Zurich - Trip to Glarus and Liechtenstein

Vaduz, Liechtenstein

I did two further trips while Geraldine was visiting. One was to Glarus. This was supposed to be for our birthdays and I’d read that the nearby Sadona Geopark was a world heritage site. Since Geraldine is trying to work through all of these sites (well, I think she mentioned it as something she could maybe do, and I’ve now assumed she is doing it), it seemed like a good birthday plan. It was not the most successful trip.

We boarded the train, Geraldine checked that she had her ticket with her, only to find she hadn’t got it. I checked in my purse, and I also didn’t have mine. We had to leap off the train and we stood on the platform puzzling over how each of us had managed to lose our tickets. It was bizarre. In the end Geraldine found hers in the bin at my place; she’d thrown it away by accident. I think I must have left mine on the train the night before when we bought them. I rather liked the idea that it wasn’t our fault and it was an evil demon or some mysterious force whisking them away from us, but I guess the pedestrian explanations are more likely. Anyway, we had to buy our tickets all over again. Grr. On the plus side, we had time for a coffee and a chocolate croissant at the station, so it wasn’t all bad. And we shared the blame, so it was all very equitable.

I’d read that Expedition Tschinglen was the most popular walk, so that’s what I’d planned we’d do; I hoped that it would be obvious as to how to get to it when we got there, as I couldn’t find any information online. However, we arrived at Glarus only to find that the Tourist Information place didn’t open until 2pm. So, it didn’t matter that we arrived later than planned anyway. None of the maps in the town showed the planned walk.

We walked about a bit aimlessly, although it was picturesque, so no great hardship, had a bit of lunch, and by then it was past 2pm. We went to the Information centre to ask about the walk and it turned out that we had to get a train to somewhere else first. We popped over to the station ticketing booth, but they said the next train to the destination wasn’t for another hour. We deliberated, but felt it was really too late, since we didn’t want to rush the walk or end up lost on the mountains in the dark. We returned to the woman in the information centre and she kindly suggested another walk; this too required a train. Once again, we popped over to the ticket office, but that train too would not be arriving for quite some time. At this point, we didn’t feel we could go back to either the information place or the ticket office again, so we slunk out the side door.

In the end, we did a 15-minute walk (only I think it took us 30 minutes) up a mountain to get to a restaurant where we had some wine. We were able to see snow in the distance. But it was quite a long way to go for the day just to have a glass of wine (or two..).

The final trip was to Liechtenstein. I was a bit luke-warm about this as many people find Vaduz boring, but I’d heard that Feldkirch in Austria wasn’t so far away and was very pretty, so we could do both Liechtenstein and Feldkirch and thus do three countries in one day. That’s pretty cool.

Our travels all went well this time (we were one year older and therefore wiser, perhaps?). To my surprise, the bus to Vaduz, Liechtenstein was also the bus to Feldkirch, Austria so it would be very easy to do both. We awaited eagerly for the announcement on the bus or even by the roadside that we were arriving in Liechtenstein, but it never came. It turned out that once we crossed the Rhine, we were there, but apparently they’d made some agreement years ago not to have borders.

Liechtenstein felt orderly and clean and, to my surprise, its currency was Swiss Francs. The whole country has only 38,000 people, with Vaduz holding just over 5000, so I decided it would be good to live there as it would be relatively easy to be one of the country’s best – for example, I’m pretty sure I could present myself as the country’s foremost expert on Schelling if I lived there.

We ended up spending the whole day there and we never got to Feldkirch. Liechtenstein is dominated by its castle, seated dramatically on the top of a hill among a backdrop of mountains. There was some pretty interesting modern architecture, too. We started off visiting the cathedral. The weather was glorious, so we did a long climb up to the castle, taking in some wonderful views along the way. At one point, we stopped by an interesting fountain representing all the different parts of Liechtenstein through the use of stone and the flow of water. Finally, we arrived at the castle only to find that you can’t actually go in, since it’s the Prince’s residence. But the walk alone was worth it.

All in all, we had a great day, and it leaves me still with Feldkirch on my list of places to go!