April 3

April 3:  Off to Austria and Lichstenstein

(these next few posts may come a little late… we’re supposed to have internet but don’t).

Well, we found the Munich Airport so Judy could get registered as a driver on the car, we found our way to Youthhostel Feldkirsh in the far west of Austria (our next stay point), and we made it to Lichtenstein just in time to pay for a fake passport stamp.  It wasn’t a bad drive, and the youth hostel was really cool.  We’re pretty sure it is a converted church.  The walls were incredibly thick, so much so that you couldn’t get internet if you weren’t in the same room as the router.  We were given a room with 4 bunk beds (8 bunks), an advantage of coming in the off-season.  I thought we would be the only “old folks” there but we weren’t, and we had kids from all over the place.  But we had our own room, and that was nice.  We also had a really bad washer and dryer, but a way to get clothes clean nonetheless.  Eventually.

We checked in, threw some clothes in the washer, and headed down the road the 10km to Vaduz, the capital of Lichstenstein.  We chose to go there for a pretty cheezy reason:  that probably none of our friends have been there.  Lichtenstein is a principality with its own king, even though it’s not much bigger than Manhattan.  And it has more incorporated companies than people (by about 2:1) due to its favorable tax status.  The capital is Valduz, and there is not much to it.  We got there very close to 5:00 and fortunately parked near the visitor center (entirely by accident).  For €2.5, they will stamp your passport.  Who could resist?  Nobody stamps passports anymore except at your port of entry in Europe.  Lichtenstein, like its neighbor Switzerland, has not adopted the Euro.  It runs on the Swiss Franc, and like Switzerland has very high prices.  We were going to eat there, but after finding that a tomato salad was 20 Swiss Francs ( a little less than €20, but more than $20), we decided the better of it.  We headed back to Feldkirsh, checked the laundry, and headed to the old downtown in search of food.  Feldkirsh is a beautiful, old Austrian town embedded in the Alps, and I’ll bet it’s hopping during ski season and in the summer.  Not so much in April.  Today was Judy’s birthday, and there really wasn’t anywhere special to eat.  We ended up eating at an Italian restaurant, which had good food and Tiramisu.

We went back to the hostel and the only room with internet.  There we found a very messed-up guy on God-knows-what who was barely conscious, and a couple of very nice girls from Croatia who are studying to be dentists.  An interesting mix.