Good bye Switzerland …

Saturday 17th September

We travelled through three countries today …… We left beautiful Lucerne and travelled through the most magnificent mountain pass, with flowing rivers, green green pastures and Swiss mountain houses. There were a number of castles along the way which made it impossible to take your eyes off the scenery. We stopped for morning tea in Lichtenstein at Vaduz, the one and only town in this principality and which is 5 kilometres wide and 20 kilometres long. Lichtenstein is aligned with Switzerland, but is independent. And as such isn’t part of the European Market, just like Switzerland. I’m afraid to say there wasn’t anything of significance there that I can tell you about. We continued our journey and quickly entered into Austria. The terrain and architecture remained very similar to Switzerland with very green fields and mountains and it was a pretty drive. We then had lunch at Innsbruck in the ancient part of the city which was very interesting with it’s quaint buildings and cobbled streets. It is also the place where Swarovski crystals come from. The new display shop which had just recently opened had a crystal staircase and crystal chandeliers both of which I managed to photograph and was a sight to behold, and of course the items on sale, both jewellery and ornaments were very tempting for Jill.

We set off after lunch, destination Germany. As we concluded travelling in Austria the terrain altered and mountains gave way to rolling hills, then flatter pastures. This was Bavaria the largest of the 17 states of Germany and with a long history of its own. We eventually reached Munich the capital of Bavaria and the third largest city in Germany. Would you believe we arrived to find out it was the first day of the 201st Octoberfest, the celebration of Ludwig’s marriage. We just had to sample the Octoberfest atmosphere, so went to the famous Hoffbrau Haus which is a large beer hall that seats 6,000 for a meal and a beer, with lively music in the Bavarian tradition. We found it to be very noisy so we left and found a quiet side walk restaurant where we had a very nice traditional German meal and I had a special Octoberfest beer. Until now we had only experienced sunshine on our tour, however that came to an end and the heavens opened up while we were out, putting a dampener on some of the celebrations for the Octoberfest. So after having a look around some of the Souvenir shops, we grabbed a cab and went back to the hotel.