left to try. YES, we saw one Gasthaus, so in I went to inquire. Certainly, in this tiny village in the middle of the Appenzeller hills, away from touristy Appenzell town, a room would be inexpensive. Wrong. They did have a room, but the price was 75 SF per person!! I said no, we'd go on. She then said a room without a bathroom would be 50 SF per person, including breakfast, but we'd have to share the bathroom and shower.  Even though this was still far more than I figured it should cost and had hoped for when we first sought a zimmer frei, it was very late and I took it.

Here's our cozy little room, up on the top, 3rd floor. We needn't have worried about having to share a bathroom with others because we were the only people staying in the Gasthaus!! We saved $55 by agreeing to have our "private" bathroom down the hall a few steps.

Here's the view out our room window. Green pasture land. I put our remaining beer on the ledge outside this window to get cold, and then enjoyed it later in the evening. 

Another view of our room. It had a VERY squeaky floor, so we hoped no one was below us. We had dinner downstairs in their restaurant, and we again noted the high cost in Switzerland. Janet decided to have just pumpkin cream soup, while I had a regular entree that cost upwards of $25. And again, this was just a little out-of-the-way Gasthaus. But it was a great dinner and great Appenzeller bier. 

The REAL story of this night were the church bells directly across the street. They rang every 15 minutes -- loudly. They kept us awake, and we got irritable. At 6:00, they kept right on ringing for two minutes, seemingly to wake up the entire town. We thought later that this was indeed the purpose, because during our breakfast at 9:00, about 30 workers showed up for some food. The proprietor said they were taking their first work break of the day, meaning they probably began at 7:00, meaning they probably all woke up at 6:00 when those church bells tolled. Welcome to farm country in Switzerland!

Trick water fountains at Hellbrunn Palace

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Schloss Hellbrunn, in Austria, was today's highlight, not only because of this famous gazebo, but because we loved all the trick water fountains and water-driven gimmicks. We also went to two Bavarian resort towns, to where Franz Gruber lived, and on a long, harrowing drive through the mountains to sight see and scare Janet.

We had a leisurely morning. I walked across the street to a bakery and bought a true decadent pastry, a marzipan roulade. The coffee pot worked fine (after the initial spill because I hadn't closed the lid completely). Eventually we drove to Inzell, on the Deutsche Alpenstrasse, and walked around on another Kaiserwetter day.

We thought this fountain and courtyard were pretty. We walked a short distance to visit the St Michael's Church, founded in 1190, and were impressed as usual. We saw the huge world-class ice skating rink that I had read about in the 7-Eleven bicycling team story, where team founder Jim Ochowitz skated in 1971 and saw what it would take for a cycling team to compete on the world stage.

 

We then drove a short distance to Rupholding, and got out of the car only long enough to look at this attractive Rathaus with its Lüftlmalerei (wall paintings).

Onto the autobahn we went, back into Austria just south of Salzburg to Schloss Hellbrunn. It was built as a summer "day" residence for Salzburg's Archbishop Marcus Sitticuss in 1612. So much for a Catholic priest's vow of destitution. Because this elaborate mansion was meant merely as a day's escape from Salzburg, it has no bedroom! But Marcus had a sense of humor, as we'll see (for one thing, his uncle was the archbishop who had 15 children with his mistress).

The first thing we needed was lunch. Too many tour buses meant the cafe was booked, so we went to the take-out counter and ordered the only thing on the menu - weinerwurst mit brot. And, as you can see, beer. Then our tour finally started, and the guided part was only of the gardens with its trick water fountains and water-powered grottoes.

Here was the first trick fountain. When a servant would open the valve, everyone seated at the table would get drenched, other than the host seated on the end, nearest the camera. It turns out the gardens have dozens of fountains that the servants, and our tour guide, would suddenly turn on to surprise and drench visitors.

These fountains came on just as we all were exiting that grotto against the wall. Interestingly, flowing water (by gravity) was the power source for all sorts of moving figures and mechanical theaters throughout the grounds.

For example, in this theater are hundreds of figures all working harmoniously in a village. Once the guide turned on the water valve, all the figures came to life and moved around "doing their thing". Here's a close up:

See all those figures? Hard to believe that water-turned axles and belts make all of them move. We also went into two grottoes where there were birds singing and calling, produced, again, by water-powered bellows. It was amazing what they'd done in those gardens.

Janet and I then toured the actual palace, the one with no bedroom. After that, we walked down to see the Sound of Music gazebo. I sang for Janet the song they did in that gazebo, "You are 62 going on 63, fellas will fall in line..." Ha! The gazebo was brought there following the movie's filming in 1964.

Our next stop was a short distance south in Hallein, to see Franz Gruber's birthplace and museum. We got to it after it had closed, but we took several photos:

That building is Gruber's home and the museum. It's covered with plaques, such as the Stille Nacht plate in the top photo above.

This inscription tells Gruber's story and about this house.

His grave is right there in the front yard as well.

Here is a better photo of all the wall plaques and the grave. As we walked back toward the car, we inquired at a tourist shop where the church was located where Silent Night was first performed. We were told it was in Oberndorf, north of Salzburg on the Salzach River. We looked it up on the map, and it was too far away to drive to, although we had passed right by it when we drove from Burghausen to Salzburg.

Hallein is known mostly for its history in salt. "Hall" means "salt" in Celtic, and it was mined here back to prehistoric times. Salt was known as White Gold, and brought wealth to this area for many centuries. Rich Hess and I took a salt mine tour here in 1971.

Instead of just driving straight back to Bad Reichenhall, we drove a big clockwise loop around and below the chuck of Germany (Berchtesgaden National Park) that sticks downward into Austria. We first continued south through the Salzach River valley, looking up to the Rossfeld panorama where we had been looking down the previous Sunday morning. When we got onto the road going westward, it was small and very winding. Apparently I was going too fast around all the curves, because Janet later admitted how scared she was during this drive. Eventually we got to Saalfelden to head north, and the road flattened out and she felt much better.

As we passed through Bad Reichenhall, we pulled off the highway to find a restaurant. We knew the pickings were slim, but decided to try again. We did find a hotel restaurant that was open, and ate outside.  We enjoyed our dinners, which included tossed salads! Back at the apt, I uploaded some photos onto Facebook postings for the first time on this trip, so that friends/family could see us at Oktoberfest and some other places.