Day 7: Zurich to Schaan via St. Gallen

Well, after a very long day, we have finally arrived at our next hostel in Liechtenstein.

We began our day at 8 o’clock. We got up and ate the last of our yogurt and muesli, and finished packing up our bags. Since our next hostel doesn’t have a kitchen, we decided to leave our uncooked pasta in the free food section, rather than cart it around with us. Here’s a terrible picture of Jeff packing things up in our room:

We headed out at 10 o’clock, and walked to the train station. We caught the 10.40 train to St. Gallen. The train stations in Switzerland are extremely impressive, and sometimes a little difficult to navigate. We’ve gotten pretty good at reading the train schedules and finding our tracks by now, though. And our train passes have definitely been useful – we’ve use it pretty much every day for various transit and museums.

Our trip to St. Gallen was about an hour long, so Mary took the opportunity to practice her cello part for her concert that’s a few days after we get back. She listened to a recording of the music, and pretending to play her part while looking at the music and making notes.

When we arrived in St. Gallen, we made our way immediately to the tourist info centre, and asked them about the Cathedral. We ended up leaving our bags in a small room in the info centre, since we wouldn’t be able to take them into the Cathedral.

Mary thoroughly enjoyed herself in the St. Gall cathedral library. We had to lock up all our coats/hats/bags in a tiny locker (good thing we left our big bags at the tourist info place), and wear funny slipper things over our shoes inside the library. Inside, we saw:

-          11^th century manuscripts containing Tropes and Sequences by Tuotilo and Notker Balbulus and F. Sicher

-          Various music theory treaties, including the one containing the Guidonian Hand

-          The oldest transcription of the rule of St. Benedict

-          The oldest book written in German

-          THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT OF MOZART’s KV385 (“Haffner” Symphony)

Unfortunately, we were not allowed any pictures inside the library. Mary really really wanted to purchase the book they had published about the library and its contents, however, they only had copies in German. She was pretty disappointed about that. (And feels strange writing this in third person).

We were looking forward to going into the cathedral, but someone was having a wedding there, so we couldn’t. We went into a second smaller cathedral, but could not take pictures. Here’s a picture of the exterior of the larger cathedral:

When we were finished spending time at the cathedral, we headed back to the tourist info station and fetched our bags (~ 2 o’clock). We went for a little walk to a nearby park, and ate our lunch (bread, swiss cheese, tomato, lettuce, and some rice crackers).

We walked back to the train station and caught the 15.03 train to Buchs. From Buchs, we got on a bus that took us into the town of Schaan, and walked 15 minutes to our hostel (it takes longer than usual with big bags on). A nice lady stopped and gave us directions (in English) when we were trying to figure out where to go.

Our room (2 single beds, bathroom with toilet & sink, table and 2 chairs):

So far, we’re not too thrilled with the hostel. We were looking forward to checking in, having a nice dinner in the dining room here (as they advertise that they serve dinner 6-7pm every night), writing the blog, and heading to bed. Instead, we checked in, and found that the kitchen is closed for the duration of our stay, as they apparently don’t have enough people staying here to warrant serving dinner. Well, that would be fine, except that the grocery store was closed at this point, there are no restaurants in town, and the nearest place to get food would be an hours walk. We were pretty desperate for food for quite a while, until we happened upon a little “Kebab” joint, which served pizza for 13fr. We quickly chose a pizza, and they made it fresh for us while we waited. We got one with mozzarella, spinach, and tomatoes sliced on top. It’s probably the least healthy thing we’ve had since we got here (minus all the chocolate Mary keeps eating…), but it was very tasty :). We’re a little worried about what we’re going to eat tomorrow. Everything in Switzerland closes on Sunday’s. Fortunately we noticed that this Kebab join has a sign saying “7 tage offnen”, so we know we can eat there if necessary. They might find they get a lot of business out of us!

On our way back to the hostel, we discovered a bunch of animals living on a farm of some sort across the road from the hostel.

We went back to the hostel after dinner, and had to figure out internet. They advertise free wi-fi, but don’t tell you that you need to have access to a mobile phone in order to use it (yeah, twisted eh?). Being from out-of-country, we do not have a cell phone, and when we told the reception desk this, they were somewhat astonished, saying they’d never met someone without a cell phone. We eventually found a note on the log in page saying that if we didn’t have a cell phone, we could call a number from a land line, and it would recite off a passcode to us. Good thing Mary knows her german numbers! We found a pay phone in the reception area, and after spending 10 minutes or so trying to figure out how to use it (there was no indication of how much it cost, or how to use it), we finally successfully dialled the number and wrote down a passcode for the internet.

At this point, we’re pretty exhausted. Our bags are pretty heavy, and walking around carrying them isn’t very easy. We fiddled around with the straps quite a bit this morning to get them to sit on our hips a little better, so they’re better than the first travel day we had.

Early to bed tonight, I think. We have our only full day in Liechtenstein tomorrow, and lots planned! It’s a lovely little town here (with mountains on either side of us), but we’re planning on heading into Vaduz for the day to visit the Prince’s castle, and hit a few museums.