Last weekend me, Eric (Minnesota), Isaac (Texas), and Kasia (Poland) decided to rent a car (see previous post for details about the car!) and take a weekend trip to the tiny country of
Liechtenstein. Liechtenstien is only 62 square miles, so the school district of Mason is about as large as this whole country! Why Liechtenstein, you ask? Well, it's close by, none of us had never been there before, and it's not like anyone else ever visits, so we went. There was nothing special that we were dying to see - we were just planning on bumming around for a while in a new country.
After we picked up the BMW, we headed south on the Autobahn from Stuttgart. We had to go through Switzerland to get to Liechtenstein, so we decided to have lunch in Zurich. On the way, we actually had to stop at the border crossing (somewhat of a rarity with the EU, but Switzerland and Liechtenstein are not members). The guards just told us to buy the highway sticker and then we had them stamp our passports. You get checked more going to Canada! Here we also got a little bit of Swiss money (they use Francs, not the Euro). We had food that we had brough with us, so we had a picnic in square in a nice residential neighborhood (where we could actually find a parking spot!). We then typed "Liechtenstein" into the Nav system, and set off from Zurich.
After we left Zurich, we had great views of the Alps while we were driving along this Swiss highway, when we weren't in a huge tunnel! There were many picturesque little villiages and castles with huge cliffs and snow-covered mountains behind them. It was all very amazing, especially because it was the first time I've seen real, non-Appalachian mountains.
When we made it to Liechtenstein, after about 4 hours on the road counting lunch, we drove up this narrow, winding mountain road to Schloss Vaduz, the home of the Price of Liechtenstein. The castle was under construction and it's not open for tours anyway, but there was a small parking lot with hiking trails and such. We parked there for a little bit and walked around a bit to take pictures. We were on top of a very steep mountain at this point and could see the vast majority of the populated part of the country from this one place!
One interesting thing about Vaduz (the capital city) is that there is vineyard right in the middle of the city with streets running around it. The vineyard is about 5 feet above street level though, so there's a wall and stuff. Running loose in the vineyard, with no fences, were a bunch of sheep!
We asked the friendly staff at the Liechtensteines Landesmuseum if there was good hostel around, because we only had the information for one that was in Switzerland. They suggested we drive to Austria (only 15 minutes away!) and try to find the hostel in that town. So, we typed in the name of the town (Feldkirch) into the nav and head off. We drove around aimlessly for a few minutes before pulling up to a Holiday Inn and asking a guy walking out if there was a hostel around. He told us to park the car and come in for a minute. When we went inside, he was talking to the clerk. We though he was just being a very nice guy, because he stayed there and helped us out. The clerk even called the hostel for us to find out the prices, but then offered us an even better price at this hotel (20 Euros per person for one night). We realized that this place had a pool, sauna, steam room, and we were there already, so we stayed there.
We later learned that the nice man who helped us was one of the head bosses of the hotel! He hooked us up quite well though - it was a nice hotel and the pool and sauna were very nice! The rooms also had minibars. Later that night, "Goldeneye" was on, dubbed into German of course!
After putting our bags in the hotel room, we wandered around the town for a while trying to find a place to eat. We eventually found ourselves on top of this huge hill a block from the hotel with a castle on it. There was a restaurant in the castle, so we ate there. It was really neat eating inside a castle while looking out over this whole city with mountains in the background!
Here's the view we saw from our hotel window when we woke up in the morning - a beautiful mountain view! We packed our bags and headed back to Liechtenstein to visit the above-mentioned museum. It was filled with a bunch of typical historic European stuff, of course, but there was also a special display about
Ötzi, the ice mummy some hikers found in the Alps years ago.
After we were done at the museum, we got back in the BMW and drove back to Austria. We found a Döner restaurant (Turkish fast food) and ate there for lunch. Then, I got to drive the BMW back from Austria to Germany on the Autobahn! We made it back through four countries in three hours, not counting lunch!
A very common occurance in Germany during the Christmas season are Christmas Markets. Pretty much every city of any significant size has one and there are so many in the area that it's impossible to go to all of them. I visited the markets in Esslingen (a Stuttgart suburb) and Stuttgart itself.
A Christmas Market is pretty much a Christmas-themed craft show, but there's differences depending on where you go. Esslingen is a very old city, so their market is Middle Ages themed, with minstrels, blacksmiths, and so on. Stuttgart's market was just normal, but with more stuff for kids and such. I saw the guy with the coolest job! They have this little train track setup for kids to ride around on like they have at malls back home, but this is a gas-powered outdoor train and this guy gets to sit there a drive this train around the track in circles all day!
Another big part of the markets is food. You can buy food like roasted chesnuts, pretzels, 1/2 meter bratwursts (served folded in a 1/4 meter bun, see picture!), whole smoked fish, beer (of course), and something interesting: Glühwein. This is red wine mixed with spices and served hot (like coffee) in a mug. It's not boiled, so it's still alcoholic. It's a wierd taste to me, but it's really popular here.
