Trek to the Alps: Three countries in thirty minutes

September 1, 2013

A new day—a new drive through villages and roundabouts, as we left Stuttgart. I was ready to leave Stuttgart—an interesting city but not one necessarily for a vacation. “Gretchen” (we have named the German GPS lady provided by Ford) went with us, leading us to closed roads and insisting that we make u-turns and proceed down the blockaded roads. I was talking back to her and decided she was not welcome on our vacation. She just totally avoided highways to get anywhere. Finally, we shut her down. We traveled all over France on our own in a car without a GPS and did just fine. Of course, we knew the language much better than we know German. We plugged in Samantha (the US GPS lady, whose name we discovered when we bought our own set of Europe maps from Garmin), however, and she took us immediately to the autobahn—my first experience driving on this race course. As long as one stays in the right lane, it’s okay. I had to pass a couple times and speeding cars came rushing out of nowhere behind me. I felt as if we were in the Grand Prix.

The best view of the day happened when I first spotted Lake Constance on the border between Germany and Switzerland. Even though the day was overcast and it began raining shortly after we stopped, it was very spirit-lifting to see that rural landscape along the water with rustic buildings dotting the coastline. I have never seen more vineyards anywhere, not even southern France.

Shortly after that, Samantha led us through a bit of Austria and our first sighting of the Alps. Moving into Austria and then Switzerland gave us a whole different perspective. She knew exactly where Appenzell is—this traditional, but trendy, little village high on top of a mountain where we are now. We drove up a twisted, almost one-lane road to reach this destination—beautiful, green pastureland and mountain peaks surrounding what we thought was a simple way of life, only to discover at the summit a very trendy commercial village—quaint and lovely, but very ready to do business!

This hotel has 17 rooms, each very modern in a rustic way; however, they are not really set up for computer users. After dinner in the hotel restaurant, we strolled around the village, window shopping, and will explore more tomorrow. Oh, by the way, at dinner I asked if they had iced tea. The server’s face lighted up when I asked and she brought me an interesting concoction—tea with fruit juices and maybe a spoonful of ice.

Oh, I forgot to mention our first encounter with a German grocery store yesterday. We were looking for bottled water and found two aisles of bottled water. We carefully studied the German labels and decided on one. We also browsed through the store—nothing like our grocery stores at home. There were no displays—the different fruits were in the boxes in which they were shipped and piled in the middle of the aisles. Variety was limited. No bags. People were carrying things in their arms—milk, eggs, two bananas, etc. I might also add that when we opened the bottled water, craving something thirst-quenching, we realized we had carefully chosen some kind of sparkling water with seltzer or something in it!

Tonight we are a bit despondent because Robin’s phone is missing—he just bought a new one the day before we left Richmond and was so pleased to have it. He realized that the last time he had it was when we got gas on the way to Switzerland today. We looked in the car, but it was dark. We’re hoping we’ll find it in the daylight. We like to be reachable as well as able to communicate if we need to.

He also wanted me to mention that if anyone intends to visit Switzerland, one needs to know that the AC adaptors in Switzerland are not the same as the AC adaptors for the rest of Europe. The Swiss use a three-pin configuration and their pins (and their receptacle holes) are thinner so one adapter we used in France and Germany won’t work, though the other, with smaller pins works ok.

I’ll end on that note and see what tomorrow brings.