The plan is to start today by doing a wonderful £1.47 return trip with Ryanair to Friedrichshafen in southern Germany, then a train ride through Bregenz in Austria like I did back in September last year, but to go on further, this time into Switzerland to St Margrethen, and south to Buchs, and from there a bus journey to Vaduz in Liechtenstein, and back to Friedrichshafen for the flight home. Then stay at Stansted airport for four hours where I would have to check in for my usual trip to Riga in Latvia. Five days there this includes a day trip via bus to Lithuania and fly back to Stansted on the Monday night, stay there for a few hours for my flight to Gothenburg in Sweden for a six hour trip before going home to do some clothes washing. Then not long and I am back in Latvia for another three and half days.
So a lot planned.
Well, the trip didn’t start too well, but it was funny and nature took its course. Oliver my travelling friend for today is to pick me up at my home at 4am. I didn’t bother checking the weather forecast and Oliver didn’t tell me, but when I ran outside the front door, I slipped as there was SNOW everywhere. Plus, this was deep snow. So back I went indoors to get a few extra winter wear.
After a steady ride to Stansted and checking in, we boarded our aircraft to Friedrichshafen which was due to depart around 07:10. With snow still falling and air traffic controls cautioning planes on the runway, which meant delays, it wasn’t until after an hour we departed.
Also we had our aircraft de-iced as well. I never had seen that before.
So, we flew, and on this plane with around forty other passengers, we hope to arrive in Friedrichshafen around thirty minutes late. Well, we were on our way to making the runaway, and with around 45 seconds before hitting the runway, German air traffic controls told the captain that it was bad conditions on the runaway and too pull up. So up we go around 7,000ft to the holding position, fling over southern Germany for around 25 minutes until the airport authorities cleared and de-iced the runway.
So now, after arriving quite late into Friedrichshafen, in the heavy snow, our plans we turned into dismay.
The major objective today was to get to Liechtenstein, but with time running out on this day trip, there was no hope for that. I have heard many wonderful things about European countries dealing with the wintry conditions when it comes to transport, so we both decided that Switzerland can still be done, via Austria.
So we headed into central Friedrichshafen to book our train tickets which never got checked anywhere in the course of the day, and had a quick look around the edge of lake of Constance in this park, and to view the Swiss Alps the other side of the lake, which because of the snowfalls and low clouds, you could not even see twenty meters away.
Anyway, back to the station for the train to Lindau, the next town going east on the lake.
After arriving in Lindau, we missed our connection to Bregenz in Austria which put us another hour behind, as that is when the next train is. So we had a wonder into Lindau. The snow was getting harder. It was lunchtime. Great. The only place open. McDonalds! So after keeping warm in there, having the worst cup of tea of my life, and being ripped off on the price of my meal (and I thought the prices in London were bad enough) it was time to go and venture to the lake. It had this amazing lion statue facing out to the sea on the edge of the harbour with this lighthouse. Oliver decided to start throwing snowballs at me, and got on right in my face, all over my new glasses, and the snow slid downwards underneath my coat and had a cold chest all day. Even a local German lady walking pass shouted out ‘Ha Ha, Very Funny!’
Anyway, back to the train station where we caught our train to Switzerland via Bregenz.
After a late start of twenty minutes at Lindau train station due to the weather conditions we arrived at St Margrethen in Switzerland, after going through the wintry scenes of Bregenz in Austria for a whole ten minutes.
This was the first time that I have been to a non-European Union country. A neutral country in fact. Home of good chocolate, brutal police and the 1987 winning Eurovision song, sang by a French-Canadian Celine Dion.
There was no border control police on the train or at the train station.
The snow was still coming down. You can barely see the Swiss Alps at first, and we were at the foot of them. We were slightly more inland of the Lake of Constance compared to the other three towns we went through.
I and Oliver decided not to spend too much time here as most of the things we wanted to do (apart from getting to Liechtenstein) are to go around the Bregenz area. So we had 55 minutes here. After walking around the southern side (and very near side) to the train station, all we saw was a church which was St Margrethen tourist attraction as it seems, as it was on all the badges and postcards in the very few shops here. SO we decided to walk northwards. I was getting really cold and just wanted to sit in the station café to keep warm and save my energy. But Oliver saw another church in the background and thought that would be a great photo oppurinty.
So we walked and came across the Austria/Switzerland border control.
So we took some photos, went straight past the Swiss police and onto no-mans land, which was a bridge over a river. Very nice touch I thought. We got the European Union sign, the Austria border sign and the Swiss sign, even though it had road speeds. I don’t think the Swiss police were impressed when we walked back past, but I don’t care, we needed to get to the train station via a shop on the border which sold sew-on badges for my backpack. Good job she accepted Euro currency, we didn’t have any Swiss Francs on us.
Small note – that church Oliver saw was way in the Austria zone.
Maybe another time. If we ever bother going back here. Not sure.
We landed back at the train station to go back on ourselves to Bregenz in Austria which was a ten minute journey.
After pulling into Bregenz on the train, we headed towards the city, which by now for the moment, the snow fall had died down. The sky will be dark in around an hour, so I told Oliver, if it was open, to go up Mountain Pfänder by the cable car. Too are amazement, it was. After paying seven Euros each for a return trip, we were on are way up the 1064m mountain side to the top of Mountain Pfänder.
It was misty, cold, snowing hard, and you could not see much.
The conditions were really bad up here. We saw two young people sledging down the mountain side. Brave of them. I wouldn’t even bother in these conditions. But then again, they were wearing the right clothes. There was me we just jeans on (no thermals), a vest, a t-shirt, a jumper, a coat, scarf and gloves with no hat. I was wearing trousers as well. I wasn’t really prepared for this. At least Oliver had a hat, which had a major English supermarket chain written across it.
We had a look around the southern viewing area first, that is, if we could see anything. Couldn’t see the Austrian Alps. Or the Swiss Alps. Or Liechtenstein. Not even the snow below the fence. The telescope was frozen solid and Oliver wanted to view out of it, despite the weather and was completely frozen. I had a moment of madness, when I did a snow angel. I regret that forever now.
Looked good on the video clip Oliver has got.
I tried warming my hands up underneath a hand blow dryer in the toilets, but this were stupid. No point. We walked around the northern viewing area. We couldn’t see Bregenz, Lindau, and Lake of Constance below, not even the house a few meters away. The snow was around 10 inches by this point and started to fall even harder. Light was fading. The sound was pure golden silence. It was fantastic. I have ever really experience anything like this before. We walked around the wildlife park they have up here. The eagles weren’t here, as they were back in September when I came here. There was reindeers, boars, and rams having a good fight. After walking down a path (which of course, was snow on top) we stopped a few meters down in the middle of a mountain side forest. It felt like we were in a winter wonderland with this Christmas looking trees around with thick snow around them, This place reminded me of the cartoon back in my childhood, ‘The Racoons’
We decided with the darkness, the temperature and time, it was good if headed back to the cable car station.
It was difficult to walk up the slope without a walking pole guiding you. But we made it. My hair and jeans were absolutely frozen. You could snap my hair off it was that cold. Two cups of hot chocolate was in order back at the cable car station, and so we headed down back into Bregenz. We were walking past the Bregenz Hafen train station, where a train was pulling in to go towards Lindau so we caught it. It was time to start heading home, and try and dry our trainers and socks on the not so good heaters on the train.
After trying to warm up on the train back from Bregenz and Lindau, where we had better connection times, we were back in Friedrichshafen town. We had around an hour to kill, so we went into town looking for food. Once again, like Mainz a few weeks ago, there was nowhere open. So we went into this local kebab and pizza house. Very cheap. Good. Shame the people don’t understand their own orders as I ordered a cheese and tomato pizza, but got the same as Oliver, some tropical pizza.
It tasted horrible after a while, and I would have rather eaten poison then this rubbish. So after feeling disappointed, we headed back to the station. I had misread the timetable earlier so we went into the bar and ordered some drinks and had a rather good talk with some of the locals. Shame about the barmaid who had a stropping attitude and hated us as we were English. Must be the reason. Or she just hates tourists, god knows.
After arriving at the airport, where there would be only around fifty people on this flight back to Stansted, it was a great time to ask the passport control people if we could have a stamp in our passports. This shouldn’t be allowed when a European Citizen is travelling between two European Union countries, but we got one. Somehow, after all the problems earlier in the day, the flight left ten minutes late, but was on time arriving back into Stansted.
So, after saying goodbye to Oliver, it was time to go back into the airport with my luggage, to find a place to sleep which I found out it was too cold, so I sewed my new badges which I got in Switzerland and waited for the Riga check in desk to open.
