A Guten Tag on the Rhine

While in Switzerland, we were hoping to do a bit of travelling around - it's a small country, and you can basically get across it by train in a few hours.  But, as I mentioned earlier, Switzerland is very expensive, and although the distances are short, they are costly. And, as we were in a restful phase of our trip, we didn't really want to spend half the day on the train (since we certainly couldn't afford staying overnight at whatever far-flung destination we wanted to visit!).  So we looked through the guidebooks at Andy's brother's house, and talked to his sister-in-law, and decided we would head towards Rheinfell and then make our way back to St Gallen along the Rhine and the Bodensee (Lake Konstanz).


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We packed a bag with some leftover capsicum-loaded spaghetti, some apples, and a bottle of water, layered on as many clothes as we could comfortably move around in, and headed for the Bahnhoffstrasse - the train station.

We caught the comfy commuter train to Winterthur, and then changed to a smaller local train where we got off at our first stop, Rheinfell.  We had read about this in the Lonely Planet, which declared it not as impressive as Niagara by any standards, but Europe's biggest waterfall no less.  So we didn't have high hopes, though did think the castle on each side of the waterfall sounded like a nice touch.  We were pleasantly surprised with the waterfal, which was beautiful and impressive.

The castle on the far side of the river, Schloss Worth, looked more like a large house to us, so we didn't pay for the several Swiss Franc ferry ride over to see it.

Schloss Worth, though, was free to get into and was more imposing.

And it offered good views of the falls.

After admiring from several angles, we decided to continue on our journey.  Nachster Halt: Schaffhausen.  This was a very likeable town with an old, cobblestone centre which felt very German (having never, at that point, been to Germany). Apparently this was the only Swiss town to be bombed in WWII, because the Allies mistook it for Germany.  We had lunch in the square, eating leftover pasta and a fresh bretzel alongside locals eating sausage and bread (held in separate hands, one bite of sausage followed by one bit of bread).

We checked out a church built in ~1100, which was imposing inside, and clearly built in the 'frighten the bejeesus out of people to encourage religiousity' school of church architecture.

Even the entrance was, quite frankly, intimidating.

But it had a cool herb garden outside, tended since the Middle Ages.

And we walked up the hill to the Munot, a weird fortress/castle/round building from the 16th century.

It was all but empty inside, which makes me reluctant to use the term 'castle'. This made Andy speculate that, when under threat, this was the place everyone ran to, and hid.  I suspect there were strict selection criteria for entry, but maybe there's a chance it was egalitarian...

But it would be a good vantage point, with views like this.

We continued on our train trip, travelling along the Rhine through fields of veggies and apples.  We left the train once again in Stein am Rhein, the town declared by Lonely Planet to be the Best in All Switzerland.  (Their terminology may have been different, but that was the gist.) Andy's sister-in-law told us it wasn't that great, so we weren't sure what to expect. On our way from the train station, we got a close up view of something that we saw from a lot of trains - rent-a-gardens.  It seems that, in the bits of land near train stations that are too small for living but too big to waste, the rail company has hired out plots of land to people who want to grow stuff.

We also saw walnuts growing.  Tell me they don't look like what I think they look like.

The town is loomed over by this castle on the hill.

When we found the town (our ability to get lost and walk the wrong way didn't get left behind in Hong Kong, that's for sure), what we found was quaint and medieval.

And very clearly tourist-oriented.

But with a sense of whimsy, or perhaps just a sincere love of dogs.

We visited a chocolate shop and got a dairy-free block of dark chocolate with almonds.  We (okay, I) ate half the block sitting near that dog statue.

Andy touched the Rhine, or rather, the place where the Rhine meets Lake Constance/ Lake Konstanz/ the Bodensee (with so many languages, things tend to have several names in Switzerland).

We hopped back on the train, got off in Kreutzlingen, and then took a quick, minute long train ride across the border into the German city of Konstanz.  Konstanz's strategy, during WWII, was to ignore black outs and leave the lights on, in the hopes that the Allies would think they were Switzerland.  It worked, and they were never bombed.

It felt like a nice city, but the places we had been earlier in the day were so Bavarian in nature that it didn't feel like a different country. Until we saw a busker playing accordion.  Then it felt pretty German.
Compared to the highly reserved nature of the Swiss, something about an accordion just strikes me as bawdy and fun-loving.

We looked at the lake.

Looked at this rotating statue, living at the end of a pier, with loads of cleavage and a bit of va-jim-jam hanging out.

And then, after only about 6 hours of doing stuff, we went home, tired and happy (and with happy feet), glad to have embraced a slower pace of travel.

Windows to the soul

One of my favourite things about Switzerland was all of the adorable window decor, so here is a post dedicated to the shutters and oriels and frescos that we saw.

In the town of Appenzell...

 

In the castle known as Schloss Laufen, in Rheinfell...

In the really charming town of Schaffhausen...

Yeah, that's a skeleton wearing a pirate hat inside this oriel.

In Stein am Rhein, where Andy wondered how people go about their everyday business when their town feels like such a fairy tale...

My favourite house in all of St Gallen,  based on our very brief tour of the place, and primarily due to the Bright Red Shutters!

I've honestly never given a second thought to shutters before visiting Switzerland, but now they are on every imagining of a dream home that pops into my head.

Neutral, and On Time

After 5 days in hectic Hong Kong, our brief respite in Switzerland was much needed and quite welcomed.  In contrast to Hong Kong's crowded, busy efficiency, Switzerland had a slower pace, and a polite but unfriendly efficiency.  It was clean, it was quiet, and it was so damn picturesque.  Andy and I, hilarious individuals that we are, made plenty of jokes about neutrality and timeliness. 

Getting to Switzerland was one of the least fun plane rides we had on the whole trip.  We left at 11pm or so, after a full day of touristing at the Big Buddha, and with no shower. Before boarding the plane, I was already feeling fairly ill, probably from eating cold spring rolls. And the plane was crowded. Poor Andy's legs, from hip to knee, is precisely the distance from his seat back to the one in front of him, and he found himself in a plane seat with one of those stupid boxes in the foot space. The food was only okay, and the movie selection was disappointing. Swiss Air definitely didn't win us over in the 13 hours during which we were a captive audience. 

Arriving in Zurich at 6am, we had a few hours to kill before we met up with Andy's sister-in-law to get keys and directions to her apartment. So we got train tickets and went into Zurich city for a look around.  Our first impression of Zurich was that it was nearly empty (it was still very early, though), very cold, and very expensive - before lunch, on the first day, we spent about AU$100. Yikes!  But it was also very pretty.  There is a river running through the city.

With old churches on either side.

And lots of pretty swans.

But it lacked a vibrancy, and we weren't immediately taken with Zurich (though, after visiting on a Saturday at lunch time, I realise this is probably because of our timing).  We did poke through a local market, with loads of exciting produce - mushrooms, artichokes, berries, apples, pears, potatoes... But we were pretty happy to meet up with Andy's sister-in-law at lunch time and head back to her place in St Gallen for long showers, laundry, and resting.

And, although we did plenty of stuff while we were in Switzerland, my lasting impression is the restfulness.  We cooked at Andy's brother's apartment most nights, which was a nice break after restaurant-eating for so many days in a row in Hong Kong. We dawdled through parks and grocery stores, and old towns, and churches. We spent lots of time in markets (which are set up 4 or 5 days a week in St Gallen, I think).

St Gallen, although a smaller city, was more appealing to us than Zurich.  It has a giant, old cathedral.

And a funny story about how the site was chosen. So the legend goes, as we heard it, a drunken Irish priest called Gallus was tramping through Switzerland when he fell. A bear came to his aid, and Gallus took this as a sign from God - so decided to build a church on the site.

St Gallen's old city has heaps of cool old oriel windows.

There was also So Much Fruit around the town, growing in people's yards, in parks, along the sidewalks...

And we stumbled upon a little community compost pit, which was adorable and awesome.

We caught a tiny tram up a hill, and had a look around some manmade lakes.

But the best part about being on the hill was the views over the little city. 

Soon, I'll tell you about the day trip we took along the Rhine, and the other day trip we took up an Alp.  But for now, here's one last photo of Switzerland's quaintness.

One last Hong Kong post

I think it is worth telling you all about our second day in Hong Kong in regular, chronological narrative form. It kind of demonstrates the kind of experience we had in a way that showing you a bunch of photos at once doesn't do.

We started by walking over to Whampoa, and catching the ferry to North Point.

We walked around that neighbourhood for a few minutes, just taking it all in, before catching the train to Causeway Bay to visit the library.

Because, you see, my iPod wasn't the most convenient in Hong Kong.  Our hotel had free internet.  That's internet, not wifi.  Doh.  But there was plenty of free wireless around Hong Kong - public parks, for example, all offered free government wifi.  But the other thing we didn't bring was an adaptor, so I could only charge my iPod through a USB.  So to the library we went, to charge iPods, email parents, and check up on students.

We got a teensy bit lost finding the train station to head further in towards Central.  But, when we got off the train, we had no trouble finding Hong Kong Park.  We saw a vegetarian tea house, and I got a little excited, but it wasn't yet open.  Instead, we went straight to our intended destination - the Flagstaff Teaware Museum.  This is an old colonial building that now houses exhibitions dedicated to all things tea.

When we finished looking at interesting tea pots (and I began longing for an elephant-shaped tea pot for our kitchen), we went back to the tea house.  But, it was booked out - and a good thing, because I think we would have been underdressed.  It looked like a popular destination for Ladies Who Lunch.  Instead, we ordered a turnip cake and fried mushroom dumplings and ate them next to a pond in the park.

We caught the Peak Tram up Victoria Peak, the big mountain that Hong Kong city crowds around.  The tram was steep and messed with our perceptions of the buildings.

At the top, we walked around a little, but were a bit overwhelmed.  At this point we were hot, and tired, and had been deposited by the tram into a massive shopping mall (as we came to realise is the case at basically every train stop). 

The view was stunning, but our legs and feet were tired so we kind of didn't appreciate it as much as we should have. 

But we did pose for some self-timer photos.

We got the tram back down the hill.

And then tried to locate a few of the veggie restaurants I had identified using my fail-proof google maps strategy.  The strategy was this -- I printed off a google map of each section of the city we were likely to visit.  On these maps were marked all the vegetarian restaurants (that are listed on google, I guess) in that neighbourhood, with the little marker on the map, and the list with the name of the restaurant and the address.  This seemed to me like a good idea before we left.  But in practice, the maps weren't zoomed in far enough to navigate very successfully.  And the addresses on the list were often written in Chinese characters.  Der.  So my failproof method resulted in lots of walking around, completely clueless as to where we needed to be.  So on this day, it was probably 1 or 1.30 when we started looking for lunch.  We were heading to the nearest restaurant on the little google map first.  But we got to the end of that street and hadn't passed it.  So we headed towards The Centre, an impressive building which, according to our google map, had a veggie place really close by.

At this point, it was probably 2.00 or so, and we were tired and hungry.  We weren't even taking in the sights as we walked around, because we were cranky and a bit miserable.  We retraced our steps, we scrutinised the maps, we figured out that it had to be down this little alley-way... but when we got there, we saw only one tiny hole-in-the-wall with no English language anywhere.  It may have been the one, but we weren't brave enough to try it out.  But, we had been walking for at least an hour, probably closer to two.  So we were tiiiiired.  So when we saw a sign for foot massage upstairs, and made a beeline straight for it.  Let me tell you, that was the best decision we made on the whole trip.  An hour of watching Shanghai Knights and drinking cold water in an air conditioned room while people rubbed our tired, sore legs and feet was exactly what we needed.  Even though it delayed our meal even further, comfort beat out hunger on that afternoon.

Feeling a bit refreshed, we realised we were close enough to a third restaurant to try and locate it.  At this point we were all the way up in Sheung Wan, which is a fair walk (or maybe it's not and my memory is deceiving me!).  We located the corner it had to be near, and we walked back and forth a few times and then... Andy spotted a green "Vegetarian Food" sign! Success!  I have never been so relieved to sit down and have a menu placed in front of me.  The restaurant we had found was Po Lin Yuen Restaurant in Shueng Wan.  It was 4pm, and there was almost no one else there, so service was prompt.  It wasn't gourmet, or particularly healthy, but like the foot massage, it was exactly what we needed.

We had salt and pepper tofu, deep fried with a silky-smooth inside.

We got some sweet and sour veggie pork, which was crunchy mock meat nuggets coated in a sticky, sweet sauce, with yummy fresh pineapple chunks.

And we healthified it slightly with Buddha's Delight, a dizzying array of mushrooms with veggies and crunchy noodles.

After that, we realised how close we were to the Macau ferry terminal, and walked along the harbourside back to Central Pier, where we watched the sun set. 

Then we caught the ferry back to Tsim Sha Tsui to watch the light show, which was less impressive than the number of people who gathered to see it.

We didn't get back to our hotel until after 9pm, and we were stuffed.  It was a big day, with lots of walking, sweating, getting lost, being hungry, and grouching at each other.  Luckily the rest of our days weren't like this, otherwise my overall opinion of Hong Kong would be very different!

This is the last of my Hong Kong-specific posts, up next is Switzerland...