Over the Hills and To the Lakes

Lucerne was wonderful for the ambiance but Interlaken takes the prize for the location with the easy access it has to high Alpine walking.  So we now head east again, this time towards Liechtenstein, unless something catches our eye between here and there.  We’ve driven a fair amount of Swiss roads and what they do not do (or do very rarely) is have laybys (pullouts).  There are often dozens and dozens of miles with the only stopping places being car parks in towns or villages.  This means that we cover the ground quicker than expected because there are no photo or tea stops.  We have got our 40 Euro motorway vignette which all drivers have to have or run the danger of a 200 euro fine but so far we’ve not been on a Swiss motorway.

We were surprised to find a perfectly good pull in for lunch at about the right time after Lucerne and suddenly we find that we’re in Liechtenstein.  This is as you will all know a country but it’s a country with a population of about 37,000 and a landmass about 15 miles long by 8 miles wide at the widest.  That’s 160 sq km.  According to Wikipedia, Manhatten is 87 sq km the Isle of Wight is 384 sq km.  Realistically, if not politically it is a part of Switzerland.  Vaduz, the Liechtenstein capital, has a population of about 5000 people and is the only capital city in which I’ve parked in the centre for free.  At least since 1960s London where I used to drive to work and park just off Fleet Street for nothing all day.  Now, with the huge amount of money the Liechtensteiners have made from secretive banking and Tax Havening over the years you might have expected some top notch stunning architectural treats in Vaduz but it is frankly just dull.  Top sights include the postal museum or the Post Office.  We did not linger but drove off to the worst campsite in the country.  It is also the best campsite in the country and those of you with logical minds will now have leapt to the correct conclusion that it is the only campsite in the country. 

Before we arrived in mid-Europe we hadn’t realised that we were in early season in this part of the world and that the flowers would still be at early spring levels but surprisingly with no narcissus.  Waking to a gloomy and rainy day with a forecast suggesting that this isn’t just a quick sprinkling we abandon the plan, only half formulated to go into SE Switzerland, the Engardine, and head southwards for Italy instead.  We’ll head for Lake Maggiore, the most westerly of the big Italian Lakes and we have the choice of the motorway and tunnels through the Alps or the mountain pass of San Bernardino through what could well be snow at high altitude.  Naturally we head for the pass but strangely everyone else is going on the motorway.  It begins snowing some way before we leave level ground and the fields and trees are looking decidedly white but we do see a sign saying PASS OPEN before the road heads up into the mist.  It is quite exciting to see that the sign is covered in snow and so up we go.  As I regularly say, what could possibly go wrong.  Well obviously nothing did or you’d be reading this as a little inside page newspaper story.  It was like being back in Norway again, a bleak cold landscape with rocks showing here and there through the snow and the road all to ourselves.  The snow was beginning to lay on the road before we reached the top and when we got there, we stopped for lunch, not wishing to pass up the chance of stopping at a Swiss layby.   So after some hot soup we set off down the switchbacks towards Italy but with still some of Switzerland to drive through.  This is Italian speaking Switzerland and although I know it‘s a bit of national stereotyping I can’t help feeling there must be some internal personal struggle between the apparent methodical, orderly, rule bound Swiss outlook and the somewhat looser Italian view, even if politically speaking they are all Swiss.

So we roll on down to Lake Maggiore, or as the Italians insist on calling it, Lago Maggiore.   The lake is described in Lonely Planet as changing from jade green in the north to deep blue in the south.  At the end of this gloomy day I can report that in the middle it’s a deep grey.  We have a terraced spot right on the edge of the lake with a view eastwards to the far shore and we have bus tickets to take us into the nearest town on the morrow.  About a 20 minute ride, the tickets cost us 2 euro 50 each for the return.  The road we’ve driven along has the lake on the left and cliffs or walls or houses on the left.  It is a bit like a narrow country road with an all comers road rally taking place.  There is no pavement.  On the lake side is a continuous metal crash barrier with a fifteen feet or so drop to the water and about a foot towards the road is a white line.  Pedestrians have to walk in that vague area or risk being hit head on by a vehicle or being smeared along the crash barrier.  Cyclists ride as if nothing else is on the road and we can’t understand why there isn’t a permanent ambulance/hearse cruising back and forth.  We feel perfectly safe in the morning riding on a nice big bus in some wonderful sunshine. 

We both find that we can get by in French, German and Italian as long as they speak good English, and nearly everyone does.  Back in Lucerne a young Portuguese waiter spoke five languages and we heard him using several while we were having lunch.  Fortunately for us, English is the new Esperanto. 

On the various campsites we spend time on, we’re seeing people at quite close quarters compared to what happens at home.  There are always a variety of nationalities, almost always the majority from the country we’re in, especially in Switzerland but not Norway where nearly every outfit we saw was German.  After the locals it is usually Germans, Dutch, French and then Brits with a few erratics from time to time.  On that Liechtenstein site there were four of us : two Brits, one Finnish and one Russian.   People watching is interesting and I can really understand why Social Anthropology can be so fascinating.  One odd thing we have noticed is that on British sites, caravanners use a water container like a small barrel with a handle secured to the flat ends so that a large quantity of water can just be rolled along and then just left outside the caravan with a handy pump attached.  On continental Europe these things appear not to exist and we’ve seen people going to the water supply tap with a coffee pot or a one litre jug or a kettle.  Maybe it is just some European exercise fad.  It does seem very nerdy but I just notice these things.  By the way motor-caravans have their own on-board water supply which we fill up every few days.  Our holds about 75 litres and it is much more convenient.

Pallanza is our destination on the bus, a beautiful and typical Italian town on the lakeside and I’m reminded again how much I like Italy.  There’s a market in full swing on the quayside, some stalls with great selections of fruit and veg but a lot just selling unnecessary plastic objects.  There is the obligatory stall selling football shirts emblazoned with star names.  The usual are there, Messi, Ronaldo and so on but now as a sign of the times, Vardy.  For you non-footie fans Jamie Vardy is one of the star players for the entirely unfancied Leicester City who have won the Premiership title for the first time ever this season.  Some bookies gave odds of 5000 to 1 against them at the start of the season.  Anyway, said Vardy was playing non-league football only a few years ago.

This town, Pallanza is the location for one of the best botanical gardens we’ve ever seen and we visit them in many countries.  Here the azaleas and rhododendrons were in full bloom and many acers were in fresh leaf on this undulating and hilly site with views over the lake.  It was laid out in the 1930s by one of those Scotsmen who loved Scotland so much he left it and went and lived somewhere else.  Mind you he made a damned fine job of the garden.

In a number of places on various travels we’ve seen those tourist trains consisting of about 8 or so carriages pulled by a vehicle made to look like a locomotive.  Strangely, wherever we’ve seen them in the world it is always disguised as a toy steam engine, never a diesel or electric one.

A little way southwards along the lake from Pallanza is a cablecar which rises to a 1500m summit with spectacular views over the lake and a panorama of the Alps to the north.  We had hoped to go up, stopping at the Alpine Garden half way but the cablecar has a full overhaul every 40 years and true to our usual timing excellence it is this year.  Yes, it’s closed.