Saturday, May 21, 2011
I can’t believe I’m sitting in our rental car in a McDonald’s parking lot in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, where we will be spending the night. I just have to trust that the Lord will protect us. Steve is snoring away so somebody has to stay awake just in case, especially since he left windows open. And since I’ve not had electricity in the room in Stechelberg to recharge the netbook batteries, I have maybe 3 hours of battery left on my spare battery, then I’m done with computer…
Will start at the beginning of the day, which started out way much better than it has ended thus far. We had a leisurely “get up and go” from Stechelberg – Marc and Diane were very pleasant and I would recommend their place to anyone. Had a bit of a scare when I realized I didn’t have my glasses – but found them down in the kitchen where I’d left them last night while fixing supper. We paid our bill of 112 CHF, very reasonable for two nights! Headed to Lauterbrunnen and made a stop at Staubbach Falls where we took a short and steep hike so we could see behind the waterfall. Way cool (way wet too.) Oh, and there was a cache there. Why else would I have known about the falls?
Headed north and east toward what we’ve been calling the “three passes” area. This is a roughly triangular area with each side having a high Alpine pass within it. We chose to start with the Grimsel Pass. These were great motorcycling roads, BTW (we first learned about these passes through the Alpine motorcycling book we had bought.) Lots of switchbacks and still snow along the sides, I can see why they don’t usually open until the beginning of June. We reached the top of the pass and did a bit of exploring. Got to walk through snow and saw people doing a little skiing as well. We bought the obligatory souvenirs and then I tried to find a cache that was there. Was having no luck walking along the road so realized that I’d have to go up behind the restaurant. Yep. Only trouble was the two German Shephard dogs that were chained to the top of the drive. So I went around, through some snow and up a rocky area, and found the cache. No way was that a 1.5 terrain!
Going down from Grimsel was a series of steep switchbacks, really glad I wasn’t the driver! At the bottom of the valley was Gletsch, which seemed to serve no other purpose than to be a way point between the Grimsel and Furka passes. So up the Furka we went. Another set of steep switchbacks, up and up we went. At the top, another great view though no services open. Did find a micro cache there, Steve had to reach it for me. Some of these roads were barely (and I mean barely) wide enough for two cars to pass. Once, a bus went past us, barely squeaking by with just inches to spare so it seemed. And the motorcycles – don’t know if they have right of way in Switzerland but they weave in and out to the left like they have all the time in the world. I asked Steve at one point whether or not he would like to come back on the bike and ride these passes properly. He said, maybe but alone – you’d freak out at every turn. Possibly so but still wasn’t so nice of an answer, in my thoughts.
Reached the Andermatt area and headed north toward the Klaussen Pass and eventually to Glarus. Our plan was to start looking for a place about there. Everything I’d been told/read was that it would be easy to find “zimmer frei” in a town. Well, try finding them today. The hotels we found were asking 60 – 70 or more CHF per person. Just not acceptable to Steve. Even considered trying to find Nora’s (my sister Judy’s exchange student) family which lives in Glarus, but thought that would be just too awkward. In retrospect I wish we’d had.
The trip to Glarus over the Klaussen Pass was beautiful, as were the other two passes, but yet more challenging as the roads seemed to be even more narrow plus we caught some rain up near the top of the pass. Really glad to get over this one! The remainder of the road was just a nice scenic mountain ride.
After striking out in Glarus, we decided to head toward Vaduz, Liechtenstein and keep looking while we went on. I had booking.com and tripadvisor apps on the Ipod, but no wifi service. I had the GPSr with searchable lodgings, but that just gave the name. So it was mostly a process of just looking as we went along. Found a campground which looked promising but they didn’t have any cabins or similar to rent. They recommended a less expensive place in town which turned out to be closed.
By the time we reached Vaduz, we drove to the nearest hotel. Nobody home, at least the doors were locked. I could see reception desk but nobody there. It was 4 star anyway so Steve wouldn’t have wanted to pay the probable price. I did see a sign which gave the wifi code so tried that. Got in for just a few minutes then it wouldn’t let me continue, not sure why. So we went to the McDonald’s down the road, to try to use their wifi. You had to have some kind of code, so I asked a friendly looking man (he had a kid with him) first the obligatory “Sprechen sie Englisch?” He did so I asked him how to get the code. After working with my Ipod for a bit, he asked if it was a touch or a phone. Seems that made a difference, not sure how. So anyway I think he ended up entering HIS code for me which was very nice. Another take pity on the poor foreigner in a bind, but hey I’ll take it. That got me about 90 minutes of internet time during which I searched for anything reasonable in Vaduz and came up empty except for expensive places. I did manage to get a reasonable place for tomorrow night in Reutte, so that we are near Neuschwanstein Castle that Steve really wanted to see. Also got to check email and sent off some SOSes as it looked pretty certain by now that we were spending the night in the car. Just wanted people to know the plans “just in case.”
At about 10:30 we parked the car off in a quiet corner and tried to settle in. About an hour later, though, a car parked right in front of us, nearly blocking our exit out. Assuming the worst, I felt pretty uncomfortable with that. So we moved down the street to the first hotel we’d tried, and stayed there until about 5:30 a.m. Steve slept more than I did, I maybe got a couple of hours myself. At least we got to use our airplane blankets…. I. am. Never. Going. To. Leave. The. Country. With. This. Man. Ever. Again….
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