Journey to Vaduz

21.09.05

After another late night of planning - I decided that it would be best to just spend 3 nights in Vaduz, Liechtenstein. Having one night somewhere doesn’t give enough time to do much. As with most Hosteling International establishments, check-in would be at 5 pm. In The Green Guide [Michellin] there is a section on San Bernardino-Strasse, which is the route I would take from Moscia to Vaduz. I picked one place on the way for a stop over, and arranged my departure time to arrive at the hostel just after 5.

Zillis is a small town, but its church has a marvelous painted ceiling depicting the life of Christ. By the time I arrived, my morning headache had subsided, and it was nice to receive the student price, as if I was only 18 — despite my efforts to argue my way out of it.

You could crank your neck to look at the ceiling, or use the provided mirrors - but it felt weird looking in a mirror. So I laid on the floor, and looked at each of the over 100 frames of the 12th century Romanesque “comic strip” — narrating each scene in my mind with modern day attitude.

Afterwards, I watched an English movie describing the small town and how it likely came to have a ceiling like this in the church. Apparently the Bishop of Chur, a nearby city, owned this church building.

In Vaduz, my roommates Ben and David from Wales and on their way to Oktober fest, and travelling with Gabby (Gabriel) who stayed in the girls dorm room. I had no idea Oktober fest starts in September. David has been to this hostel before, and many other places on a 7 week tour of Europe. He was just finishing off a book titled “The Rule of Four,” in the same vein as the DaVinci Code.

We went to a nearby restaurant for dinner, and I found out that “pomme frittes” are just normal french fries. “Pomme de ?terre” is French for potatoes. I thought they had something to do with apples, especially because I first saw the menu item in Atnau, which is like the “apple capital,” of Switzerland.