OK, I take back all I said about this being a sleepy rural berg. It’s a happening country, and not just in Vaduz, the capitol. We drove from Vaduz north to the town of Schellenberg and then back south to the Old Bridge, a north-south distance of about 16 km. Remember, the whole country is only about 27 km long, so we did well over half of it. In doing so, we drove up against the Austrian border on the east and actually walked into Switzerland over the New Bridge on the west.

Liechtenstein’s GDP is on ready display. Every building is modern. Construction is going on everywhere. Try as I might, I couldn’t find a quiet little village. Schellenberg came close to being small and rural but even it was thoroughly modern.

Did we visit the old town for some 17^th and 18^th or even 19^th century architecture? Not to be found. This place seems to be in the “tear it down and rebuild it right” mode.

And don’t get me going on the traffic! Stop and go going toward Schellenberg. It’s as bad as driving in Munich or Salzburg or for that matter Route 1 in Saugus.

We didn’t get on our way until nearly 10 AM. We slept in a bit and I made an egg (from the farm) scramble with potatoes, onions, tomatoes and Guyer cheese. We drove downtown and found a parking spot (it takes EasyPark on your phone) and walked to the nearby information center. Following their suggestions, we visited the Treasure Chamber, Liechtenstein National (history) Museum and then, rushed for time, we went to the bus terminal to take the 35-minute City Train Tour and finally the Old Cinema.

The Treasure Chamber is a climate-controlled room with objects acquired by the princes over the years. There were some interesting 16^th century firearms, a pistol being about the size of an AK-47. There was a whole raft of Easter Eggs, one of which was a genuine Faberge from St. Petersburg plus a number of others from Russia. Even a moon rock given to the prince by the USA.

The history museum was quite nicely done, much of it dealing with church and political dealings from the 12^ththrough 17^th centuries. Back in the day there was no Liechtenstein, just a bunch of ill-define pieces of geography owned by one prince or another. These were traded like Monopoly deeds whenever someone needed money or got beaten in a battle. Christianity overcame pagan religions fairly late – sixth century or so. It’s enough to make your head spin trying to make sense of it all. It all came together as a single principality in 1719:

“The principality of Liechtenstein, consisting of these two lordships, was founded in 1719 and remained part of the Holy Roman Empire. It was included in the Confederation of the Rhine from 1806 to 1815 and in the German Confederation from 1815 to 1866. In 1866 Liechtenstein became independent.” Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Confederation of the Rhine means Napolean and when he got beat, Liechtenstein was sucked up by the Germans who finally cut it loose in 1866, probably not knowing what else to do with it. Liechtenstein claims to be the country with the oldest defined borders of any country in the world – over 300 years.

The City Bus ride was a set of cars pulled by a vehicle made to look like a railroad engine. It was bumpy, hard to see out of and the audio description was hard to understand. The movie, however, was quite interesting. It gave a tour of the Vaduz Castle, the home of the current prince and his family. Since the castle is closed to the public, this was a good way to understand what life is like up there. The castle’s foundation and walls were built in the 12^th century but like most buildings in Liechtenstein, it’s hardly original. It was modified many times. It was rebuilt after the Swiss Confederation burned it down in 1499 and has been modified at least four times between 1904 and the early 1930s.

The Principality of Liechtenstein is a constitutional monarchy headed by the Prince of Liechtenstein. In practice, the prince and an elected 25-person legislature, share power equally: Either side may veto any law passed by the other. Hans-Adam II, a guy about my age, is the current prince. He’s handed off much of his executive responsibilities to his eldest son and heir apparent. Hans-Adam II dabbles in art, buying up pieces his old man was forced to sell at the end of WWII when the country and the family were in dire financial straits.

So after that it’s 2 PM and we’re hungry. My plan was to find something up in Schellenberg but what little driving in town we did didn’t yield much hope. I parked in a random parking lot and, lo and behold, across the street was a grocery store, something Judy had wanted to find. So, we bought paper towels and bread and orange juice for breakfast and two Magnum double raspberry ice cream bars and a bag of popcorn. Luncheon is served!

The grocery store was about the size of the Common Market in Melrose. School had just let out and like the Common Market there was a steady stream of kids, moms and grandmoms coming by to pick up an ice cream bar. Made us homesick.

Back to town and a parking lot, what we hoped would be close to the Old Bridge that links Liechtenstein with Switzerland. Turned out to be a forced march in 85 degree sun for ¾ of a mile but we made it. Liechtenstein and Switzerland have close ties. Switzerland handles many of Liechtenstein’s administrative functions and so there is no border formality between the two.

Back to the farm for a shower and then off once again to Vaduz for a quick photo op in front of the Parliament building, the Government building and the cathedral. Our plan was to walk down the pedestrian thoroughfare and pick out a place for dinner. Not a good plan. First, half or more of the places served Italian food, of which we’d sworn off after Carter left us. Second, this is the first night of some Vaduz music festival and every restaurant was booked. We ended up doing pizza.

Tomorrow, we hope to get a reasonably good start for the hour-thirty trip to Zurich. We’ll only be there overnight, leaving the following afternoon, so we’ll have to get our tourist shoes polished up. Niece Amy has recommended the world’s first vegetarian restaurant, her favorite fondu joint, a chocolate shop and a high-end watch store. We’ll come home fat, poor and happy I’ll bet. Dumb goes without saying.

 

 

Today we did our longest driving day of this trip, from downtown Salzburg, Austria to Liechtenstein. It’s hard to say “downtown Liechtenstein” because there isn’t much downtown in this tiny country. It’s 17 miles from north to south and 9 miles from east to west, not much bigger than Statin Island. Population: 38,137.  It’s the richest country in the world with a per-capital GDP of around $180,000.

But you wouldn’t know it by the first two Liechtenstein-ians we’ve met so far: our hostess and host here at the Airbnb. They advertise this place as a farm Airbnb and that’s exactly what it is, a room on a working farm. They’ve fixed up one floor of their house for Airbnb rentals and live in the other. They raise corn and beets and carrots and raspberries and who knows what. The cows are up in the mountains grazing. They make the milk from the cows in the mountains. They’ll come down for the winter and live off the hay they’ve cut and, I’m guessing, feed corn. I suppose this is peak work season for them, but the tractor was still moving hay bales into the barn at 8:30 PM, shortly after dusk.

The trip itself was uneventful, almost all but the last little bit on autobahns. I let her rip to 90 mph on an unregulated stretch but lots of the time, especially in Austria, the limit was 100 k/h (60 mph). Lots of tunnels and I mean really long tunnels. But outside the tunnels the scenery was uniformly beautiful. Even when going through a city like Innsbruck, the Alps dominated the view. It was as if we were back on the Glacial Express but at a much higher speed.

We missed the Glacial Express’s white linen table service at lunch time. Instead, we stopped at the kissin’ cousin of the Kennebunkport rest stop on the Maine Turnpike.  We split a tomato and cheese sandwich and a bag of chips. The one difference: it costs 50 cents to pee in Austria.

We didn’t get a very early start (10:30 AM), laying about in bed after our 20,000-step day yesterday. Before departing, we hit the vegetable stand in the next door court yard for some fruit and veggies. Traffic was moderate with lots of trucks and several stop-and-go sections. We stopped for lunch, ice cream and gas (about $7 per gallon). We arrived at the farm outside the capitol, Vaduz (population 5,000 on a warm day), about 4:30 PM.

This place is huge. We get lost trying to find our way around. There’s the master bedroom, the double bunk bedroom, a dining room, living room, kitchen with dinette and one and a half bathroom. There are two outside decks. The Airbnb in Salzburg would easily fit in the kitchen/dinette area.

After settling in, we visited the farmer’s produce shopping in the barn. We purchased a veal steak prepared for cordon bleu, eggs and some other stuff. I made a mock cordon bleu with what we had and added to it the potatoes and yellow beans we’d purchased earlier in Salzburg. Our first home cooked meal.

The scenery here is alpine like we’ve become accustomed to but we’re looking forward to spending the day tomorrow exploring a small town and rural living. Ang getting to figure out what this tiny principality called Liechtenstein is all about.

Here are the pictures from Salzburg

If we’ve figured this correctly, we were 17 going on 18  when we saw the Sound of Music together. It was Cincinnati, both sets of parents and our brothers were with us, probably Judy’s Nana too. It was at one of those widescreen movie theaters. CinemaScope, maybe?

Yeah, I know, it’s a corny movie and we should have spent our time learning about the Archbishop Dukes of the Hapsburg’s Austro-Hungarian empire or something. But our four-hour bus ride did, as we’d hope, give us a good view of the city and surrounding areas. It gave us a good idea of what we wanted to do in the afternoon.

Our guide on the bus, Bridgette, read the original autobiography written by Maria Von Trapp and so spent much of the tour separating fact from fiction. Most of the interior scenes were shot on a sound stage in Hollywood. The gazebo scene, for example. They built a larger, semicircular version in Hollywood, so the dancing could take place and the lighting and camera equipment could be accommodated. The external shots of the gazebo were shot here in Salzburg. We saw the real thing, moved twice to a new location to handle tourist crowds.

We visited the church where the wedding scene was shot and, on our own, the abbey where Maria was before becoming the governess. We drove through the hills and yes, they were beautiful and alive, but the actual scene was shot just over the border in Germany.

A couple of other trivia tidbits.

Julie Andrews could sing and could play the guitar but couldn’t do both at the same time. The director solved the problem. He had Julie drink a shot of schnapps and voila, she could sing and play simultaneously.

And remember when the kids, dressed in play cloths made from their bedroom curtains, and Maria fell out of the boat? Julie’s job was to grab the five-year-old actress playing Gretl and hold her above water. Gretl couldn’t swim and was terrified. The second shot, which made it into the movie, saw Maria falling out on one side and Gretl on the other. Gretl went under, swallowing water, but was rescued by a SCUBA diver stationed under water for just such a possibility.

That same young girl hated Austrian food but loved the bread. Over the course of the shooting, she gained considerable weight. Christopher Plumer, who was to carry her on his shoulders as they escaped across the Alps to Switzerland, refused to lug the little fatso. A stunt double carried Gretl; you only see Captain Von Trapp from the rear in that scene.

And the Alps they were climbing would have taken them to Germany. Switzerland is 400 km or so from Salzburg. The real family dressed as if to go hiking but instead took a train to Italy.

Enough, already. After our tour, which ended in the magnificent palace gardens where some of the do-re-mi scenes were shot. We’d stumbled across it yesterday on our way to the Mozart residence.

We crossed the river and had schnitzel and brat sandwiches for lunch at a stand along the river. Then back to our apartment where Judy started a third load of laundry.

Next, a ten-minute walk to the funicular that climbs the mountain to the Fortress Hohensalzsburg, a fortress and palace overlooking, and in its time, protecting Salzburg. Like many structures in Salzburg, it was built and modified by a succession of archbishops, starting in 1077 and achieving its final form in 1519. The claim is that it’s never been defeated, although it was attacked only once, in 1525, when a disgruntled bunch of miners, farmers and townspeople tried to unseat the current archbishop. It was surrendered without a fight to Napoleon’s forces in 1800.

By the way, it seems that while the other parts of Austria were under strict Austro-Hungarian dynasty rule, Salzburg was for many years ruled by a series of Prince Archbishops. These wealthy individuals combined political and religious positions within the region of Salzburg.

After a funicular ride to the fortress, we made a quick climb to the top turret for the panorama view of Salzburg. Then back down. Rather than taking the funicular down we opted for yet one more side trip, this time to the real Maria Von Trapp’s abbey, a fifteen minute walk from the fortress. The abbey is closed to outsiders since there are still twenty-some nuns living there. The chapel was open, however.

Another walk-through Old Town and a myriad of streets and high-end shops brought us home about four thirty. I ran a load of recently washed clothes to our car in the parking garage so as to lighten our load tomorrow. Judy showered and by the time I got back it was time for a quick dinner before the marionette show at 7:30 PM. Charlotte would never have scheduled us so tight on a Tauck tour, that’s for sure!

Dinner was a small issue: most of the outdoor restaurants were full, mostly with folks enjoying an afternoon glass of beer. We finally found a place indoors. There Judy had a minced veal dish with various root vegetables and I had boiled beef with two horseradish sauces and potatoes. Good, fast grub, just what we needed. A quick stop to unload the laundry machine and we were off to the theater.

Despite a wrong turn or two (you’d think that by now we’d know Old Town like the back of our hands) we made it to the theater with 15 minutes to spare.

The marionette show was amazing. The music was recorded so no big deal there, but the puppeteering was amazing. There were often as many as 10 puppets on stage at one time doing intricate maneuvers involving foot, arms and head movements. After the show they raised the curtains and there, in an incredibly small space, we could see the nine puppeteers doing their thing. They would pass marionettes to each other as the character moved across the stage.

Now we’re back home, tired after a 20,000-step day. Tomorrow, we have no schedule but do have five hours of driving (350 km or 220 miles) to reach our farm Airbnb in Vaduz, Lichtenstein. And because the hour is late and the bones are tired, I’m putting off the photo show until tomorrow when we’ll be down on the farm with lots of free time, I hope.

That Wolfgang. What a guy. He’s quoted in the museum narrative as saying to his father, “I’m not sure if I’m too smart for them or if they are too dumb for me.” He suffered greatly, having to put up performers who weren’t up to his music. “Grey head” and “Uneven” were adjectives he used to describe such failures. Ego? Sure, he wrote great music and was a prodigy performer of both violin and piano. But come on, give the lesser mortals a break. The sad part is that he died 21,000 euros in debt at age 35.

His father was a composer and performer in his own right. Wolfgang’s mother died at an early age. His father considered Wolfgang’s sister to be the finest female pianist in Europe, but she spent her life in her brother’s shadow, managing her father’s affairs.

The fact that we’re talking about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart means that we’ve made it to Salzburg. That’s a big deal for us because it means we successfully:

• Found the Europcar rental office a mile or so from the hotel.
• Figured out how to run the Toyota C-HR’S nav system. No Apple Carplay, drat. We’d signed up for an Audi A3 but, “haven’t seen one of those in months,” the lady at the counter said.
• Proved we could navigate the city streets of both Munich and Salzburg without a major issue We chose the wrong branch of a Y intersection in Munich but that was quickly remedied.
• Cruised the A8 and other limited access roads between the two cities. The A8 is an Autobahn, which to me meant no speed limit whatsoever. Not true. Some sections are marked with a sign indicating there is no limit, but many sections were posted anywhere from 120 kim/h (70 mph) to 80 km/h (50 mph).
• We found the Salzburg parking lot from our host’s directions, although we had to park in the slightly farther away B lot rather than the A lot, which was closed.
• We found the lock box for the key, the elevator in a pedestrian passageway, found the front door and opened it. Sounds easy but try it in a place you’ve never been using scanty GPS instructions. The host’s instructions were quite good, however.
• Judy’s done one load of laundry and has another in the machine as I type. Hopefully, we’ve cracked the code on making the machine both wash and dry. It only washed the first load. Fortunately, our unit is well stocked with coat hangers.
• And this ain’t the Bayerischer or the Kempinski. This is a small kitchen/bed room and a small bath. Furnishings are vintage Ikea.
• We managed to keep starvation at bay. We had a hotel buffet before we left Munich but for lunch, we wandered the streets around our Airbnb and found a little sidewalk place where I had a salad with red climbing beans and Judy had a porchetta with ham. And an ice cream “pancake” for dessert. Tonight? We’ll go out and see what we find but it may boil down to be an ice cream. We’re tired and not all that ready for another gastronomic blow out. For breakfast we bought some strawberries, raspberries and black berries. We’ll score a pastry and maybe some orange juice and call that good.

Bottom line: another chunk of uncertainty has been lifted from our backs. We’ll find a way or two to screw up before our 13-day rental is done, but no more so than we would back in good old US of A. We can do this.

And that points up the fact that there are more than one types of “travel.” What we did with Tauck is easy: they plan it all, direct it all and handle all the issues as they arrive. What we did today and will do for the next 12 days is partially a case of seeing the sights of each locale, but half the battle/fun will be one of discovery: navigating from Point A to Point B, finding accommodations and finding out what each locale has to offer. Today we found the residence of the Mozart family and had a very nice tour with audio guides rather than a local tour guide hired by Tauck.

Our experience has been that we like to do both kinds of travel but sometimes the discovery trip is the one that we remember the best.

Our initial impression of Salzburg is first that it’s a big city with lots of tourists. I somehow came here with the idea that Salzburg was a sleepy little town with lots of musical heritage. It’s anything but sleepy – it’s vibrant, active with lots of music but lots of shopping and places to eat.

The other surprise for me is that Salzburg is mostly on level ground but there are several hills – mountains, really – that Salzburg is built around. Salzburg exists where there is no mountain nor river to get in the way.

Tomorrow we’re touring by bus in the morning on a Sound of Music trip that visits spots where the movie was filmed. We’re treating it as a city tour. We’ll have the afternoon to do more exploring on foot. In the evening we’re going to a marionette performance of the Sound of Music. Rick Steves recommends it so it can’t be that bad.