So, I'm about to embark on a writing journey as this post should have been written a couple of weeks ago. There is also much to write about, and as you know, I'm pretty detailed in the way I write. So I think I will break this post into parts. We'll see...
On the weekend of September 11th- 13th, I travelled to Switzerland and Italy with 4 other PPPler. We actually started to plan for the trip way ahead, and the original idea was to go to Liechtenstein, a small principality nestled in between Switzerland and Austria. However, as we began talking logistics of making it a reality, we decided there was probably a lot to see in Switzerland as well. Originally, when I first when to Zürich and Switzerland for the first time in 2006, I hated it and couldn't understand why people actually go there. Then in 2008, I drove through Switzerland to go to Italy and I saw some of the most gorgeous scenery in my whole life. So Anna and I were the organizers of this trip and we though Davos, Switzerland would be amazing. A quick look at Google Earth told us that nearby was also the Swiss National Park that is also across border lines into Italy. After doing some research, we decided we would go here as well.
(This is really going to be a long post....)
Further investigating and planning for the trip, we decided it would be necessary to have a car. Luckily, because of my instinctive skills to get the best price for anything travel related, I found that Europcar has a glitch in their system which allows me to rent vehicles from them at 50%. Unfortunately, they removed the offer they had going on, making it impossible to book a car like this anymore.
Although Liechtenstein isn't so far away from Radolfzell, if we were going to try to do this excursion, it was definitely going to take the whole day, and we might as well as stay another day. (You can see how the costs are adding up). We decided that we would need other people to come with us in order to get better economies of scale. We started promoting our excursion to other PPPlers and we were able to convince some more people to come with us. This helped us of course, but then are budget was once more shattered as the Youth Hostel I found in Switzerland priced things per person as opposed to per room. I found a 6 bedroom room for 58CHF, but that was unfortunately per person. (1USD = 1 CHF). I continued looking for a place to sleep, but many hotels aren't connected to a Global Distribution System and I had to really search hard. Finally we made the decision that we would spend the night in Italy as Italy is cheaper than Switzerland. In fact, almost everywhere is cheaper than Switzerland.
The hotel that I found was called the Picolo Tibet Hotel in Livignio Italy. Luckily, Livigio happens to be a tax-free region in Italy (I didn't know this) but it claims itself as being a European community as opposed to an Italian one. This is historically true, as earlier this century it was part of Austria. However, nothing about Austria really remains here except for the architecture of the buildings. Since it's on the south side of the Alps, it's much more influenced from Italy and even the Church's walls have Latin writing. Luckily, our hotel included a full breakfast, and we paid only 39 Euros (although it was supposed to be 33).
The car that we rented for the trip was an Opel Insignia with Navi. Since we had 5 people traveling at all times, we needed a roomy car, and a VW Golf wasn't going to cut it for us. But luckily, because of the glitch in Europcar's system, we rented the car for a mere 73 €. (There's a catch though, and I'll get to that later).
So Brian, Trevor, Patrick, Anna and I were on board. We estimated that with the currents costs would average each person approximately 60€ for the weekend. Not bad for what we considered on doing.
On the day of our departure, the plan was to leave school and take the train and 12:17 for Singen (the neighboring town) where Europcar is located. However, being veteraned in renting cars and traveling in Europe, I was sure to bring my passport. But, I forgot to mention to the others, who naturally also wanted to drive, that the car rental needed our passports. I did remind them on the day of, but Patrick had to ride his bike back home (a good 2km) to get his. Well this problem actually was the first of a myriad to occur to one very funny yet incredibly inconvenient day. The train leaves exactly 17 minutes after we get our of school. But Patrick, being in a different class from us, wasn't told that we were taking the 12:17 train. We waited for him at the CDC until 10 after, but then we went to the bahnhof and actually had to run to make the train. Patrick naturally didn't make it, but he biked as fast as he could to make the train. Then because Patrick was so adamant about driving, he decided to bike to Singen (8km) as fast as he could to register as a driver for the car. Again, not necessary since we were able to work something out at the rental agency and there would be no way to get Patrick's bike back to Radolfzell afterwards. Registering the additional drivers cost money too, an additional budget breaker. 6€/day/driver. Anyways, the other guys still wanted to drive so we signed them up, and to our luck, Europcar Singen (literally the last town in Germany before Switzerland) could give us a Swiss Vignette (a sticker that costs 60CHF that allows one vehicle to drive on their highway system. The Vignette cannot be transferred or removed or else it will tear apart. Therefore, many strategies have been developed to "how to remove them with out invalidating them." The trick is to put some vaseline or other creamy lotion on the sticker coating before applying it to the windshield.) The vignette cost us an additional 9 Euro. We additionally asked for a manual since we were all excited to drive a stick. Anyways, who would want to drive an underpowered automatic to begin with?
After registering everybody else as a driver, we had to go pick up the car. We misunderstood the directions for the car park, and walked in the wrong directions. We basically wasted about a half an hour looking for the car park. We did however find it, got seated and were off. Our car, a beige (although described as grey on the key chain) was parked, and we were given a station wagon, which was great! The extra room was great. Our car though, was only had a 1.6 litre displacement, which correlates to approximately 115hp. Mind you, our car was the size of a midsized American car, AND we were set to drive through the steep Alps. However our car did have a full size navigation screen (sometimes in Europe you get just a screen with arrows and a voice telling you where to go). Our Opel was pretty nice, and I was impressed with it's build quality and nice interior plastics. Opel, by the way, is owned/was owned/is partially still owned by General Motors Corp. If only they could take more from the Europeans and use some of the same materials in US versions and products. Opel, though, is also basically bankrupt and was sold off to Magna (a Canadian Auto Supplier and the Russian Bank Sberbank). Also, the license plate bracket from our was stated that we were insured by the infamous AIG. It said, "AIG die Weltweit Versicherer," which translates to, "AIG, the world-wide insurer). I found it odd that we in a GM car and insured by AIG. I prayed that nothing happened to us since both companies recently have abysmal business records.
We set off back for Radolfzell, where we had to pick up our stuff and Anna. It was 1:45 by the time we left. After dropping everyone off at home, I packed my stuff quickly and grabbed some food and went to go pick everyone up. It felt really good to drive for the first time after 6 weeks. The Opel was great, despite how massively big it was, although was comparatively sized as the Renault Laguna Wagons were that we had in Italy. I picked everyone up. Anna was last. As we seated I asked if everyone had their passports with them. Trevor didn't, but everyone else had. Since were so late to start off, and since Switzerland is now part of Schengen (a community of European countries that has open boarders) we figured we didn't need it. Traffic was bad immediately leaving Radolfzell. We got to Konstanz, were we needed to find the Europcar in order to properly get Patrick registered for the car. Our navigation system led us the wrong way into the opposite end of town. Where were we? So, then Patrick called Europcar to get the address of the Konstanz branch, where then we were able to input the new address into the Navigation system. I was already losing faith in our navigation system after this episode. Finally we dropped Trevor off at the Deutsche Bahn and made it to Europcar to get Patrick certified to drive. We picked up Trevor and then headed for the Swiss border, which is literally at the cities border. There are two options to cross the boarder into Switzerland from Konstanz. We chose the smaller one since that's were the navigation system told us to go. At the boarder, the Swiss boarder guard pulled us over, of course. In German (Swiss German -which is an awful un-understandable version of German) he asks me the following quesitons:
1) Does this vehicle belong to you? (Naturally, this was a valid question as Europcar is seated in Hamburg, or Hansa League City Hamburg, and the code on the license plate is HH. Hamburg is basically at the north of Germany, and Konstanz on the very bottom). 2) Where are we going? 3) To see our identification cards.
Everyone except Trevor had their passports, and Trevor gave his American Driver's License with his Inwent ID card. The guard went into the office, while numerous cars passed by without being checked or stopped. After about 5 minutes, he came back out and told us that everyone but Trevor was allowed to enter. He told Trevor that at the Liechtenstein border, he would not be able to enter. Therefore, we had to return to Radolfzell and pick up Trevor's passport. Did I mention we were late to leave?
One hour passes...
So, we're on the road again and travelling back to Constance and we go through the border. No problems whatsoever. However, Patrick is now driving, and he's a little bit rusty driving a stick. Immediately after entering Switzerland, there's a detour, we take the detour and miss the exit we're supposed to take and actually take the opposite one. (Our navigation system misled again, but I will let this one slide because of the detour). After taking the wrong exit, the voice (who I will now refer to as Holly) of the navigation system is telling us. "If possible, make a U-turn" in British English. Since there was so much traffic, Patrick wasn't able to turn around right away, except for the road we were on was taking us exactly to the same border crossing that we tried crossing before, but this time we're on the Swiss side and Patrick is driving. Therefore, Patrick turned left onto some small street and we turned around. The traffic with really thick, and it took us a while to leave Kreuzlingen (the Swiss town that borders Konstanz).
Finally we were on our way, and we finally moving. It was almost 5:00pm at this point and it was going to get dark. We get on the Swiss Highway (can you believe that we were going to forego driving on Swiss Highways because of the Vignette, and had Europcar not had it, we would have taken secondary roads instead). At around 6:30 we arrive into Liechtenstein.
(Capital Building Liechtenstein)
We drove into Liechtenstein from the North, so as to see more. The country is separated by the Rhein river. At approximately 5 miles wide and 15 miles long, it's not very big. The largest city is Schaan. The capital city is Vaduz. We drove through Schaan and saw a lot of people. But not many buildings. Everyone was leaving work. Most people in Liectenstein are extremely rich, and it was clearly visible by the cars they drove. However, a lot of people also rode the bright green "Liechtenstein Bus". In fact, I think we saw more people in the Liechtenstein bus in Schaan than we did in the whole city (hmm? village) of Vaduz.
(Parliament Building - Liechtenstein)
(Henry, Patrick, Anna, Trevor - Main street in Vaduz)
We got to Vaduz, parked and took a walk. Vaduz has a lot of banks. In fact, that's all that is there. Surprisingly, many countries have consulates there too. I was impressed to hear though that the US does not have a consulate in Liechtenstein. Vaduz is literally a ghost town on a Friday night at 7pm. There is no one. No one on the streets, no businesses are open. Nothing. We found the tourism center, which closed at 6pm. I would have gotten my Liechtenstein stamp in my passport had we gotten there in time, but as you've read so far, we were seriously behind schedule. We tried to find a place to eat in Liechtenstein, but everything seemed deserted and not worth it, not to mention the extremely ridiculously expensive prices. We decided to foregoe eating, take some pictures and get on our way. We did see the castle in which the Prince of Liechtenstein lives.
(Liechtensteiner Fire Hydrants)
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