Last summer we had taken a short trip to the Bodensee, a large lake between Germany, Austria and Switzerland. We had really enjoyed our time there, where we spent a fair amount of time biking and decided it would be great to go back and bike some other segments and see things in the area that we didn't get a chance to on our first trip.
The Bodensee is a popular vacation destination for Germans and others in Europe, so it took a little work to find a place to stay that was nice, conveniently located and not tooooo expensive. We finally settled on the town of Hagnau (like is the German Wikipedia site translated into English by Google), which is located on the German side, about 10 km from the town of Friederickshafen, where we stayed last year.
Our main focus of the trip was to complete our ride around the Obersee. Last summer, we did a section from Friederickshafen in Germany to Rorschach in Switzerland. On this trip, we did two separate rides. The first was from Konstanz to Hagnau. For that trip, we first took the ferry from Meersburg to Konstanz. Jason found out that Konstanz avoided bombing during WWII by keeping its lights on. Most cities in Germany during the war went into black out conditions during the night to avoid any allied bombing. Konstanz used its position nestled up against neutral Switzerland to its advantage and kept all of its lights on, tricking the allies into thinking it was part of Switzerland and, consequently, not bombing it.
We had perfect weather for the ride--sunny with a little bit of wind. The ride for that day was approximately 60 km (37 miles). We stopped at an Imbiss (German equivalent of fast food--mostly sausages and fries) for a very late lunch in Ludwigshafen, where we each had a well earned beer before moving on and heading back to our hotel for the evening.
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| Stop for a break...and a beer! |
On our second day, the weather was not as good and our (or, at least, my) butts were quite sore from our long ride the day before, so we decided to drive to the nearby tiny country of Liechtenstein. While Luxembourg is a small country--about the size of RI with about 500,000 people--Liechtenstein is even smaller--about the size of Staten Island with about 36,000 people. We drove in to Liechtenstein from Austria and first went to the capital city of Vaduz, where we walked around a bit. The city is mostly modern, with a few older buildings, including the Prince's castle.
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| The Prince of Liechtenstein's Castle in Vaduz |
We next drove up, up, up into the Alps to the mountain town of Malbun, the location of Liechtenstein's only ski resort. We were planning to do a short hike, but the weather was against us, so though we could have taken a chair lift up and hiked down, we decided against it, as the clouds and rain were coming in. We did enjoy some Kaffee and Kuechen at one of the few restaurants that was open and walked through the town between raindrops.
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| Malbun Liechtenstein and its Clouds |
Back in Vaduz, we went down to the Rhein, which forms the boarder between Liechtenstein and Switzerland. The Rhein flows from there through Lake Konstanz and then up through Basel, into Germany, were it is joined in Koblenz by the Mosel. From there, you can follow it up through The Netherlands where it empties into the ocean in Rotterdam. In Vaduz, there is a covered bridge that crosses the river, so you can walk or ride your bike from one country to the other. Just as common in Europe as it is on the Vermont/New Hampshire boarder.
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| Crossing the Boarder through a Cover Bridge |
For our third full day, we did a second bike ride to complete our circumnavigation of the Obersee. We took the ferry to Konstanz again, and rode from there to the Swiss town of Roschach, where we had finished our ride last year. The ride through Switzerland was very nice. There are fewer tourists and just generally less density on that side of the lake, so it makes for a a very pleasant ride.
Adding this section to our completed items, we still had one leg left, from Friedrichshafen, where we stayed last year, to Hagnau, our location for this trip. To catch a regular ferry to Friedrichshafen, we put our bikes on the train and took it up to Romanshorn, jumped on the car ferry and, after about an hour arrived in Friedrichshafen, where we enjoyed some Kaffee and Kuechen before getting back on the bikes and to Hagnau.
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| Jason in Romanshorn |
Before heading to the hotel in Hagnau, we stopped by the town beach. I use beach in the Rolf Pond meaning: a place where there is some grass and enough room between the trees to swim--actually, it was a little more developed than that, though in the same spirit. I changed and went in for a swim, which was quite refreshing after a say of biking in the sun, while Jason relaxed a bit and checked his eyelids for light leaks.
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| Enjoying the Beach in Hagnau |
On our drive back home, we saw two interesting things. The first, was the German exclave of Buesingen am Hochrhein. As an exclave, the entire town is not connected to the rest of Germany and is completely surrounded by Switzerland. So, we had the interesting experience of crossing the boarder 3 times within a few miles as we exited Germany to go into Switzerland and exited Switzerland to go into Buesingen then back into Switzerland. It is quite easy now with the Schengen Area--I can't imagine doing that same drive and needing to make all the boarder crossings.
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| Road-Side Boarder Crossing into Switzerland |
The other interesting this was the Rheinfalls, the largest waterfall in Europe. It is quite impressive, as can be seen in the video below. There were people from all over the place there--Chinese, Dutch, Americans, Indians, etc, etc. In the video, you may be able to see the boats that go quite close to the falls. We didn't have the time to go on one of the rides, as we had a long drive home--maybe on another trip.
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| Me, with the Rheinfalls |
And that was our trip. As always, vacations end far too soon....
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