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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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