To the Rhine

Getting up early at the Brunnen campsite is easy since at six in the morning the main road next to it awakes into continous noise that even out-sounds the ubiquitous ringing of cowbells. No problem though, it allowed me to do some quiet sightseeing in the town of Schwyz without bumping into tourists everywhere. Also I managed to conquer the one climb of the day near Sattel by nine o’clock.

From Sattel is was a steep downhill into the Lake Zürich area, too fast to really enjoy the splendid view over the lake. It got better. The Walensee region features superb vistas just about everywhere so I wasted some of my headstart on taking countless pictures. The passage at the south shore of the lake leads through a series of dark, irregular but well maintained galleries, steep (in excess of 20 %!) climbs, and tiny settlements that barely fit the in between the cliffs and the water. About halfway along the lake I picked up a road cyclist who I traveled with until Sargans; I got a decent lesson in Swiss WWII fortifications out of it which are sprinkled everywhere in the border region.

So much for Switzerland. I felt some regret that I had to leave it but my mood was ligthened significantly by the thought of reasonable prices that lay ahead.

Once Upon a Time in Central Europe

So far I’ve been traveling mostly through space but for a complete vacation the time travel aspect shouldn’t be missing. Thus I ventured into the living anachronism that is the principality of Liechtenstein, a. k. a. the Saudi Arabia of Europe, to see what’s been happening lately in the Middle Ages.

What a boring place. Even the prince’s castle sabotages attempts at getting a clear photograph of it. The historical dress in the area appears to be suit and tie, the traditional costume of the banker caste. The few opportunities Vaduz has for shopping are limited to archaic mechanical wrist watches. A reminder that timekeeping used to be a hard problem before GPS.

Luckily I escaped the puny princedom without being caught and lynched by the peasantry, so I could travel on to the more modern country of Austria.

(Side note: the practice of blocking arbitrary ports on wifi should be outlawed; I can neither access my VPN nor SSH over the campsite WiFi. What a bunch of malicious Internet hating bastards they turned out to be.)

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